Teri Buford memos to Jim Jones, 1977

[Editor’s note: These document retain their original spellings.]

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To: JJ
From: TB

ELAINE BROWN

I saw Elaine Browns FBI files yesterday. It is one whole box full so utterly impossible to copy unless there is some real need for it and then I will do it but please let me know. The most interesting thing that there is to note about Elaine is that up until 1971 she had terribly terribly thick FBI files. Every move was put in there. Then in 1971 – when Elaine’s record should have been even longer due to the fact that she was running the party – all of her records became very very short. They give her residence and the fact that she is the head of the [Black] Panther Party. Tieing this information in with something that Pat told me the other day makes me think seriously that Elaine turned informer for the Panther Party perhaps about the time that Huey left for Cuba. Pat [Richartz] told me that while Huey was in Cuba she got information from an INFORMER in the DA’s office. Pat said that after Huey left a very odd thing happened and that is that she would get information from the informer in the DA’s office faster than she would get the information from the Panther Party. Patrick said that she was learning more about the Party from the DA’s office and she was from the Party herself. It was as if someone in the Party (high up) was having a direct pipeline with the DA. Pat thinks that it was Elaine and that Elaine had (before Huey left) called Garry’s office all the time and after he left she stopped completely. Her whole personality changed. When Elaine found out that Huey was coming back it was then that she called up Garry and asked him if she was still head of the party. Elaine is a meglamaniac in the truest sense of the word. I personally think that she was offered a deal by the FBI that they would keep Huey out of the country and the party would be hers if she would inform. Pat also told me a long time ago that Elaine used to treat Erica Huggins so badly that it was a wonder that she didn’t leave the party over the way that Elaine treated her. – Putting it all together it seems unlikely

 

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that Elaine could have been anything but an agent. I am not saying this for the sake of rhetoric but rather I think that this is in fact the case. Elaine had been caught smuggling cocaine into Goerge [George] Jackson in prison which would have gotten both her and him in a lot of trouble. However – all matter was completely dropped. Another thing is that Elaine smuggled 3 pounds of grass into the Panther Headquarters and was seen doing it buy [by] FBI and nothing was done whatsoever. It was just a note. Anyway – Huey thinks that the woman is crazy and snapped under the pressure however he does not and will not accept the idea that she may have turned informer some 6 years ago. Another twist to this also is that someone who was currently under investigation for the Richmond murder case a few years ago and was getting the finger pointed at felt Elaine was a fink and in private testamoney in the DA’s office (according to the DA source) stated that Elaine brown helped coordinate and participate in the Murder. This might help explain why Elain left in such a hurry.

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To: JJ
From: TB
REPORTS

FBI AGENT:

Mr. Sweringen is a newly retired agent of the FBI. He works on both AIM [American Indian Movement] and Panther cases and had access to a lot of materials. He claimed to have become disillusioned with the FBI when he became the censorer who goes through the files and marks out the bad stuff with that special pen that you can’t see through. He claims that it was then that he saw just how low down the FBI really was. It could well be that after Watergate and after more investigations of different agencies have begun that he knows that he is going to be in trouble anyway so he has decided to turn to the left in hopes of building alliances before he goes down the drain. This guy retains [Charles] Garry as a lawyer because he felt that information could be best disseminated working through the attorney-client priviledge. The guy is a white man. 30ish according to Pat [Richartz]. He has not yet surfaced and doesn’t know if and when he would do so. He has written the book of which you have a copy. Pat has shown me a very limited amount of the total stuff thinking that what she showed me could be conveyed to Dennis Banks. We do do that. However, I found Pat’s “secret hiding place” two weeks ago so every few days we check it and photocopy any new materials that have come in from this guy. None of it to date has been earthshaking to us in fact there is some that I didn’t bother to copy. But we do keep checking because the only way to know if it is worthwhile or not is to keep reading it so we are doing that much. I do think that both Pat and Garry would be very upset if they had any idea that this was what we were doing.

Pat has shown me all the stuff that deals with AIM and some of the Panther stuff – but not the book and supporting documents. In that this guy worked on AIM in LA where this whole Mowhawk Skyhourse [Mohawk Skyhorse] case is going on the man has agreed to talk to Dennis in early January.

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[Editor’s note: Several typographical errors have been corrected. The original spellings made the Teri Buford remain.]

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REPORTS TO JJ FROM Teri

INTERPOL AGENT:

The person that gave us a list of the International Police Congress is a black man whose name is H. Rodgers. He is about 50 years old and has triple lukiema [leukemia]. This man has been supplying Pat and Garry with Information out of the DA’s office and other places in regard to the [Black] Panther Party for years that has always been reliable in their opinion. Rodgers claims that the reason for the name change on these agents is for the convience [convenience] of INTERPOL but that these agents functions as INTERPOL agents and they identify themselves that way and they are the operating agents of INTERPOL (on a low level). Tom and I went to this guy’s house to pick up some papers the other afternoon and the name [man] is emaciated and is in a very bad state of health. He was supposed to have died last December so he has outlived his doctor’s prognosis by some months. He is due to start cobalt treatment after the first of the year. After meeting him I had a lot of questions about him because he did not appear to be very “with it” but then again the man is dying and is probably suffering from brain damage. My biggest fear was that Pat and Charles both seem to be taken in by any face that appears to be black and therefore maybe this guy played his job up to them to get their attention and affection. I don’t know. He claims to have gotten into INTERPOL by recommendation of an FBI man. Pat says that he has been the most reliable information giver that they have ever had and she swears by the fact that if he says that he is INTERPOL that he is INTERPOL and that as he said himself that was just a name change for the convience of INTERPOL here in the US. Scientology’s worry with it is that INTERPOL has yet to ever recognize the fact that they have little agents running around. They are supposed to be operating through the police force and this agent-business INTERPOL will not cop to. Scientology did say that from time to time people have surfaced as INTERPOL agents but that INTERPOL has completely denied any

