Illegal Marriages, Welfare Fraud, and More Phony Faith Healings--3rd 1972 People's Temple Expose

Former People's Temple Enforcer Tim Stoen during the deadly cult's heyday--who is now amazingly once again an appointed Mendocino County Deputy District Attorney

Deceitful. Delusional. The same, sad baldfaced lies.

The mountain of specious media accounts of the People's Temple is increasing exponentially these days, as we count down to April 9th's big PBS premiere of cult apologist director Stanley Nelson's "Jonestown" fantasy epic. This film is a textbook example in perverting the concept of a documentary, which is supposed to emphasize or express things "as perceived without distortion of personal feelings, insertion of fictional matter, or interpretation."

Lord Nelson's Ode to Jones--that is, before he suddenly turned Darth Vader in Guyana---is some piece of work. "Jim Jones promised the people who joined People's Temple they would be part of this social-action experiment," said Nelson, in yet another of his incredible interviews, with Inside Bay Area reporter Susan Young.

An experiment that featured the following "social-action experiments": Forced labor. Torturing five year-olds with cattle prods. Extortion. Welfare fraud. Malnutrition. Death threats. "For a long time," says the director, "he really delivered on that promise."

Reporter Young, like nearly all the rest of the media horde that have been seduced by Nelson's trick photography, lead off her story with this "promise-delivering" image:

"The first thing that strikes you are the filmed images of happy children, a riotous rainbow of races. Towheaded boys with Afro-haired girls, all holding hands, singing, giggling."

The more than lamentable thing about the stupidity of falling for this cult-staged film is the position that the children's demise--which Young does note in the next paragraph--was inevitable. Had the California media just had the guts to pursue Jones, rather than embrace him, there wouldn't have been a Jonestown. Because this cult would have had a merciful, just demise, without loss of life, long before that.

In this, the third installment of my father's expose series, the "social-action" unmasked here included an illegal Temple marriage, welfare fraud, and phony faith healing, in Indianapolis. It centers around a very suspect asst. Mendecino D.A. named Tim Stoen. Stoen, while he did manage to apologize in recent years to my father for some of the dirty work he did on behalf of Jones, still sadly manifests much of the deceit of many of the cult apologists ("religious scholars", they call themselves).

The way Stoen still clings to the delusion, and won't come clean, makes one wonder if he's been baptized in the same ethics cesspool as Stanley Nelson. Here is what Stoen told the Mendocino Coast Christian Men's Ministry in a "testimony" on his life story last February 24:

"....Joined People's Temple in 1970 to bring about a model utopia based on total economic and racial equality; was attorney for the People's Temple and Jim Jones from 1970 to 1977, becoming a socialist; helped establish Jonestown in 1973; lived there in 1977 with my five-year old son, John Victor, working in a sawmill: left the movement on a trip to the U.S. upon discovering Jones's abuses...."

Is the re-appointed Asst. Mendocino District Attorney, who never apologized for conspiring with Jones to murder my father or rig San Francisco's 1975 municipal elections, SERIOUS??

We're supposed to actually swallow the yarn that, as one of the most powerful members of Jones's inner circle (which he also denied publicly), for all those years from 1970 onward, while kids were being tortured and people were being extorted and threatened--Tim didn't have a clue?

Another full-blown symptom of a Full-Nelson chokehold on reality, something clearly not restricted to confused film makers in this Jonestown Fable Forest.

Interestingly enough, director Nelson has censored Stoen's critical role as Temple muscleman. Jim Jones' top enforcer has been let off the hook. Yet another twisted piece of this cult apologist revisionist wonder, to add to the censoring of this article's publication sparking Jones and Stoen to send up a picket line of cultists around the Examiner building that day.

You may just see the unlabeled footage in the film, however!



Tuesday, September 19, 1972
San Francisco Examiner

D.A. AIDE OFFICIATES FOR MINOR BRIDE
By Rev. Lester Kinsolving
Examiner Religion Writer


REDWOOD VALLEY - Mendocino County's assistant district attorney - who has written that his pastor, the Rev. Jim Jones has raised 40 people from the dead - has confirmed reports that he himself has solemnized the marriage of a minor girl who joined his church.

Timothy O. Stoen, who in addition to his duties as assistant DA, is attorney for and board member of Pastor Jones's People's Temple Christian (Disciples) Church in this hamlet near Ukiah, admitted he is not an ordained clergyman.

When asked by what authority he had officiated at the marriage of Mildred "Mickie" Johnson (who has now returned to her family in Indianapolis), Stoen contended:

"I meet all the requirements of the State Civil Code."

When asked which section of the state code permits an attorney (rather than a judge) to solemnize marriages, Stoen replied:

"I'll have to ask you to let me go back and check that."

The issue arose in a legal affidavit filed yesterday in Indianapolis by Mr. and Mrs. Cecil Johnson.

The Johnsons, former parishioners of the Rev. Mr. Jones when he was a pastor of the Indianapolis People's temple, charged that after Stoen married their daughter (to a man identified only as "Junius"), she was placed on the welfare rolls of Mendocino County.


Forced Donation


The Johnsons also charged that Mildred was obliged to give her monthly welfare check of $95 to The People's Temple - and that in August of 1971, Stoen had written them for permission to appoint a legal guardian for their other daughter, Gwin, age 18.

(The two girls were among former parishioners - including a number of teenagers - who followed the charismatic prophet-pastor, who left Indiana for California in 1965.)

Stoen confirmed that he had written the Johnsons for such permission. But he said that he had not known the Rev. Mr. Jones in 1965, when the Johnson affidavit says:

"Jones said that the world would end on July 16, 1967, and encouraged the congregation here to pool their money and follow him to California - where he promised they would find a place where only they would be safe from this impending disaster."


Curious visitors


The Johnson affidavit also charges that the Rev. Mr. Jones:

"Uses people to visit potential church members, noting anything personal in the house, like addresses on letters, types of medicine in the medicine cabinet, or pictures of relatives.

"Then, when they show up in church, he tells them things about their ailments and the kinds of pills they take."

When asked to comment on this charge, Stoen explained:

"I don't remember anything like this. I believe Jim's gift is authentic - or as he said in his sermon yesterday, he has paranormal gifts."

On Sunday, Sept. 10, at 11:15 p.m. (following this writer's first visit to a People's Temple service in Redwood valley), Stoen telephoned long distance to say among other things:

"I suppose you've heard a rumor that Jim Jones was run out of Indianapolis for faith healing?"

When asked to elaborate, Stoen explained:

"Well, I've seen the story in the Indianapolis Star."

What information did this Star story contain?

"I don't remember the details," replied the assistant district attorney.


Fast Trip


Yet immediately after the Indianapolis Star featured one of two stories about Prophet Jones and his faith healing, Stoen traveled from California to Indianapolis to confer with Dr. Jeanette P. Riley of the Indiana State Board of Psychology Examiners, according to Dr. Reilly.

When asked about this, Stoen explained that he made the trip but that Dr. Reilly had sent him to a meeting of the board - which had announced that it intended to investigate the Rev. Mr. Jones for allegedly claiming to heal psychosomatic diseases.

Yet the Indiana State Board took no action, as Jones had not used the title of psychologist.


No Case


"I explained to the board and to Indiana's Attorney General that Jim had done no wrong,"<>"and the Attorney General said he can come back anytime, as there is no case."

The announcement of the possible investigation by the state board came after the Indianapolis Star reported that on Oct. 13, 1971, the Rev. Mr. Jones told the congregation of the People's Temple of Indianapolis:

"With over 4000 members of our California Church, we haven't had a death yet!"

Star reporter Byron Wells, an eyewitness at the visiting pastor's afternoon and evening services that day, reported that at the afternoon service a woman was ordered to leave the auditorium in order that she "pass a cancer."


Similarity


Wells reported that when the woman returned, her alleged cancer was being carried about by an attendant - although the Rev. Mr. Jones warned everyone not to get too close. He also reported a striking similarity between those healed in the afternoon and those healed that evening.

