EE-1-G-61
Undated self-evaluation from Clifford Gieg
From Cliff Gieg – self evaluation
As far as work production I feel my output is unsatisfactory to the cause. At times I am to sluggish and lazy. I don’t push myself enough. As far as working with others I still have problems putting myself above others in the form of knowledge when actually don’t even deserve the title of a zero infact less than a zero, somewhere around the -3 bracket. I have tendencies to manipulate coordinators at times to get what I want but I believe our coordination is getting wise to this type of anarcy, and will eventually subdue this. I still have problems with my shovanism [chauvinism] with my fellow comrades and expecialy with sisters working with me. When we took the socialism test on Das copitol [Das Kapital] I noticed in myself and in others that I was more concerned with getting the right answers instead of getting a better understanding. I hope to overcome the anarcistic acts only by your example I change. Thank you Dad!!
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EE-1-G-74
Undated note from Clifford Gieg
From – Cliff Gieg
To Dad!
I have no real fear of death, the only fear I have would be myself, not being able to defend myself against the enemy. I think it would be a great relief to be able to die because life without everyone being able to be socialists isn’t worth living.
As far as actually being able to kill a relitive or wife or someone who you loved it wouldn’t be hard for one reason, and really don’t have anybody that close to me but you dad.
To be honest about missing anything in the states even while I am writing this I can not think of anything I would want back there. Sure there are things I would like them only if I could have them here. There is one thing I miss and that being able to steel from the capitolists because that is how I got most of what I have. I miss vehicals and other machinery that would make work go faster but as far as food or music we have enough of it here. Also I would like to thank you for buying those drums for me and the other parts of my drum set. I know it was very expensive and that money could have got some people over here to thank you very much.
If you were killed by the enemy I would, first of all do all in my power to seek out our enemies and kill them. And in order not to get caught and [illegible] in the movement I would make sure I got kill in the prosess. And whoever
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you put in to replace you I would be loyal to and be willing to die for that person also. And if you got killed before you put someone in your office I am sure there are enough of us who could get the group back under control before everyone could get away and try to sell us out because we would kill anyone who would try to break ranks. We would have to do that in order to get the rest of our work done and that would be to kill our traders. I think that your sudden death would be the only thing that would make people realize your truth and socialism.
My sexual attractions are very unstable in that it seems that I keep going from girl to girl and I know it is my homosexuality surfacing. I have a big problem with this because I am always trying to be the opposite thing by playing the big man or big lover role which I certainly can not be. It really bothers me sometimes because I feel if my friends knew this it will help me get over it. I just want to have a normal relationship with a women who I can really care for.
When I am carrying or holding a firearm I feel a great responsibility. Expecialy when in a crisis because I know they are all real and at any time the enemy could come over the hill. And I feel I would have a good chance to defend our land and be one of the first to die. I
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will not hesitate to shoot a trader or anyone who would try to break ranks. Again I would like to say it is a great trust and I will not abuse it.
Thank you Dad!!
Cliff Gieg
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Undated Note to Clifford Gieg from unknown Temple member
EE-2-f-14a – 14b
Clifford Gieg
Hi, Cliff;
How are you keeping? Bob told me, he was going into the interior and so I decided to write you. I thought I would have been able to see you when you came down the last time. I was at the Cultural Center, I saw you but I didn’t get to speak to you because you were on stage. I am finished with school and I am home while my examination’s results are out. When are you coming down. I really miss you a lot. I saw Mike but I didn’t get to speak with him. I am going to bed now and dream of you. Love yourself and I love you.
[Illegible signature]
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EE-1-G-41
Undated Note to Jim Jones from Rob Gieg
Very Personal from Rob Gieg
To Dad
My feelings towards death have changed since being in Jonestown. Before I got here I would have said death for any reason would be welcomed. Now for the first time in my life I feel like life has meaning because I think that the work I am doing will benefit someone sometime. I don’t feel afraid of death and when I drink that potion during the white night I was dissappointed when I learned it was not real. My feeling now is that if possible, I should stay alive as long as I can work towards communism. If I can better support world communism by dying then that is the course I should like to take and would take proudly. I don’t feel like death in that since would be a cowardly way out.