 

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TO: JJ FROM: Teri

One thing that you should be aware of that Garry mentioned one day in the office is that he was talking to some lawyer friends of his in a party the other evening and one of the lawyers was complaining to him that he had a number of clients in the drug world that had put the funds that they had received into Swiss Bank accounts and they are running into all sorts of problems with their funds being tied up and all. He said for them that this secrecy business is not holding water and that they are in trouble. Of course we knew in writing this to be the case for a long time. There are a number of charges that can be brought against a person where the Swiss may not give the money back necessarily but they do deserve the right that if you are shown to be a criminal of some sort or other that they will not keep your monies secret. This is nothing new – in the back of that green book it gives you the list of offenses and we have already determined how we stand on that. I just reporting what Garry said. I do think that if they wanted to set us up on various charges – drugs or guns that we would have a problem – however – this is nothing changed from before – not to alarm you because changing them won’t hide – them or make them any more or less safe because talking is a chain reaction thing – if they get enough grounds for one to talk then they will all talk so doing the run and hide it again job would only draw more attention. Further – I think I remember hearing somewhere that some of the traitiors had given a list of names for people to watch out for that would be involved in money moving – so I don’t remember where that came from but chances are anyone likely to be moving it is likely to be watched in which case if you didn’t have a problem before you would then.

So this is just for your information.

Teri

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TO: JJ
FROM: TB
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 18, 1977

MEETING WITH DAVID FECHEIMER [Fechheimer]

1. David believed that if you know that you don’t have a winning hand in a game then the thing to do is to frustrate them in their own game of bureaucratic red tape. That is if you had 25 people on the project named John Stoen you could tie up court procedures a long time just in routine work. The same would go for Jim Jones – there could be a lot of Jim Jones to run around Jonestown. I don’t believe that this is a solution or even a means to solving our problem. I frankly wouldn’t advise it but am just passing it on.

2. He does not believe that we are the victims of a big governmental conspiracy but he is rather of the opinion that a little Joseph Mazur [Mazor] could have the connections to single-handedly make our lives completely miserable. David claims that all you need to do is pay off a computer person at HEW and they could cut off checks to half the country so it is not surprising to him that they have issued an order to stop it all going to 1 country. He feels that Mazur is a person without morales [morals] and with plenty of brains and that Mazur saw us as an opportunity to get big. Mazur even said so in his talk about becoming the other Hal Lipset etc.

3. David disagrees with the way that Garry handled to [the] press in our regard. David insists that anything said would have been better than nothing said. Like the chicken liver charge – he said to even say that it made a person “feel better” was better than not talking. He said that to have you disappear and not one word from anyone one made you look even more frightening to the public eye. He doesn’t understand why we don’t come out and tell the real story about Grace [Stoen]. He also commented that the average person doesn’t know the difference between us and the Moonie and Cleavers church – to them we are all one and the same.
 

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– He mentioned also that he could buy any information we want. He said that he always buys his information and never trades it (of course we only have his word to go on on that). He said that he can get anyone’s record off of the Treasury Computer if [we] wanted but that the price is 1500. He stressed again that he is not charging us anything for reason that he likes us and that the money that he asks for just goes to buy the information.

– He mentioned that EST had paid him $30,000 to write the worst story possible on them so that they could figure out how to clean up their act.

– He mentioned as a matter of warning that if you should try to go political in Guyana that you would get shot – no doubt about it.

– He mentioned also that we can get sued for having those people[‘s] phone numbers so that we should be careful about that because that constitutes invasion of privacy.

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Thursday, January 5, 1978

SCIENTOLOGY:

I talked to Pat Lufkin this morning and he said that he had forwarded our stuff on the INTERNATIONAL POLICE CONGRESS to Vaughn Young who is the foremost researcher on INTERPOL. Vaughn is writing a letter to us but Vaughn basically backs up what we said and he says that the Congress is backed up by the testamoney of too many agents not to be connected with INTERPOL. He says that he has run into the same situation that we have in that regard and he says that these people do believe that they are agents and that the only thing that needs to be done is to prove the connection somehow. Vaughn says that Scientology is working on improving the connection between the two however they can. Vaughn believes that Rodgers is actually and [an] agent for INTERPOL and that Mazur [Joe Mazor] is. He just warns that INTERPOL will probably deny the connection. Pat went on to say that given that there is this connection that INTERPOL will not sue us nor will Mazur because it would be the responsibility of Mazur to deny his association with INTERPOL and furthermore this would open us to the right of discovery on INTERPOL and Pat left and feels that INTERPOL would not want us to touch that with a ten foot pole.

THOSE TWO PHONE NUMBERS THAT YOU WANTED TO CHECK OUT:

I am sure beyond a shadow of a doubt that those are the two number[s] of the pay phones at the San Franciscan Hotel so apparently what happened is that after the FC was made and the billing didn’t turn out or something they decided to put it on the Guyana phone bill. Obviously anyone doing an FC would have had sense enough not to go it collect. Also I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the code calls didn’t come up for billing just by mistake.