The Star also reported that the Rev. Mr. Jones subsequently refused requests to allow that the alleged cancer be analyzed.

He was reported as explaining that he had "no objections," but that he has to abide with the wishes of his church leaders "not to become involved in more publicity."

The Rev. Mr. Jones was also reported as having said that he was afraid that the cancerous tissue would be switched on him in a deliberate attempt to discredit his power.


Dislikes Publicity


"I've done more than any other faith healer," he was reported as explaining, "that's why I don't want any more publicity, either favorable or unfavorable."

Apparently, the Rev. Mr. Jones, for all his charismatic effect, has not been able to prevail on his devoted flock in this regard. For this past weekend, when he was in San Francisco for special services at Benjamin Franklin Junior High School Auditorium, pamphlets were distributed throughout downtown San Francisco by his followers. These pamphlets advertised:

"PASTOR JIM JONES... Incredible!...Miraculous... Amazing!... The Most Unique Prophetic Healing Service You've Ever Witnessed!... Behold The Word Made Incarnate In Your Midst!"


END OF EXPOSE #3


Postscript: In light of the Indianapolis Star's admirable record in being the first actual newspaper to expose the fraudulent cult--covered up, AGAIN, by "Honest Stan's" film--I appealed to them not to fall down at his feet like the rest of the media. I sent this message:

To: INDIANAPOLIS STAR

Mr. Ryerson
Ms. Fine
Ms. Green
Ms. Thomas
Mr. Lloyd

I'm astonished--and disgusted--that of all newspapers in the nation, the Indianapolis Star, would continue lying down in the muck of denial and dishonesty regarding Jim Jones.

Yes, lamentably a native demon seed son he was. Yet WHY on earth wouldn't the Star want to take some credit in it's proud history of having their brave reporters Bryron Wells and Carolyn Pickering be the first in the nation to investigate the People's Temple?

You choose not to say ONE SINGLE WORD about your former reporters' work to stop Jones. Instead, readers are served up a March 16 reprint of a disingenuous, creme puff L.A. Times review of Stanley Nelson's insidious cult apologist film, "Jonestown: The Life and Death of the People's Temple."

If there is one shred of integrity at that paper, perhaps you might dispense with the "we just don't have the space" excuse and allow the people of Indianapolis to read the following excerpt (which was submitted today to two of your open forum sections):

October, 1971. Indianapolis, In.

"Church Filled To See 'Cures' By Self-Proclaimed 'Prophet of God'" was the first Jim Jones exposé ever published. Indianapolis Star reporter Bryon C. Wells had attended afternoon and evening "miracle healing services" at People's Temple in downtown Indianapolis. There he heard Jones proclaim, "With over 4,000 members of our California church, we haven't had a death yet!...I am a prophet of God and I can cure both the illness of your body, as well as the illness of your mind."

Wells noted that "people who were called upon in the evening to be cured had a striking resemblance to some who were called earlier in the day." Wells's second account, "State Psychology Board to Eye 'Prophet' Jones" reported that, for the first time, Jones would be investigated.

The State Board of Psychology Examiners would decide whether they could prosecute Jones for practicing psychiatry without a license, since he claimed he could cure psychosomatic diseases. After careful scrutiny they concluded that Jones was protected under the First Amendment, and state law forbid prosecuting "faith healers."

Wells's first exposé provoked a deluge of furious letters and phone calls to the Star from Temple members. Jones, meanwhile, claimed during services that he received 23 phone calls from Indianapolis "hatemongers." Nine months later, Wells received an alarming letter from Indianapolis resident Georgia Johnson. Once one of Jones's earliest followers, she was now a concerned mother trying to get her two young daughters to return home from the Temple's other base in Redwood Valley, California. Wells passed it onto the city editor, who in turn handed it to Carolyn Pickering, the Star's leading investigative reporter.

Although Pickering was a bit apprehensive when reading Georgia Johnson's long-winded letter, she nevertheless set up an interview. Her month-long full-time investigation into People's Temple had begun.

August, 1972.

"Dear Tom", wrote Pickering to Executive Editor Tom Eastham of the San Francisco Examiner. "The Star is contemplating sending me out to your grand and glorious state to probe into a religious cult operation in Redwood Valley, near Ukiah...called People's Temple...

"...The fraud who conducts this holy organization is the Rev. James W. Jones who once had a small church here...If there is someone on your staff who might have some knowledge of this bunch, or could provide some entrees to state officials who might be interested, I'd appreciate it."

Eastham told Pickering that he already had a reporter, the Rev. Lester Kinsolving, investigating Jones. Kinsolving, who wrote a weekly column entitled "Inside Religion", had contacted Ukiah Daily Journal editor George Hunter on February 7th of that year after hearing reports that the People's Temple charismatic pastor was attracting thousands to his Sunday services. Four days later, Examiner editor Ed Dooley received a letter from Timothy Stoen, whose letterhead identified him only as "Attorney at Law". Stoen, Jones's point man, sang the Temple praises.

It was obvious Hunter dutifully reported Kinsolving's phone call to Stoen. Stoen elaborated on a long list of achievements, such as Jones's past appointments to various positions of public trust, "including Foreman of the Mendocino County Grand Jury...and that Jones was "the most compassionate, fearless, and honest person I know of..."

After being briefed by Eastham, Kinsolving contacted Pickering and the two reporters began collaborating.

---"Madman In Our Midst"
by Tom and
Kathleen Kinsolving

Giving Nelson's fraudulent film a thumbs up is not just a disgraceful disregard of your own newpaper's work (which, unlike the cowardly Examiner, stood up to Jim Jones in the early 70's).

No, it just DOESN'T MAKE SENSE. So will the Star's current publisher and editors explain this to their readers? Or do they think they deserve to keep getting that old mushroom treatment of being kept in the dark and fed manure?

And their response, ladies and gentlemen?

According to "Head Honcho" Dennis Ryerson: "....the chapter of the Jones story that was Indianapolis was so many years ago that the people involved on the staff are no longer here, and with them, went institutional memory."

As did, obviously, the last vestiges of Star integrity.

STAY TUNED FOR EXPOSE #4, CONCERNING THE SUSPICIOUS DEATH OF TEMPLE MEMBER MAXINE HARPE, WHO WAS BILKED OUT OF HER LIFE SAVINGS.

Jim Jones 1972 "God Almighty!" Spectacle--and a Monday Morning Quarterback Reporter's Desperate Derision

"You all complied with my wishes and didn't bring guns..."
--Rev. Jim Jones, addressing his ushers at S.F. church service
(from Les Kinsolving's second Examiner expose)

In the really competitive professions, such as journalism, humanity's most revealing foibles frequently emerge in ruthlessly large doses. In the high stakes pay-off of exclusively owning the "Big Story", some reporters will do almost anything, even steal and manufacture information--as we've seen in recent scandals.

Mr. Tim Reiterman, famed author of the seminal People's Temple book "Raven", was an Examiner reporter who nearly lost his life down at Jonestown--and no doubt scores kudos for his courage there.

There's just one little problem with our intrepid Mister R: Like Field Marshall Kilduff (who STILL has visions of grandeur concerning the "first expose" of Jones)--he got a permanent case of Glory Hunger. And with this unfortunate disorder, Reiterman created his own very, very dishonest versions about the actual first exposes that would have obliterated Jones, had his own gutless excuse for a newspaper just stood up to the plate and STAYED THERE.

Reiterman's "Raven" is definitely a good read. Most of it actually sticks to the facts, too--except, however, when you arrive at around page 211. That's when the manure hits the turbo jets. Reiterman makes an incredible claim about my father, alleging that his "investigation" (Reiterman's quotes) was partially based on a personal grievance against the by-now clearly fraudulent and dangerous cult leader, Jim Jones.

Keep holding your nose. He's got a few shovel loads more.

Reiterman further maintains the exposes, that featured eyewitness and sworn testimony, "were not well substantiated."

Yes, some reporters will do anything to own the Big Story, it seems. But he is not alone, as we'll see.