I am afraid of the bush at night. There is something about not knowing what I’m facing that frightens me. If I know what’s ahead I can prepare myself and then not be afraid.
I sometimes think that when a strategy is planned ahead of
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time it becomes easier for someone to leak information and then cause the plan to fail. In dealing with the enemy I think to face them head on and to do in as many as possible is the best way. I want those fuckers that were once a part of us to know exactly who is killing them. I would like to face [Jim] Cobb or [Mike] Cartmell or [Tim] Stoen or any one of the Bastards face to face and let them see me pull the trigger on thier asses. I would know that the only way I could be stopped by any motherfucker would be to kill me. I would force them to kill me so they couldn’t take me to jail where I could be tortured and possibly put thier cause in jepardy. I feel like I wouldn’t talk but I must be realistic in that I have never been tortured and can not really be aware of my reaction.
If any thing happened to you dad my first reaction would be to take revenge. I feel if it was the consensus of the body to continue the operation here
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I could stay on the job and continue as now. My belief in this project is strong enough that I could carry on your work. I would how ever want to know that if I didn’t personally get chosen to avenge your death that someone else was doing it or else I would take it upon myself to avenge your death.
I am prepared to kill Shirley or Jason or Romaldo [Gieg] were they to become traitors. I have known for a long time that in guerilla warfare it might become neccessary to kill some one close to you. (myself) if they were to put the entire groups lives in jeopardy I have prepared myself for that. I am not so loving that I cannot kill.
I can think of nothing that I miss so much from the states that I would want to give up this communist life to get it.
Sexually I consider myself able to go either way. I have had my share of homosexual relationships but they seem more superficial than
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heterosexual relationships. To me a homosexual relationship has only one purpose and that is for sex acts. At one point in my life that would have been sufficient but not anymore. I want to learn to be able to care about someone and I feel too much guilt when I’m involved in a homosexual relationship to really put my mind and heart into it. But I want to stress that for just sex. Its immaterial which way I go.
On occasion I have carried a gun to work. I don’t like being young and white and carrying a gun when the other two workers are black seniors here. During a white night I would rather be in the pavilion with the family so I know whats happening than to be out some where with a gun. I don’t feel so desirous of guns. I feel competant with a gun because I don’t get my [illegible] by carrying one.
The amount of news I hear you give is very
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minimal. I am in so many meetings that when I come in for dinner and shower I’m rushing like hell to get somewhere. The only way I can absorb the news is to sit down somewhere and concentrate only on what you’re saying. It is discouraging to me the condition of my memory. I don’t know if it’s from past drug use or what but it seams like my memory is extremely poor.
I do remember about Bangla Desh. It gives me hope for this country when you tell us about another small country that has had a successful changeover to socialism. One of the things that brought me into this cause was a talk you gave about Cuba and the advancements Castro had made in such a short time.
I remember the mine workers strike and most workers going back to work without getting any demands met. Which goes to show how the labor unions no longer support the workers but they are like [first president of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations] George Meany, extensions of the capitalist business owners. Also a CIA representative.
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Russia and China has been clashing over Mongolia. Russia says China has gone imperialist.
I remember also about Japan and West Germany refusing to help the capitalist United States out of their economic crisis by stimulating there own economies by 5%.
To me socialists means freedom for Jason. The unloading of the burden from my own shoulders of trying to make ends meet in America has meant a great deal to me. I know I never would have taken the proper responsibility for Jason back there. In the society like we have here socialism means to me that all of my basic needs are met so that I can work to built socialism and liberation on a much larger scale. World wide, hopefully. I would have great satisfaction knowing that I help to bring freedom and justice to a world that is so badly lacking.
