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Conversations with Dymally [California Lt. Gov. Mervyn Dymally]
Concern on part of [Guyana Amb. to the US Lawrence] Mann that Congressmen do not make this an issue on the floor and read material into the record that could reflect negatively on the climate in Guyana. Negotiations are delicate now.
Dymally with [will] be meeting soon with a man named Terence Tudman of the US State Department. He will give us the names in the State Dept to use as contacts.
Dymally is also meeting Wednesday (October 12, with committee for Caribbean. Humphrey, Bill Coleman, Bob West, Andy Young.
Another man in State Dept – Bill Louers (?) – we will get names.
Dymally will be holding a press conference in Guyana in February – will shed light on the situation.
Toronto: that’s where the big ambassadorial staff is set up and big mission from Guyana.
Notes on Katsaris meeting:
- Medical verification – his doctor called – Jane has the name. Said he was a very sick man.
- He mentioned money he has given Maria – support for the Temple. Claimed he was not against the Temple.
- He was alarmed by the changing stories she got from Maria on why they couldn’t meet. Venezuela, short time with boyfriend, etc. Very obviously being put off. Stories not credible, were open, palpable devices to keep him away. This arouses his anxiety.
- Sent telegram to Jim. He also called Mazor on how to get hold of us. Mazor said he had a jet plane with engines all revved up and 20+ people ready to go there and that Katsaris should come with him. Katsaris declined the offer.
- He contacted Frank Touminia (sp?) [Tumminia] of Guyana Desk in State Dept.
- Went to Guyana Embassy and talked with Dennis Gouveia (sp?)
- Claims that Dick McCoy said he (McCoy) talked with Paula who said Katsaris had molested Maria. McCoy had a note on it to verify the conversation. Said that Paula said she didn’t want to get involved.
- Tried to get in touch through phone system, but didn’t work.
- Said he was desperate: was going to talk with anyone, willing to talk with anyone about seeing his daughter.
- Went to DC. Spent a weekend there. Saw Touminia, Gouvaia.
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He also visited House Subcommittee on Latin American Affairs. They told him that his only access would be through politics. He went to Senator Humphrey’s Foreign Relations committee. Phil Burton’s administrative assistant, Don Clausen’s adm. asst., Alan Cranston’s adm. asst. Willing to see anyone who has any relations with PT in order to explore all avenues to see Maria.
- Tim Reiterman and Marshall Killduff called him. Wanted to talk with him, but he didn’t do it. He didn’t want it made public. Fear for his reputation.
- He wanted to go there – to Guyana.
- Before going, he gets three mysterious late-night phone calls. People identify themselves as “ex-members.”
1st call: “We’ve heard you’re planning to go there, our advice is not to go down.
2nd call: “mistake”
3rd call: voice of black man: You could be putting your daughter in jeopardy.
He doesn’t believe the calls are from ex-members. He thinks we did them.
- Then he gets a call from Maria that takes him aback. She asks “how are you?” This friendly tone and incongruous question after he has gone through all this, blows his mind. She claims his tone on earlier call(s) sounded threatening. This is also a shock to him. He can’t believe this is Maria say this – feels that she has been influenced, is under others’ influence. Especially when she asks for Medical verification of his condition. This utterly blows his mind. Considers the request, given what Maria knows about his case, “dumb” or “insane.” At this point he is really worried about Maria – who is controlling her? Is she in her right mind? Feels degrading thing to produce medical verification for Maria. On the verge of saying “the hell with it.” And giving up entirely. But decided to get the verification.
- He said he thinks we are paranoid about him. He said he thinks we have him on our “enemies list.” The “official report” about him working with a “right wing” congressman also flabbergasted him. He talked about his participation in anti-war movement, reverence for [Martin Luther] King. Admitted he did not leave a politically active life, but tried to show us he was liberal, progressive. Said he tried to break away from rigidities of church, and to bring Maria out of it. This is why he brought her to Peoples Temple in the first place.
- He kept going back to the changing stories: first Guyana government policy, then our policy, then the Venezuela thing, etc.
- He wanted all this conveyed to Maria.
- He [balance of line blank]
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Katsaris left on a fairly friendly note. Shook hands. But his feeling about us is that we are paranoid.
He said that he didn’t want to credit the stories he had read about the church, but advised us that the stuff he had encountered in his attempts to see Maria made him credit the stories more. He said this as if to advise us that our own actions have done more to confirm the stories about us than anything else.
If Jean Brown has the tape of the conversation, I hope it came out – it should be analyzed.
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REPORT ON KATSARIS VISIT
First thing, he was angry that Maria had questioned his health problem. Said she had known about it for 15 years, in December he had sent her money for health check because she had said she needed it: he told her at that time there were things like that in the family. Said that he was pissed off with her. A son or daughter of his should give him more respect and love…
He gave breakdown of his talks with Maria, increasing paranoia and anxiety. After last phone patch with her he said he would come to Georgetown anyway, even though what he called was a “strange” last call telling him it was the government policy not to allow visitors headed for Jonestown (Tom quickly contradicted that one, saying it was distinctly explained by Maria that it was not a government but a Jonestown policy. But K. picked up on it and said it he heard what he heard, Maria first said government. Tom then said she must have meant church government, the name we refer to our board. K. seemed a little less sure of himself about that point after what Tom said). K. said Maria had gone through various dodges, such as come in December, excuse of fiancé, would be in Venezuela – all of which he said he saw through. Finally she had just said, to hell with it, don’t come, I don’t want to see you.