Presented here is part two of more of the "unsubstantiated" story that would have brought down Jim Jones six years before the slaughter, had it only not been for journalistic cowardice.

And journalistic dishonesty.



'HEALING' PROPHET HAILED AS GOD AT S.F. REVIVAL
By Rev. Lester Kinsolving
Examiner Religion Writer

[Monday, Sept. 18, 1972]

"I know that Pastor Jim Jones is God Almighty himself!" cried one of the more than 1000 people who overflowed the auditorium of Benjamin Franklin Junior High School on Geary Boulevard yesterday morning and Saturday night.

"You say I am God Almighty?" asked the Rev. Mr. Jones, the charismatic pastor-prophet of the People's Temple Christian (Disciples) Church near Ukiah, who was holding special services in San Francisco this weekend.

"Yes, you are!" shrieked the unidentified but obviously ecstatic woman, as the audience clapped or waved their arms and shouted approval at Sunday services.

Busing

The Rev. Mr. Jones has been consistently attracting congregations of more than 1000 people - who travel by the fleet of ex-Greyhound buses from as far away as Los Angeles and Seattle to his home in Redwood Valley, seven miles north of Ukiah, and to services such as those this weekend in San Francisco.

Among those attracted is the assistant district attorney of Mendocino County, Timothy O. Stoen, who has affirmed in writing that the Rev. Mr. Jones has raised 40 people from the dead.

Jones arrived in California in 1965, accompanied by 165 of his parishioners from the People's Temple of Indianapolis, where he served as pastor.

He is a darkly handsome, 41 year old, part-Cherokee who is an ordained minister of 1.9 million member the Disciples of Christ (Christian) Church.

Yesterday as he conducted services, he was clad in a white turtleneck sweater, a pulpit gown, and dark glasses. He was seated on a cushion-covered stool behind the podium - which is an apparent necessity given the five and six-hour length of his services.

Reply

He reflected only momentarily upon the lady's enthusiastic affirmation of his divinity before replying:

"What do you mean by that? If you believe I am a son of God in that I am filled with love, I can accept that. I won't knock what works for you - but I don't want to be interpreted as the creator of the universe."

Then he added, gently:

"If you say 'He is God,' some people will think you are nuts. They can't relate. I'm glad you were healed, but I'm really only a messenger of God....I have a paranormal ability in healing."

The Rev. Mr. Jones had just completed what were said to be two resuscitations of parishioners who had either fainted or gone into catatonic stiffenings in the general excitement.

In each case, he stopped in the middle of a sentence, raced from the stage to the audience and laid hands upon the stiffened congregant.

Acclaim

After some 30 seconds, the audible tension of the multitude broke as the Prophet lifted up each prostrate figure - to thunderous applause.

Another unidentified woman began leaping wildly and screeching hallelujahs - while an even more elderly woman commenced a frenzied hopping in a corner down stage right.

Utilizing the full force of the microphone to project his generally soothing voice above this ecstatic din, the Rev. Mr. Jones smilingly explained:

43rd Time

"You'll have to understand - she was given up to die; they said she'd never be able to move again....Such experiences are not at all uncommon to us. That's the 43rd time this has happened. I just said: 'I love you, God loves you, come back to us.' The registered nurses around her said it was so."

These R.N.s were neither introduced nor even identified, however. They were hardly even apparent, given the number of large men who surrounded the reported resurrection.

None of these security guards ("ushers") was spotted carrying firearms, however - in contrast to last Sunday's service in Redwood Valley, where an Examiner photographer spotted three holstered pistols (one a .357 magnum) and a shotgun.

"You all complied with my wishes and didn't bring guns, even though you are afraid for me," congratulated the Rev. Mr. Jones.

Yesterday morning's services opened with two hymns, followed by glowing testimonials from 3 men who recalled how The Prophet had either healed them or in one case saved them from air crash and false arrest for transporting narcotics.

Healing

Then Mrs. Jones, a trim blonde, sang a song entitled "My Black Baby," with the Jones' adopted black son, a handsome boy of 14, standing at his mother's feet at stage edge while the audience loudly applauded. (The boy had been extensively featured in last week's sermon by his father in Redwood Valley, as well.)

Then The Prophet made everyone hold hands (after an initial embrace). With the organ providing a tremolo background, he began a series of trance-like revelations about various people's names, relatives, addresses, and maladies. These assorted ills were all pronounced cured by both healed and healer - to further applause.

Among a vast number of subjects discussed by the Rev. Mr. Jones in his two-hour extemporaneous sermon was the desirability of cooperation and fellowship with other denominations.

He did note in this connection that this is sometimes difficult, however.

"We tried to fellowship with one pastor in this area - who actually propositioned two of our young choirgirls! And when I confronted him about this, he replied: "Wasn't David a man after God's heart?"

(King David, in the second Book of Samuel, seduced Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite, whom David ordered killed after Bathsheba became pregnant.)

Vagueness

But this San Francisco pastor was not identified by the Rev. Mr. Jones. Nor were several assistants and parishioners able to identify the man.

The prophet's offertory calls are (comparatively) low key. He told the mammoth congregation that the elders had informed him that Saturday evening's collection was "light."

Later in yesterday's service he applied this very same (unspecific) description to the Sunday's collection - while one week ago, the Rev. Mr. Jones described the current financial condition of the People's temple as "bleak."

(Receipts for the fiscal year ending this June 30 are listed by attorney Stoen at $396,000.)


END--PEOPLE'S TEMPLE EXPOSE #2

[Our next expose, which will return to the subject of another familiar "Tim"--Stoen, the Cult enforcer who carried out illegal marriages and oversaw Jones's welfare fraud operations. More than enough to put that cult out of business--NEVER MENTIONED IN STANLEY NELSON'S APOLOGIST FILM. Stay tuned.]

Postscript: To Reiterman's credit, the "truth" section of his book was refreshing, citing the fact that after my father's exposes, "....the Examiner quit the story. A nobody named Jim Jones had worn down a big San Francisco daily......Meanwhile, the Temple set sights on Kinsolving as a declared enemy. At one strategy session, an overzealous church leader suggested that he be kidnapped, stuffed in a bag, then beaten or 'eliminated'."

Though never eliminated, his house--my house--was burglarized by Temple members.

"Raising The Dead"?....Gun-toting "Guardians"? Ignored Warnings of a Murderous Cult--6 Years Before Jonestown

[caption] "REV. JIM JONES, THE PROPHET--ONE WOMAN SAID HE IS GOD ALMIGHTY"
Disciples Church pastor here from Ukiah to conduct special services

Say hello to our little friend.

This is the photograph of the cult monstrosity that greeted the world on the front page of the San Francisco Examiner in September, 1972, on the second day of my father's series of exposés which lit up a bonfire of dire warnings, all ignored then, with tragic results. The establishment has dismissed or outright erased the record--up until today.

At the close of this first expose, hold your breath--and nose--for one of the
most glaring examples of this syndrome of self-serving media misinformation. Now, for the first time in almost 35 years, read what the people of California found out that Sunday morning about a crazed wolf in clerical garb.

Read through with this thought: Six long years lay ahead to rescue those people from the slaughter in the jungle. Think of the foster children illegally taken, tortured, and murdered, while officials such as San Francisco politician Willie Brown praised, cheered, and supported -- all the way to the massacre -- the Stalinist beast Jones.

The other seven exposes will make your hair static electric with outrage, enough that you should pick up your cell phone, call the local PBS station, and demand to know why they are broadcasting Stanley Nelson's cult apologist propaganda film, "Jonestown: Life and Death of People's Temple."

May these once "buried" exposes by a courageous reporter--who Jim Jones and his Temple Enforcer Tim Stoen plotted to murder--finally provide the complete, genuine history of the People's Temple cult, at long last.

And now, Part One....


THE PROPHET WHO RAISES THE DEAD

By Rev. Lester Kinsolving
Examiner Religion Writer

[September 17, 1972 Page 1]

REDWOOD VALLEY ---- A man they call The Prophet is attracting extraordinary crowds from extraordinary distances to his People’s Temple Christian (Disciples) Church in this Mendocino County hamlet.