When I say freedom for Jason I mean all children. I use Jason
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to fall back on when I get bogged down. I can say I’m living and working like this to benefit Jason or Shirley or Ronaldo or whoever. Sometimes I have to bring it down to a personal level. I think generally though I’m concerned with the entire collective.
With the people left back in the States. I feel the major threat is that they might, out of frustration get caught up in that shit. I know my own problems were drugs and alcohol. At least when I was there we didn’t feel the danger was so close at hand. I sometimes wonder if the folks there now feel it because I now when they get here they’re all way over weight like most of the recent arrivals anyway haven’t been working too awful hard. I feel there is more danger back there whether our people know it or not. Accidents can be staged too easily back there.
Here at least if the shit gets too bad. We can retaliate, we’ve got arms if necessary ore we can do revolutionary suicide or something. Back in the states we
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had no recourse for actions like the murder of comrade Chris [Lewis]. Unless if we just go back and raise hell with the motherfuckers.
I feel like here we’re not in any real danger from without. We’re too sticky for the States and I feel were too beneficial to Guyana.
Dad you asked me to write out some other things concerning first Shirley Hicks and then Ron Talley.
First off about Shirley. I said to you and Johnny I wondered why Ron was trying so hard to get to go to Georgetown. I said that I had questioned it too. Shirley and Johnny made the point that Shirley was one of the people pressing hardest to get him to go.
She said the original plan was for him to go so they could have thier normal S.A.T. teams. Shirley, Ron, Patsy [Cartmell], Clifford [Gieg]. That was going to fit right in with using him for the comedy
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scenes in the program. She said as soon as Jack [Beam] told her that Ron was not to leave Jonestown and that as far as he was to know the somebody was going to be cancelled, then she dropped it. She said that I approached her and said what I did about questioning Rons motives after Jack had talked to her and she was not persuing it after that. She said her motivation behind taking him was to go as S.A.T. security force.
You asked me who does Ron Tally related to, or care for. He is involved in no romance and says he’s no interested. Says by the end of the day he hasn’t got any time or energy or anything, but to eat and sleep.
I said that can always think of someone that I do this work for and I wondered how he keeps going when he sometimes is down and out. He said he loves the toddlers and the toddler program. I said that there was a whole lot of children like Jason that really needed more personal attention than they get. However I feel now by
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taking Jason to work with me he gets more attention than most. He couldn’t give me any one person that he relates to in a special way.
About the situation with Chris and his (Ron’s) car. Apparently or so he said that he didn’t know all the details about Chris being involved with a shoot-out with police in his car. He said he didn’t think that situation was ever resolved. About not being able to go back when I mentioned that no where else would he be safe from arrest since Tim Stoen is stirring the shit up again he seemed mostly indifferent. He did say they’d have to kill him before they’d ever arrest him. He said however he’d already resigned himself to knowing that he could never go back.
The other question you asked me about Ron was only negative comments he’d made. The first thing that comes to mind is a comment he made about Tish and the paperwork she requires co-ordinates for us to turn in.
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He said the print shop had to be shut down on account of her paperwork and forms. I feel he was trying to get me dissatisfied with the structure I come under.
Another comment was on the breakdown of S.A.T. He said that when people found out that SAT meant no more than ushering and tearing down the pavilion after meetings that many people wanted out. He said there is no S.A.T. no more.
He commented that somehow no matter how he gets in the dinner line when we have chicken he always manages to get a small piece.
He said he felt he might be watched after being probed in the first security meeting. And followed.
He also grumble something to me one time about not being able to go anywhere. We told him you said after these crisises then when he’s not needed for security he could maybe go to the ridge with one he grumbled and said the white nights will never cease.
He told me that he hates to organize his life. He was talking about
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organizing my time here for the most efficiency and he made the before mentioned response. I’m talking about my time at chickery.
Dad, I think that I need to look at myself and answer the question about why would I like someone that is so negative and even almost to the point of being subversive to this movement with his pattern of sewing division.
