FOIA Documents Added to Website (2024 Edition)

In recent years, the efforts of this site to transcribe documents released under the Freedom of Information Act have focused on the records of Peoples Temple itself, especially those recovered from the Jonestown community in November 1978 and processed by the FBI in the spring of 1979. (Most Temple records from its California churches are maintained by the California Historical Society, although there is some overlap between the two collections of materials.)

Thousands of pages have been transcribed, but there are many more thousands remaining. As we complete various sections of the FBI organizational breakdown of these records, we note them on the What’s New page of the Alternative Considerations website.

The sections completed in the past 12 months include:

• Section 74, designated in the Guyana Index as “Guest Book,” consists of 34 pages of entries with the names of 413 people who visited Jonestown during 1978. Most are of local residents, from Port Kaituma (seven miles away), Matthews Ridge (approximately 29 miles away), and other locations in the Northwest District.  There are also a number of visitors from Georgetown and its suburbs, many of whom represented agencies of the Guyana government, including nearly 50 visitors on April 24 from the Burnham Agricultural Institute.
• Section 77, consisting of 199 pages of “Administrative Functions,” includes numerous records of Peoples Rallies in Jonestown during the summer of 1978, as well as charts listing counseling and governing boards within the community, as well as descriptions of the functions of those committees. Many of the documents in this section were transcribed by Alexandra Prince, a professor of Religious Studies at Skidmore College.
• Section 86, labeled “Social Security & Pensions,” is a 272-page listing of beneficiaries of retirement income – Social Security payments, Veterans Administration benefits, pensions and annuities – as well as intermittent payments made by insurance companies and banks. There is also a 14-page listing described as Peoples Temple Mail Income with upwards of 400 names, all but a handful comprising members of the Temple who did not go to Jonestown.
• Section 92 and Section 93 combine for 129 pages listed as “Informant tapes & photos.” They consist of reports made by Temple members in the U.S. – mostly in Los Angeles – describing their interactions with the police. Indeed, it should be noted that the term “Police informant” is these pages does not apply to the usual reference – that is, it does not refer to anyone who provides information to the police, but rather refers to people within Peoples Temple who have made calls to the police to reports criminal acts that they have been party to or witnessed. A third section with the “Informant tapes & photos” designation – Section 94 – consists of photocopies of photographs taken by Jonestown residents. Higher quality copies of these photographs appears throughout the albums on the Peoples Temple Flickr site.
• There are three pages in Section 95 labeled as “Letters to PT.” The pages are of correspondence addressed to Temple leaders from government officials.
• Section 112 comprises 16 pages of immigration documents – passport applications, letters of reference, and visa applications – and a two-page application to immigrate into Guyana relating to Jonestown survivor Philip Blakey.
• Section 113 is the second of two folders labeled as “Terri Buford” – the other is at Section 97 – which consists principally of letters and reports written by the Temple leader who left the group in the fall of 1978. There are also numerous reports by another Temple leader, Jean Brown, also from the same period, many of them related to Buford. This 266-page section was transcribed and annotated by Cole Waterman.
• The 308 pages in Section 116, labeled “Jim Jones,” include many of the Temple leader’s personal records – birth certificate, diplomas, teaching certificates – as well as transcripts of interviews with San Francisco radio stations prior to his departure for Guyana.
• The FBI combined nine folders of Temple documents into three sections in its listings, Sections 118-120. The resulting document is 574 pages with the names of nine important figures in Peoples Temple’s history: Maria Katsaris; Carolyn Layton; Karen Layton; Larry Layton; Lisa Layton; Chris Lewis; Annie Moore; Mike Prokes; and Larry Schacht.
• The FBI placed two folders of Temple documents into three sections, 121 through 123. The resulting document is 610 pages and includes documents relating to two Temple leaders, Tim Stoen and Deborah Touchette.
• The folder labeled in the Guyana Indexas “EE-Letters to Dad” was big enough that the FBI broke it down into four sections, from 126-129. Section 126 – letters from people whose last name started from A through F – consists of 524 pages. They were transcribed by Cole Waterman.
• The 484 pages of Section 130, labeled in the Guyana Indexas “Letters to Jim Jones,” consist mostly of letters and reports written by Jonestown residents.
• The 319 pages of Section 136, labeled “Sworn Affidavits,” consist mostly of documents on the Stoen custody battle, healing testimonials, and statements critical of Temple enemies.
• Section 144, comprising 115 pages, document the 1978 battle between Peoples Temple and the Concerned Relatives organization.