His followers say he can raise the dead.

The PTC (D) Church’s mimeographed newsletter recently described the resurrection of a Los Angeles man.

And one director of the Temple claims that The Prophet has returned life to “more than 40 persons…..people stiff as a board, tongues hanging out, eyes set, skin graying, and all vital signs absent.”

His congregations, mostly black, believe The Prophet possesses other, equally amazing powers. They come from all over the West—from as far away as San Francisco, Seattle and Los Angeles — to the Temple, 7 miles north of Ukiah.

The weekend flock is gathered by the Temple’s fleet of 11 ex-Greyhound buses for services that often run from 11 in the morning until 11 at night, broken only for communal meals prepared by Temple cooks. Congregations number over a thousand and attendance at weekly services is similarly impressive.

The Prophet (or Prophet of God, as he prefers to call himself) is the Rev. Jim Jones, 41, the part-Cherokee former pastor of the People’s Temple Christian Church in Indianapolis.

Utopian Community

So powerful was the appeal of The Prophet’s ministry reportedly designed to create a Utopian community along the lines of the early Christian church that when he decided to move west seven years ago, a goodly number of his Indianapolis congregation came along.

No less than 165 Indianapolis Temple-ites—including several teenagers—moved to Redwood Valley with the Rev. Mr. Jones in 1965. The Temple’s total participating memberships today is 4,711, according to one of its directors.

“Grand total income” is said to have been $396,000 for the year ending June 30, 1972, while “grand total paid out” is put at $343,000. Permanent funds: $260,000.

The resurrection cited in the Temple newsletter transpired inside an ex-Christian Science Church building in Los Angeles—-the latest in a series of PTC (D) Church real estate transactions. And the Temple is presently in final stages of acquiring an auditorium to house the proposed San Francisco People’s Temple—just across Geary Boulevard from the Japanese Trade Center.

Other holdings: A 40-acre children’s home, 3 convalescent centers, and 3 college dormitories. Other operations: A heroin rehabilitation center and, in the words of one of the Temple’s three attorneys, “our own welfare system.”

The Rev. Mr. Jones’s influence in the Ukiah area is apparently just as strong as his impact on the congregations who jam his temple (with its 41-foot indoor swimming pool) to overflowing. Not only is The Prophet a part-time teacher in the local school system, he has also served as foreman of the Mendocino County Grand Jury.

He has stated to his flock:

“We have won over the sheriff’s office and the police department.”

He has certainly won over the assistant prosecuting attorney of Mendocino County, Timothy O. Stoen-—who is one of the Rev. Mr. Jones’s five assistants, a member of the Temple’s board of directors—-the man who claims “over 40” resurrections for The Prophet.

But the Rev. Mr. Jones has not won the hearts of all the locals. Four years ago, the Ukiah Daily Journal carried a story bannered, “Local Group Suffers Terror in the Night.”

It described menacing phone calls to The Prophet in the middle of the night—sometimes featuring the sound of heavy breathing, sometimes outright threats: “Get out of town if you don’t want to get blown out of your classroom window.”

Highly Respected

A large newspaper ad (8 columns, nearly full page) appeared in the Journal a month later as “an open letter to Rev. Jones, his family and his church members,” deploring “the unseemly words and actions of a small segment of this community.”

It pledged that “you are not only welcome in this valley but are highly respected"—and was signed by nearly 200 residents. But the harassment did not abate.

For this reason, The Prophet travels with impressively armed body guards. Attendants at services wear pistols in their gun belts.

These guardians are necessary, explains one of the church’s attorneys, Eugene B. Chaikin, because, “We have suffered threats and vandalism. Our local law enforcement agency has requested that we have trained persons carry firearms, and we have reluctantly acquiesced to the Sheriff’s instructions on this matter.”

There is little question of The Prophet’s influence on the Ukiah Daily Journal—for when The Examiner inquired about the People’s Temple and its charismatic pastor some months ago, Journal editor George Hunter immediately reported the inquiry to the office of prosecuting attorney.

‘Jim, The Prophet’

Thus relaying the news to the precincts of Timothy O. Stoen, assistant prosecuting attorney and assistant to The Prophet. Stoen promptly wrote to The Examiner to say, among other things, the Rev. Mr. Jones “goes by the self-effacing title of ‘Jim Jones.’”

Subsequently, Stoen explained that “our church bulletin writers are somewhat zealous”—but that’s the way they see it.”Stoen seems enthusiastic himself, though he prefers to call The Prophet just plain “Jim.” Here is an excerpt from a Stoen letter to The Examiner received five days ago:

“Jim has been the means by which more than 40 persons have literally been brought back from the dead this year. When I first came into the church, I was the conventional skeptic about such things. But I must be honest:

“I have seen Jim revive people stiff as a board, tongues hanging out, eyes set, skin graying, and all vital signs absent. Don’t ask me how it happens. It just does.

“Jim will go up to such a person and say something like, ‘I love you’ or ‘I need you’ and immediately the vital signs reappear. He feels such a person can feel love in his subconscious even after dying.

“Jim is very humble about his gift and does not preach it.” As a matter of fact, Stoen writes, “The Prophet eschews publicity.”

Additional Powers

[Stoen continued] “Whenever there is publicity, the extremists seem to show themselves. Jim has simply been hurt enough….Jim Jones is NOT concerned for his own safety. His real concern is to prevent harm to his children and others in his church family who might be hurt for what he himself has stood for…” The Temple’s newsletter, however, is not the least bit shy about publicizing either his power to bring back the dead or his “additional powers.”

In exhibiting these powers to an unnamed woman in Los Angeles, the Prophet reportedly identified all the names of her relatives, the brands in her refrigerator, the cost of her insurance policy, and the exact price—“TO THE PENNY”—of all the books she had purchased “years ago!”

Stoen’s written affirmation of the self-effacement of The Prophet did not include any explanation for the three tables just outside the main entrance of the People’s Temple.

‘Credibility’

These tables are loaded with either photographs, or neck pieces and lockets—all bearing the image of the Rev. Mr. Jones, and on sale at prices running from $1.50 to $6.00.

Attorneys Stoen and Chaikin have repeatedly contacted The Examiner, by phone calls, letters, and even via messenger—Sharon Bradshaw of the Mendocino County Probation Department—because, as Stoen puts it:

“People’s Temple does, frankly, have a remarkable human service ministry and is devotedly supported by extensive numbers of people. It is extremely important to us to keep our credibility.”

The Prophet, as Stoen describes him, is "supremely and totally dedicated to building an ideal society where mankind is united, life (human and animal and plant) is cherished, and the joys of nature and simplicity are esteemed."

Furthermore, he adds, the Rev. Mr. Jones “receives 400 letters a day” and has adopted 6 children of assorted races. He “wears only used clothing and takes in abandoned animals.”

Meanwhile, his sturdy sentries lend the temporal assurance that the Temple of The Prophet is the best-armed house of God in the land.
###
END OF PART ONE

As promised, Jonestown Media Manure Meal #1 comes from the San Francisco Chronicle's Michael Taylor in a special 20th Anniversary "retrospective," on Nov. 12, 1998.

Taylor chips in just this one paragraph, which actually is generous compared to the usual wholesale censoring by the rest of the sheep. It doesn't take much imagination to see how this newspaper, another quivering coward that crawled away from "Father" Jones as he ran amok in the early '70's, would be granted a cover story:

"In 1972, the first warning signals about Jones went up when the San Francisco
Examiner profiled him in unflattering terms as an influential rural preacher who
called himself the Prophet and claimed to be raising the dead," writes Taylor.

Then comes proof that Taylor got his gold star in school for creative writing:

"But ensuing official investigations of Jones went nowhere."

Certainly.

By the time we get to the end of this series, let's hope Taylor and his fellow fourth estate knaves will still have at least one nostril above the suds in the Sewer of Lying By Omission.