I never really looked that deploy at him and totaled all the negative shit prior to this time. Its true that just the way he fucked Renee while I was working out of town should have been enough for me to see what a deviate person he is.
You have put me in a position of a lot of responsibility. Its been hard for me at times to accept that I have straightened up. I have never learned to get along completely on my own through I think that after probing myself like this it’ll be eased.
I’ve always kept a few negative persons around just to
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to reinforce my own shit. Ron was not always in trouble so it was easy to overlook his subtle undermining. I realize think that these security meetings can motivate me into standing up for communism tall and strong. And alone if necessary.
Thank you Dad
Rob Gieg
Dad I’m sorry there is so much for you to read but the questions were so involved I don’t know any other way to answer them.
Thank you Dad
Rob
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EE-1-G-49
Undated note from Rob Gieg
Father,
I feel like I’m about ready to give up on sexual relationships. Obviously I can not hold any kind of thing together based on sex. I’ve tried male and female relationships. I got very involved with Mike Kelley.
I still like the companionship that goes along with a relationship its just that I know sexualy I ain’t shit.
I was in a cottage with Chuck Kirkandall for about a month and a half and became quite attracted to him.
For companionship and I suppose mothering too, I am attracted to Shirley [Hicks]. We had sex once and certainly there were no ringing
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bells or flashing lights.
I have been in the middle of so many fucked up settings caused by sex I’m pretty much disalusioned by sex.
Lately I guess I been getting my rocks off by working.
I’m insecure so I guess thats why I like Shirly Hicks when shes nearly ten years older than me.
Thank you Father,
Rob Gieg
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EE-1-G-57
Undated note from Rob Gieg
Dad,
In the event of crisis [arrow pointing to crisis and “(BATTLE)” inserted] I would like to take the life of Jason before I saw him taken by the enemy.
I would do all I could first to defend the collective but I would like him near enough that I could [“finish” crossed out] end his life if it came down to the last minute.
I feel that this life is all there is that might make up for being brought into this world. It was selfish on my part that he is even alive.
I would hate to think that all he had ahead of him was to live the life of a facist if captured and de-programmed. also they might torture and kill him anyway.
I would be some kind of asshole to make him pay for my indulgence. After I took his life then the enemy would have to kill me because I would
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be one crazy nigger and they wouldn’t take me alive.
If I never saw another minute of this life I have seen more than I deserve, because I have seen communism work.
I feel if Jasons life ended now he would die a young communist and that would be far better than letting him grow up in the hands of the enemy to become a facist.
I thank you Dad for all you have given me.
Rob Gieg
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EE-1-G-64
Letter to Gieg family from parents
3/13/78
Dear Rob and Jason
I’m sorry to be so slow in writing. The time has just slipped away so quickly. We were really glad to get your letter. We got one from Renee too. Tell her “hi’ and I’ll write to her separately as soon as I can. I couldn’t understand, but the bottom of her letter was cut off, right around the letters of the line above it. Didn’t make sense…
You mentioned about “21 black youths being shot in a riot in Philadelphia.” Rob, I don’t think that’s true. No one we know, including the people I work with, black and white, believes it, either. I don’t know where you got that information but I’m going to write to Aunt Freda in Philadelphia and ask her. She’s in social work in Philadelphia, and would know. She lives in a neighborhood with a high percentage of black people, too.
Rob, you didn’t mention the camera that Linda and Dianne sent you; you did get it, didn’t you? And the film we
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sent you to use in it. Linda and Dianne haven’t heard if you did. We thought it would be nice to be able to keep track of Jason’s growth – how he changes as he grows, etc. He’s such a doll. We really miss all three of you.
You know, I’d mentioned the climate sounded similar there, to Hawaii. Well, I looked in the atlas and Georgetown, Guyana is at about the 10th parallel and Honolulu, between the 21st and 22nd – (I guess they’re parallels, I’m not really sure that’s what they’re called, but it gives you an idea that the climate wouldn’t be too different.
