The CIA and Peoples Temple

Of all the federal agencies which logically would have had records about Peoples Temple and Jonestown, certainly the most opaque – and seemingly sinister – was the Central Intelligence Agency. It is also the agency whose (very few) records retain the greatest number of deletions, and those are for the identified records which have been released at all.

The most substantive and successful request made under the Freedom of Information Act for CIA records was filed by the editors of this website – even before there were websites – in the first few weeks after the deaths in Jonestown. The genesis of the request can be attributed in part the cultural context of the times – congressional investigations had exposed the illegal monitoring of American citizens conducted by U.S. intelligence agencies throughout the 1970s – and part of it stemmed directly from Peoples Temple itself. Not only did Jim Jones place some of the woes that Jonestown had experienced in Guyana at the feet of the CIA, not only did attorney and conspiracy investigator Mark Lane pledge to sue the U.S. government on the Temple’s behalf over the CIA’s interference in the community, but Jonestown resident Annie Moore’s last letter to her sister, Rebecca Moore, lauded Lane’s efforts, concluding with the observation that “What’s interesting is that it is all coming out before we are all dead.” Rebecca received the letter after November 18, 1978.

This page includes an extended excerpt from the chapter on the CIA in Rebecca Moore’s 1985 book, A Sympathetic History of Jonestown: The Moore Family Involvement in the Peoples Temple, as well as the two court decisions in the case of McGehee v. CIA. A forthcoming chart will list the documents generated by the CIA which were released by the FBI and State Department pursuant to other FOIA requests and lawsuits. Additional documents relating to the initial request and subsequent lawsuit will also be uploaded.

1. McGehee v. CIA, by Rebecca Moore, excerpts from Chapter 16 of Sympathetic History of Jonestown
2. Court decisions in McGehee v. CIA
   1. US District Court Decision (1982)
      1. PDF
      2. Text
   2. US Court of Appeals Decision (1983)
      1. PDF
      2. Text