On your mark....Get set.....

Check these two dates on your calendar, everyone—this is one of those “good news/bad news” announcements.

The Good: Tuesday, March 20.

The Bad: Monday, April 9.

If you’re like me, getting the bad news first is always first choice:

Three weeks from tomorrow night, millions of PBS television viewers will be lured into Director Stan Nelson’s Cult Apologist Theatre. And that Orwellian telescreen will bombard them with his weapon of mass deception: “Jonestown: Life and Death of People’s Temple.”

It gets worse. Yes.

A second wave of toxic fallout will be Nelson’s hawking the DVD to anyone that wants “to arrange for an educational screening in your community…” One can only imagine how much more snake oil he and writer/wife Marcia Smith have packed into their perverse meal-on-wheels for every community, everywhere, anytime.

Something of a scourge, modern-day Biblical proportions perhaps? Lord Nelson's revisionist ooze is about to flood family rooms across the nation.

The good news: There’s still time to inoculate your brain—from the radioactive wash.

Alluring it may be, Nelson’s Swiss-cheese version of People’s Temple doesn’t require anything more than a basic historic reality check. This thing is a triumph of style over substance, ridiculously riddled with holes of credibility, continuity, and candor.

That’s why it’s important to be ready two days from now, on Tuesday. Appearing here will be a series of 1972 San Francisco Examiner exposes by my father — this one called “The Prophet Who Raises The Dead”.


One by one, you will finally see how Jim Jones’s criminal enterprise was being uncovered. It started, actually, with a story in the Indianapolis Star, the year earlier. So much time before the 1977 New West expose.

So much time to have been able to rescue all those men, women, children, the toddlers, and the babies, from their years of cult captivity. And from being shipped off to a Guyana Gulag to be slaughtered like cattle.

The massive, collective denial about this must stop, once and for all.

How much longer can virtually all the media, politicians, clergy (especially the Rev. John V. Moore), or anyone else connected with this story continue with the charade? For “documentarian” Nelson, however, it's not enough just to participate in this grand delusion; he takes it up a notch with bizarre notions of a destructive cult's "fulfilled promises." Telling a story in this fashion, with much “assistance” from Becky Moore and Mac McGhee's “Jonestown Institute,” is lying by omission.

According to Nelson and his “New Religious Movement” mentors, the People’s Temple cult, which subjected its members to extortion, beatings, cattle prods, malnutrition, sleep deprivation, and other tortures, actually were “sharing a lot of love” and “equality” in those times. These exposes showed otherwise, all the way back in 1972.

If our then-media editors, and the so-called crusading reporters like Marshall "Pursued 'Em Early & Often" Kilduff, Tim Reiterman, and others had just had the wits and the guts in 1972 to join forces with my father and Indianapolis Star reporter Carolyn Pickering in their fight to stop Jones in 1972, THERE WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN A JONESTOWN.

But the Boys on the Bus just reclined and snoozed through 1972, and '73, and '74, and the other years, peaking out their windows as the Temple Train rolled towards the jungle cliff.

Their rewrite, however, rocked.

That, along with our news pundits' catchy little "....drink the Kool-Aide" phrase, seems to keep our current Fourth Estate elites unbothered about such trifling little past boo-boos.


This Tuesday, the light switches back on. Follow it, in spite of that thick fog billowing all around you in this once sacred, self-serving Jonestown Fable Forest.

Jonestown: Perfectly Preventable Tragedy -- If Not For The Craven California Power Elite That Loved The Beast....

If Bay Area powers-that-be and other journalists at the time had listened to Les Kinsolving's reports about Jones and his temple, maybe those 900-plus lives could have been saved

Eureka Times Standard
March 4, 2005

This is the final preface to the series of eight shocking San Francisco Examiner exposes by my father that, had they been allowed to run in their entirety, would have blasted charlatan Jim Jones out of business. But those miserable Examiner editors, and the rest of the pathetic regional media, didn't have the backbone, so frightened by law suits from Peoples Temple enforcer Tim Stoen (who today they JUST don't care to mention, you'll notice). And so, THEY DID NOTHING. After running only four articles in September 17-20, 1972, and getting picketed by Temple cultists, the Examiner went into a fetal position and surrendered, for almost the next five years.

Tim Stoen
The sordid details of that scandal have been efficiently covered up until now, by the Examiner and the usual suspects, Tim Reiterman and Marshal Kilduff, who shamelessly attempt little fairy tale rewrites of this into a minor footnote.

If, on the other hand, you'll be watching for the first--or perhaps the second time--the History Channel's "Jonestown: Paradise Lost" docudrama tomorrow night, abandon any hope of having the record set straight there. The same goes for it's accompanying documentary on cults, in "Decoding the Past," which while a superb expose as a whole that puts cult apologists (NRM) on the run, still inexcusably neglects Top Jones Aide Stoen, who was the Co-Engineer of this cult nightmare until finally defecting close to the end. The "Decoding" producers decide instead to allow Kilduff run his twisted little spin on it throughout.

One of the other questions that people should ask directors Nelson and Wolochatiuk is WHY they squelched the story of the crisis over John Stoen, the little boy claimed to be fathered by both Jones and Stoen? What made this so compelling is that it nearly precipitated the mass killing over a year earlier-- "The September, 1977 Crisis."

All this, clearly explained in Debbie Layton's famous affidavit given to the U.S. State Department, now part of the historical record, now a part of the history that is standard to anyone versed in Jonestown history. I understand Nelson censoring it, because he has an apologist agenda to follow. It's easy for him to delude a universe of theatre goers and bloggers with his cinematic sleight of hand.

But Tim Wolochatiuk? The Producers of "Decoding History?"

Why did you do it?

That fun couple, Becky Moore and Mac McGhee, who serve up the grandest fish tales on earth at the "Jonestown Institute," did succeed wonderfully in working over their visitor, "Paradise" director Tim Wolochatiuk. In the end, they made sure he got all the "proper fact balance" he needed. And then there was that curious name--did Becky think that one up, per chance?! As one viewer comments in a Guyana-based blog, "I wonder why the 'Paradise Lost' portion of the title....What about it was 'Paradise'?" though not nearly to the brain-numbing level they achieved with Stanley Nelson. As Mac McGhee proudly boasted to me (with his usual panache):

“…..Would it interest you to know that your main punching bag these days cooperated as much with ‘Paradise Lost’ as we did with Stanley’s film? Check the closing credits, next time it comes round on your TV.

Your whipping boy, Mac."

Fielding M. McGhee III
The Jonestown Institute

At least, however, "Paradise Lost" didn't offer up some grotesque apologist tripe about Jonestown, like the kind you see on these "NRM" websites. Lamentably, however, it did miss the mark, like all the others. But no mind. Now you'll have a chance to "read all about it,"

In this editorial by the Times Standard, they focus on Tim Stoen and his published apology to my father, which first ran in the Santa Rosa Press Democrat (to be posted.) Interesting thing: The Examiner just didn't have any room for such a story!

And, like Orwell's Big Brother hard at work on "fixing history," our "Jonestown" director, Stanley Nelson, too, just didn't have any room for such a story.... Coincidence?? Somebody needs to call Stan, or Mrs. Nelson (his writer, Marcia Smith) and ask them why, don't you think?

The editorial is called:

LESSONS LEARNED?

"After three decades, Assistant District Attorney Tim Stoen wrote a letter of apology to the reporter whose life he helped make miserable in the early 1970s for stories written on the strangely violent and pseudo-messianic happenings at the People's Temple under Jim Jones.

Stoen, as is well known, was a top aide to Jones until about a year before the cult's infamous mass suicide. Before his break with the temple, he and other Jones supporters publicly flayed the reporter and protested the offices of the San Francisco Examiner for his unpopular accounts of the goings-on at the People's Temple.

While perhaps startling, the letter was a thoughtful gesture from Stoen to reporter Les Kinsolving, who had recently suffered a heart attack; Kinsolving released the letter to the press. Meant as a private communication, it seemed heartfelt and expressed a level of regret that Stoen hadn't said publicly over his involvement with the People's Temple.