3/18 Just got back to this – It’s been odd, seeing the weather news on TV, and always seeing Honolulu shown in the 80 degree plus range, and temperatures back east, really low. Ours sort of “in between.” Yesterday, our temp. was over 80 degrees, too. Really pretty weather! I love it!! Makes me feel good!
Mike has a temporary job 2 weeks straight, $12 per night, doing janitorial work at a hot-dog restaurant, then a couple nights
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a week after that. You’d be surprised what it does for his outlook!
You mentioned your not drinking, etc. and that’s really good. We have had no alcohol here for over a month. I put my foot down on it and so far, it’s worked. Even when Grandma and Grandpa Gieg were here for a visit, recently. Things are so much better without it. Who needs it?
We’re getting ready, more or less, to redo our bedroom and bath. We bought wallpaper for the bathroom, silver foil with small ferns in a bright and olive shade of green. Really pretty. Will paint the bedrooms and dressing room and put up new drapes. We’ll paper the ceiling in the bathroom, again, like we did in the half-bath.
Dianne called last weekend, and we got a very long letter from her, yesterday. I don’t think I had told you in our last letter, but she has an apartment of her own in Lansing, but it doesn’t have much furniture in it. So, we’re taking
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the stuff we love, of hers, back there, when we go back for Linda and Stan’s wedding, the latter part of May. That includes the stereo and two big speakers, the two book-shelf units, the wall-hung desk we’d been making for her when she “took off” with Paul a number of years ago. Also, the little platform rocker she gave us when they went to Montana. I recovered it for her in an orange, black, brown and white plaid. It looks cute! Paul’s sister, Fran, offered Dianne the two vinyl covered chairs back that Dianne had given her, if we can fit them in. We’ll try. It will help us, getting the stuff out of here, too! I was afraid we’d be stuck with it forever, but I didn’t feel I could just give it away, either.
I figured out our income tax last weekend, and we’ll get enough to buy a color TV for the trailer, and a stereo, too. We were pleased. Will get them so they can operate on 12 volt, 110 or battery. That way, we can operate them, wherever
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we are. That type of TV apparently only comes with a 9” diagonal screen. Pretty small, but all that seems to be available. I’ll have to re-copy the tax forms & send them off, this weekend. Will probably get the refund in time to get them for our trip. Dad bought a 12 volt fan for the bathroom in the trailer, so will eliminate the problem of steam and moisture in there.
Dad’s been working 12 hour shifts at the gas plant this past week and he’s really been tired. He said he may work only 8 today and tomorrow. They’re not doing anything active, and that’s more tiring, really. Our overtime was cut out about 6 weeks ago, for now, and was I ever pleased! They’ll probably reinstate it, but while it lasts, it’s great!!
Rob, I can’t tell you how much we really enjoyed your letter! It was sort of like a documentary, in a way. Could almost picture the troolie huts, etc. You know, those sound
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much like some of the huts we saw in Mexico, between Acapulco and Taxco, up in the mountains. Of course, their climate is similar, too. I think I’d told you, much of the area we visited there greatly resembled Hawaii. Tropical plants, climate, etc. We really think of you all a lot. Talk about you a lot, also – miss you a lot!!! Whether we write often, or not, you’re in our mind, believe me! Writing had been a problem, because I was and am so uptight with work pressures. However, it seems to be getting a little better, and I hope it will continue! All the supervisors in our district had gotten very mediocre appraisals due to the districts poor performance on statistics. As hard as we’d been working, it really hurt!
However, our “stats” are improving greatly, so we’re apparently learning to work smarter! I’ll really try to do better. Honest. Will close for now and get this in the mail. Loads and loads of love. Tell Jason “Hi!” Tell Jason “come here, right now!
Mom Dad & Mike
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EE-1-G-64
Envelope from Gieg family addressed to Rob Gieg
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