K. went to Barry Wood in Ukiah and told him he couldn’t believe it, either Maria was coerced or brainwashed. Barry said he knew JJ from legal services, he was reasonable, and should be contacted by telegram about this. So this is when K. said he called Mazor on the pretext that he had read his name in the papers. Mazor told him not to go, he had gotten a plane ready to go and that parents were going to go to see their children; he should go with them. K. said, no, he simply wanted to see his own daughter, so he sent a telegram to Jim Jones c/o Dick McCoy at the American Embassy there. He claims he never received an answer so went to Washington. Went to the State Department Guyana desk, a man named Frank Tuminia. This man told him the State Department couldn’t help, that it was private property and the girl was of age, that if the government was discouraging visitors he should see the Guyana Embassy. He went and met a man named Dennis Gouveia. (I think I am right here, that this man was in Georgetown, though I have never heard of him. If not, then this person was still while K was in Washington.) He went to McCoy at the US Embassy where Paula Adams had delivered a hand-written letter from Maria saying she did not want to see her father. What really threw him was when he got the message from McCoy that the reason (given as background information from Paula) that he could not see his daughter was that she had been molested by him as a child.
This really set K off. He said now he really worried because he didn’t think this was his daughter talking. He tried to talk McCoy into flying into Jonestown with him, via charter to Kaituma. McCoy refused, saying he had no official business there. K then tried by radiophone to Port Kaituma to no avail. Finally, completely frustrated, he went back to Washington DC (Thurs, Fri., Sat., and Sunday) where he met with a close personal friend who happened to be the staff director for the House subcommittee on Latin American Affairs and said that Peoples Temple doesn’t want him to see his daughter. This man (no name) told him what he should do is get to Congressmen who have political clout. You talk to assistants of Humphrey, Clausen, Phil Burton, Cranston, and told him he was afraid Maria either have access to such sensitive information that the Temple is afraid to let her talk to anyone on the “outside” or that we are so paranoid as a group that everyone on the outside is an enemy and he is on our enemy list.
Then he said when he got home he got calls from both Ritterman [Tim Reiterman] and [Marshall] Kilduff. At this point Dick asked how did he suppose he got ahold of his number.
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He got instantly defensive and said wasn’t that presumptuous of us to ask him how he was contacted by them when he had spent $1200 trying to see his daughter and talking to people around the nation and in South America… He never answered the question. He said that he told them not now, but that if there was no satisfaction in this that he would talk to them later. Then he said he received 3 strange phone calls, two from women and one from a black man. All said they were friends who had left the Temple. Their advice to him was not to go down. Said he could be putting himself on the line people could “burn you down” or something threatening to that effect. We told him that is exactly why we are paranoid, this kind of conspiracy is after us all the time. He loosened up at that, as if he gave room to the idea we had not done it. He said he did not think it was ex-members, saying as much as that he thought it was the church.
He took off again on the insults Maria had piled on him the night before on the phone. Called it strange, saying she started off with “Hi Pop,” as though nothing had happened. Thinks it is dumb, stupid, insane that she would ask him for a medical excuse. Then he thought, if he refuses to do it, it would be playing right into our hands if we are keeping Maria away from him and she must know that he is trying every possible way to get to see her. So he will go on to his doctor this afternoon and get himself an excuse. If nothing else, he said, this is good therapy for him. I guess he means that it has given him a reason to keep himself going physically – he sure doesn’t look sick. He was dressed in some damned expensive and had a trim, clothes up-to-date hari [hair] style and mustache.
He said the [that] we are all paranoid, needed a psychiatrist and were doing everything in our power to turn and basically supported parent into a panic-stricken, suspicious person who believed all the things written in the articles. Said he has always told Maria that she came from a family with a strong father figure and from a dominating church background which even he took 40 years to get out of… That it was a shame that she left that and then turned to an even more dominating father-figure and never learned to experience her independence etc. When he talked about her rejecting him he got a crack in his voice like crying (phoney) and it is obvious that he cannot take the fact that the daughter he lead [led] by the hand through the peace marches of the 60’s has really rejected him. Then he gave us all a good long look in the eye and said he would not take lightly what was conveyed to him by the Ambassador in Guyana. Since his reputation is not to be messed with, that he holds either the man McCoy responsible or Paula Adams, but that he will get to the bottom of it. WHAT AN ASS. Also reacted against what she had said about his knowing a right-wing Congressman. This could not possibly be his daughter saying this. Now he is all the more unsettled about the whole thing… It ended very ungracefully, we just sat there and looked at him. He went on to his doctor. [Handwritten addition: “He said he felt better for having had the chance to talk it out – but it was as though he had had control of the conversation.”]
I want to say that for the three of us, Tom did well in answering some of these outrageous charges. He countered him successfully several times. Dick took him down seriously and tried to deal with him intellectually, but the guy got Dick every time and shut him down. I think Dick was unnerved by the whole thing and had mixed reactions about what he was hearing. I was furious with him for inviting the fool to the Temple. I told him we should talk to JJ first on the radio and put the guy off until later in the evening until we had instructions, if we were cleared to talk to him at all. Dick said he disagreed with that, we have to talk to people and give them a chance to reason with us. He was obviously in for more than he bargained for with Katsaris. He did not have any remorse about not checking first with us before telling the guy to come over. For my part – I just sat there and looked at him. At one point he got so outrageous I told him I had just been in Guyana and that Maria was fine and healthy and happy, that whatever she had said
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to him she was fully acting under her own volition – but he just passed over that. I mentioned twice that I had seen her and she was well – he didn’t even respond. Funny, if he is so terribly concerned about her. He told us he had said to the Guyanese Ambassador that he had a bigger problem than Katsaris had, because K just had one daughter, while the Ambassador had a whole 700 people with estranged relatives.