That made it newsworthy to the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, and to this newspaper as well.

But Stoen said he felt the Press Democrat reporter who wrote the story made too much out of something that Stoen said has been consistent all along: he has repented and apologized for his actions with the People's Temple and Jim Jones.

Stoen may not realize that in the letter he admits more wrongdoing than he has in the past; for the second-highest-ranking law enforcement officer in Humboldt County, that by itself makes it a big deal.

Remembering that more than 900 people died as the end result of Jones' ministry makes the letter's importance even more clear.

Since he became right-hand man to DA Paul Gallegos, Stoen has blazed a maverick and sometimes unusual trail of his own, including an odd three-day Senate campaign run and a personal style that has put him at odds with some in the local legal community.

Be that as it may: We applaud Stoen for writing the letter and for making the admissions he did -- it seems to show a mature man making a thoughtful amends for past bad judgments.

We hope the lessons expressed in the letter will not go unlearned: The media can still function as a safeguard for society. If Bay Area powers-that-be and other journalists at the time had listened to Les Kinsolving's reports about Jones and his temple, maybe those 900-plus lives could have been saved."

Surely could have. But weren't. The politicians, clergy, journalists, and others that aided and abetted Jones aren't yet ready to admit to this, or their role. The public needs to confront them. Call Cecil Williams. Send e-mails to Willie AND Jerry Brown and all the rest. Ask them WHY??

Moreover, even worse, are the cult apologists. These people suffer dangerous delusions regarding the parameters of freedom of religion. From flying saucer worshipers to child abusers, it seems everybody's welcome to come on over and join the fruitcake express train, "New Religious Movements"(NRM). Charter members include Becky Moore, Catherine Wessinger, Eileen Barker, Douglas Cowan, John Hall, and, easily the two most bizarre, J. Gordon Melton & Massimo Introvigne--who have a very strong affinity for vampires (Melton described one of their vampire society conventions as "a bunch of silly people dressing up and biting each other on the neck.")

Drop in on the next annual "CESNUR" (Center for Studies of New Religions) conference--last year's was held in San Diego--but you might want to take a couple of garlic cloves to ward off the attending vampires. (Some of the attendees went on "field trips" to pay their respects to the flying saucer worshipers and the 12 Tribes cult, a "family-oriented" bunch that preaches the benefits of child abuse.)

And San Diego Union-Tribune reporter Sandi Dolbee, who is assigned to cover the "religion and ethics" beat, just missed all that. She did, however, do a splendid job of whitewashing the 25th Anniversary of Jonestown, when she provided Becky Moore a Cult Apologist Sermon in her story. Moreover, at this CESNUR conference, Dolbee gave all these "scholars" free reign to cheer on the extravaganza's opening film, which was, but of course: Nelson's "Jonestown."

With this kind of "ethical" coverage, it makes one wonder if perhaps its time to move Dolbee to a different beat. Has she become "one of them"??

It's astounding the ease in which these so-called "scholars" make fabrications about the People's Temple. Interestingly enough, again, Nelson's choice of a "scholar" for his film, besides featuring Moore (sister of two of Jones's enforcers), was John Hall, of U.C. Davis, who publishes outrageous papers condoning the Temple's excesses and abuses (this is the cult that also tortured children as young as five, recall.)

Uncanny how Nelson was so hardpressed to find ANYONE with a contrasting view, say, that had experience with the cult in its "glory days" in Redwood valley, when they were happily picking crops, and singing, hugging, laughing, and "sharing lots of love," according to our director.

He could have interviewed Norman Clow, now living in Houston, who lived in Redwood Valley at the time and attended school with some of these cult captives. Norman wrote to me, shortly after reading the Stoen apology story over the Associated Press wire (made the AP, so the story went as far as Australia, ladies and gentlemen--yet, still NO ROOM FOR IT IN EITHER OF THOSE SPINELESS SAN FRANCISCO NEWSPAPERS....).

"Jim Jones taught in our schools in Anderson Valley in the 60's (Boonville, west of Ukiah/Redwood Valley) and in fall 1967 he brought a dozen or so Temple students to our high school. Three were in my senior class and two of them died (Anita Ijames and Judy Stahl-Ijames). One, Faith Worley-Kice, left before the move.

Dale Parks, who was one of the defectors during Ryan's visit and whose mother was killed at the airstrip was a friend for that year. We were good friends, as much as possible under the circumstances. I saw Dale in Ukiah a year later and he was "recovering". I met his dad, who I don't believe ever would. Ava Cobb was another great friend. Her brother Jim, who I knew, was one of the ones pushing for the investigation.

I always understood that she had left the movement with her brother but recently saw her name and a picture - could have been here - in a list of those who died. I know many of her family members did die there. I hope she didn't. They were all good kids, fun to be around even given their unhappiness over the Temple, and none of them deserved any of it.

I believe Jones was a madman practically from the day he was born. Many of us kids at the school thought the guy was a little wierd and maybe even dangerous in the 60's, but no one would listen, certainly not the school authorities.

You could tell the students he brought to the school were very uneasy, just always intimating some fear or regrets about their situation. But you couldn't get past a certain point with them - they still deferred to that loyalty he had built in them, called him Father, and there was an invisible wall that kept you always a certain unassailable length away.

Of course you realize Tim Stoen went back to Mendocino County as an assistant DA and is now in that capacity in Eureka, Humboldt County. He has publicly apologized several times for his involvement, recently admitting it was a terrible mistake and asking forgiveness. Fine, but I'd still just as soon not have him as the local DA.

As a lay pastor of the rare conservative stripe in the United Methodist Church, I often wonder what on earth was going on in the eyes of the various churches back then.

Your dad was a very brave man to do what he did. Many of us knew he was right all along and we all owe him a debt of gratitude for the part he played in getting all of this out. Thank him for me."

--Norm Clow
Houston

Now let's say we climb into that time machine and travel back to a misty Sunday morning. .....We've....arrived. There's still time. It's September 17th, 1972...San Francisco. A foghorn softly booms. There's a headline up ahead, in that Sunday edition newspaper:

"THE PROPHET WHO RAISES THE DEAD"
by Rev. Lester Kinsolving
Examiner Religion Writer

(TO BE CONTINUED...)

A different kind of "Inconvenient Truth"

"JONESTOWN" DIRECTOR NELSON DISCOVERED ACCUSED OF "GLOSSING OVER OF FACTS" IN ANOTHER FILM;
VISITS UC-SANTA CRUZ THIS WEEK TO LECTURE STUDENTS ON "HOW TO WRITE HISTORY" IN DOCUMENTARIES....

There he was, smirking and bantering about the usual edifying subjects, such as tossing trash in movie theatres. It was more than a mild shock to see my favorite comedian, the sometimes "master of his domain" walk out on that stage at the Kodak Theatre to take charge of a very special nomination list on Hollywood's holy night.



That list Jerry Seinfeld read at the Academy Awards on February 25 named the five nominated best documentaries of 2006, out of which, of course, "An Inconvenient Truth" got the Oscar. The ultimate winner was the Academy itself, and all of us.

Unlike the Grand Army of the Obtuse that makes up nearly all of our film critics, Academy voters had the wisdom to give thumbs down to a piece of cult apologist cinema that's brought new meaning to the reckless disregard for another "inconvenient truth."

In reality, a multitude of inconvenient truths are suppressed ruthlessly and repeatedly--in "Jonestown: The Life and Death of People's Temple"

Director Stanley Nelson's editing tricks in his "Jonestown: The Life and Death of People's Temple" easily sent nearly every movie critic swooning, yet another reminder about film's power over those ignorant of history.

Nelson's film is a potent propaganda showcase, largely owing to its subject matter, of course. No questioning his craft, folks. This is one gunslinger that doesn't miss his mark: He fuses together enough of the "correct" film clips of the cult; enough of the "correct" heart-wrenching, toe-tapping music; and enough of the "correct" interviews rigged to paint a portrait of a cult that was, as one interviewee claims, "vibrant" right up to the day before mass-murder in Jonestown.

"Vibrant?" So the forced labor, malnutrition, and torture (which started in California, protected by the media), was secondary. "Vibrant" isn't the only superlative our "documentarian" has cherry picked from carefully screened interviewees in redecorating what social psychologists have concluded as one of history's most destructive cults.

In Nelson's 90-minute window dressing, this group of brainwashed people that burned little children with cattle prods -- for years, in California, while the "crusading media" did nothing-- has a whole lot more than "vibrant" attached to it.

Here are some of Nelson's sweetened-up interview samplings: „"..People's Temple truly had the potential to be something big - something powerful" "As soon as I walked in (the Temple), I was home""...Every single person felt like they had a role there." Everyone felt like they were exceptionally special..." "There were many reasons to love, admire, overlook, and excuse the things Jim did."

Yes. Of course. While a gang of your frenzied fellow cultists are electro-shocking your five year-old for being "naughty, you just keep countin' ALL the heart-wrenching reasons to admire the great social activist, "Father" Jones. Not a big problem, though, since this perverted version of a rainbow coalition mutated out of the deadly efficient mind control and terror tactics employed by Jones', with an always helpful little nudge from those Temple "Angels of Death" (his gun-toting enforcers).

Nelson, however, doesn't see the need to go through the motions of excusing such inconvenient truths. For instance, his documentary remarkably covers up ANY MENTION WHATSOEVER of the horrendous children's torture feature, "Blue Eyed Monster," practiced by the People's Temple, in the California years, which he instead has papered over in some of the most disgraceful, dishonest film making on record.

Card stacking

Insidious, but a tried & true method in many scenarios. Nelson used one of the oldest tactics in a playbook traditionally employed by conmen strictly out to make a buck - "card stacking," - defined as follows:

Card stacking refers to the method of intentionally deceiving people so that they will support a cause or ideal in which the propagandist strongly believes or from which he or she will realize financial gain. The term originated from the magician's gimmick of "Stacking the deck," which involves presenting a deck of cards that appears to have been randomly-shuffled but which is, in fact, in a pre-conceived and logical order. The magician knows the order and is able to predict or control the outcome of the trick; the audience is unaware of the gimmick. In poker a deck can be 'stacked' so certain hands are dealt to certain players.

Card stacking is full of half-truths, outright lies, omissions, and distortions.

Of course, Stan's in this mainly to score points as the genius film maker he is, on behalf of what he's digested from his meals at Becky Moore and Mac McGehee Jonestown Institute Inn. They happily held his hand and guided him in finding the "right" info and interviewees, and, yes, would include token citations of those unsavory sides of the cult, but in "just the right measure."

Take the interview of the married male cult member who related the time a young male made an announcement regarding "Father" Jones' sexual predations on the other men. Nelson finishes the scene with the interviewee laughing and making light of it.

Stack a card, Stan.

Another interview, a cult member recounts one of the cult's physical tortures carried out, "the boxing punishment." He told about throwing water on someone he had beaten unconscious, and then being forced to beat him further. He then related how "tiring" it was having to fight five people in one night.

Once again, like the sexual predation scene, Nelson films the cult member laughing over this horrifying ordeal. Once again; is this something a responsible director edits into making light of? Minimize--the facts (and these are just a bare few of the unsavory that are disclosed) of a boxing torture and Jones sexually preying on males?

Stack another one, Stan.

On the other hand, the "positives" are hand-dipped in super-sweet seductive coating. You only have to see the film's trailer on Nelson's website, showing that staged clip of smiling, hugging, laughing, happy Temple folks to realize something is amiss. That is, unless you have some notion that destructive cults deserve a second look. It is safe to say that you (a) were too young too recall the People's Temple, (b) are a fanatic in the "New Religious Movements," or (c) should do some homework.

While Stan boasted openly about making "somewhat objective" documentaries this year to the New York Times, he and wife/writer Marcia Smith's credibility was called into question three years ago for another of their films, "Beyond Brown: Pursuing the Promise," in a May, 2004 Washington Post Live Online program.

A caller from Austin, Texas had caught them ˜playing fast and loose with history..." "I honor and understand the meaning of Brown vs. Topeka board of Education," said the unnamed caller, "However, I do not understand the glossing over of facts to sell the story."

In a November, 2006 KQED (San Francisco) Radio interview, Nelson trumpeted for the umpteenth time the Big Lie that he has so cleverly mesmerized much of the public with in his film. People's Temple, you ask?

"They delivered on their promise," said Stan, of the cult that practiced forced labor, death threats, malnutrition, extortion, child abuse, torture, all occurring in California.

"They shared a lot of love," said Stan.

Media knuckle-heads like Pittsburgh Post-Gazette critic Barry Paris are enchanted by the Temple "delivery," with enough superlatives to get Jonestown Apologists CEOs Becky Moore and Mac McGhee worked up into a fever-pitch Irish jig just in time for upcoming St. Patty's Day.

"Jones, after all, was a bona-fide civil rights pioneer..." gushed Paris, "...He built a congregation that promised food, clothing, shelter and retirement homes to its people and delivered. Sure, folks had to give a 20-percent tithe (which evolved into giving all their money and possessions) to the church, but that wasn't so unusual and they did it voluntarily. In the utopian-community, a deal's a deal."

"A deal's a deal." That's right. And like the rest of our witless media "pundits," Paris is completely enamored by the Nelson's "revolutionary" film making process, and just can't be bothered with the possibility of any missing pieces. I wonder if Paris, for example, has ever even heard of Father Divine. Or does he even give a damn about it.

Nelson surely has. In fact, his wife Marcia mentioned Divine at the world premiere of their film, way back in January, 2006, in Salt Lake City, Utah, when they gathered with, oh, that's right, Becky Moore of all people! Salt Lake City, of all places, too. Home base of the Mormon Church. Not that this would be construed as some strategy to "snuggle up" our hard-working cult apologists (NRM's) with an established church, oh, Lord no.

Father Divine was an African-American cult leader in the 1930s, who established a famed interracial "flock," which Jones modeled himself after. Nelson has completely suppressed any mention whatsoever of Divine in his film, another of these dazzling "card-stackings" in his film's fixed deck. Why? Because the ruthless tactics Jones acquired from observing Divine in a 1957 visit to his Philadelphia cult center would simply not fit in with the notion of pre-Guyana "love-love-love" and "delivery of promises." (Jones, moreover, later tried to steal membership from Divine's cult, unsuccessfully---YET ANOTHER FACT SUPPRESSED BY NELSON. Why??)

"A turning point in JJ‚s career was his meeting with Father Divine, the legendary black pastor from Philadelphia," writes Maurice Brinton, author of "Suicide For Socialism." "Jones was vastly impressed both by his spell-binding preaching techniques and by the total control he still exerted on his congregation (which consisted mainly of elderly black women). From Divine, Jones learned all about "organizing congregations‚" about how to use an "Interrogation Committee‚" He saw the Committee as the logical extension of his grip on his flock."

In Indianapolis, Jones started to surround himself with a group of "totally loyal‚" men and women, black and white. They would watch and report to Jones on the other parishioners. This was probably the first instance in history of a totally integrated, "non-racist‚" Secret Police. Thomas Dixon, one of the early members of the Temple, broke with JJ on this issue. "The Committee‚" he said, "was primarily to deal with those who disagreed with Jones. Whoever was summoned by the Committee was grilled for hours on end with questions such as "Why are you against the Reverend?"

Integration, especially pre-Civil Rights era, was a bold, brave act, absolutely. But AT THIS COST? This, in essence, is the utter disgrace of Nelson's film - his deliberate cover up of Father Divine's critical impact on Jones and Jones's totalitarian savagery that began percolating all the way back to the Indianapolis years and grew exponentially as the cult drifted to California, and to its final tragic end in Guyana.

But our stunningly astute in Pennsylvania critic swallowed Stan's Subterfuge like a four-year old would gobble down a bowl of sugar pops.

"Watching footage of Jones‚ congregants building their church and homes and tilling the soil in their communal farm in Guyana," wrote Paris of Pittsburg, "we see that most of them are clearly quite happy. The irony is that, in many ways, Jonestown was succeeding, not failing and Jones had done an impressive job of carving out a self-sufficient collective community there."

Clearly quite happy?? As, say, the Jonestown children being repeatedly dunked at the bottom of community well (Jonestown's "Big Foot" attraction), screaming over and over in the middle of the night for a mommy or daddy to rescue them. But who never arrived, thanks to the "impressive" effects of being drugged, beaten, starved, brainwashed, and forced back by gunmen.

The reality of course was that Mr. Green Jeans Jones' little ol' "communal farm" (thank you, "Jonestown Institute" Bank of Depraved Euphemisms) was nothing more than a gulag. Nice work Stan--Paris is convinced he was looking at scenes from Disney's Frontierland.

Perhaps Paris Hilton could give a more reliable assessment the next time.
















ALERT:

Now here's a news flash for all of you in California who'd like to have a genuine crack at this big rotten egg that the Nelsons have laid. Tomorrow and Wednesday, March 6 and 7, none other than Stanley and Mrs. Nelson will be making a personal appearance at the Univ. of Calif-Santa Cruz campus. On Tuesday evening, at 7 p.m., at Classroom Unit 2, there will be another of their free screenings (get yer free cult conditioner narcotics, students!....Time to alert CultsOnCampus.com)

The day after tomorrow, Wednesday, March 7, Stan and Marcia will appear at noon in the Mural Room at Oakes College Campus, to participate in a conference. This will be the real entertainment. If you've seen the film by now, you should have more than enough inquiries to present Mr. and Mrs. Nelson about this putrid blob of revisionism. Don't expect any straight answers, of course, but at least they can face more than the mush the media reviewers have been offering them. And the topic of the conference is a downright scream (Ah, "Hello, is Orwell in the House??!!"):

"How To Write History: Research and Representation in the Historical Documentary." Okay, so we all now know the folks at UC-Santa Cruz have a good sense of humor. Twisted, but rousing.

In another, more serious milieu, a Nelson-attended conference might better be titled "How to Write Sophistry: Faulty Research and Card-stacking Technique in a Historical Documentary." What is vitally important is that students and visitors not give the Nelsons a free ride, like the critics have.

Get out there and grill them with questions, people!

Besides the major role of Father Divine, you could ask Nelson:

Why did he leave out the role of Tim Stoen, Jim Jones's top enforcer? Without Stoen's legal terror tactics, exposes long before 1977 would have been published that would have put the cult out of business. Stoen later lied publicly, long after Jonestown, about having been in Jones's "inner circle," in a self-serving ploy to get his old job back in the Mendocino District Attorney's Office.

Nelson, predictably, will have some flimsy excuse for censoring Tim Stoen. Last summer when confronted by my father and me at a film screening, he claimed it was "another one of the stories that we wish we had been able to include."

This is where Nelson jumps from disingenuous into Stoen's camp outright lying. I doubt there was even the slightest shred of desire to include Stoen. And that is yet another in this parade of countless outrages.

Suppose Nelson had presented us with a film, "Steel Revolutionary: Life and Death of Stalin." And he had, time after time after time, deleted, embellished, minimized, and sugar-coated this monster's rise and fall. (No, of course, Jones didn't kill as many or rule a nation, etc. - but he ruled his little empire like a Stalinist.)

Millions deliberately starved to death in the Ukrainian forced famine. But what if Nelson shows footage of families happily working in the fields. Millions are sent to forced labor camps. Nelson's footage shows dancing Russians, and kids getting free schools and medical care.

Such lethal omissions about history can have devastating consequences on the future. You know what the saying is about not learning the lessons of history and its consequences--made famous on that forboding sign in that horrifying pavilion.

Here's another hypothetical in a Nelson film on Stalin: Our "revolutionary" director decides to leave the audience almost completely in the dark about Leon Trotsky. Trotsky, who was Stalin's rival, later assassinated, might have succeeded in stopping the monster in his assent to power, had he been more astute politically and made certain Lenin's Testament had been read publicly.

But Trotsky never did. The Testament was censored in the USSR. And he, and millions of people, paid dearly for it. Still, Nelson decides, "Well, I just don't have room for Trotsky in this story, sorry about that....!" Responsible, accurate way to "write history"??

Some directors, it seems, are more than willing to leave out key facts as such, if it suits their "ideology agenda." You can love Michael Moore or hate 'em; his film "Fahrenheit 911" had a couple of scenes that stick out as some of the most appalling instances of this syndrome. The first scene has an American soldier in Iraq singing to a heavy metal song, "...let the motherf----- burn, burn motherf-----, burn..." The other shows, just prior to the U.S. invasion, Moore's POV (point of view - film jargon, that is) of Saddam's brutal regime: Kids are playing, a wedding, and people are laughing. No scenes of Saddam's torture chambers in the montage.

This--a "documentary?" Oh, almost forgot. Nelson worked for Moore one time.

But then, it would be unfair to pick on just poor ol' Stan. No, indeed. As said at the start, this People's Temple Rogue's Gallery is enormous. There are so, so many more to discuss and confront. So many that helped that Beast Jones, who they DEFENDED and PROMOTED SHAMELESSLY ...reporters, columnists, editors, talk show hosts, clergy, lawyers, state assemblymen..it is mind-boggling. Many of them have turned revisionists, like Nelson, and lie compulsively, like Nelson, in order to maintain their place in the limelight.

Truly sickening. It's time to set the record straight.

The next Jonestown Apologists Alert will premiere a special series of stories, exposes that you, the public, should and must read. The San Francisco Examiner, when it was still a "functioning" newspaper, published a three-part series back in November, 1998, on the 20th Anniversary of Jonestown.

It was called "Days of Darkness." Then-Executive Editor Phil Bronstein made the following breath-taking promise:

"The Examiner owes it to its readers ...to publish a series that goes far beyond a recollection of what happened. What we hope to do in these stories is raise and answer key questions that still haunt us all about Rev. Jim Jones and the tragedy that befell his followers˜and all San Franciscans˜two decades ago."

But of course predictably what Bronstein, now at the S.F. Chronicle, then offered up was the same, tired old fabricated garbage the California media has continued spewing out non-stop for what is now close to 30 years. This heap of self-congratulatory drivel is designed to cover up their weakness, stupidity, and cowardice in not shutting down Jones and his Temple Mafia when they easily had the chance. Bronstein, you--and the rest--STILL OWE.

When there was still time to do it. A time such as September, 1972, when my father, Les Kinsolving, was honing in on them like a Hellcat fighter in the Pacific.

He had eight exposes set to run in the Examiner of the fraudulent, menacing cult. Four, however, never saw the light of day, thanks to Jones enforcer Tim Stoen (who later apologized for his actions, whose motives are still unclear).

The first expose, "The Prophet Who Raises The Dead," ran on the front page of The Examiner, Sunday, Sept. 17, 1972. Those that have wanted it, or the other three, never published again, for their own self-serving, immoral reasons, will now no longer have their way. These, and the other four exposes that were originally censored under the threat of Jones and Stoen's law suits, will be published in their chilling entirety right here.

Then you'll understand that one of the greatest crimes was simply that the Jonestown Massacre never needed to happen, only for the fact that the Examiner, and the rest of the California media lost their backbone in 1972--but will still not own up to it. And it's clear that our Cult Appologist film maker has thrown that one, as well, into his cinematic chamber of secrets. He's consistent, people.

Stanley Nelson, in his KQED program, proclaimed that [not until 1977] "Marshall Kilduff rang the first alarm about People's Temple!"

Tomorrow and Wednesday, when Nelson appears at UC Santa Cruz, and gives instructions on "How To Write History: Research and Representation in the Historical Documentary, " will he continue displaying the same level of candor?