{"id":123504,"date":"2023-07-12T15:20:51","date_gmt":"2023-07-12T22:20:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=123504"},"modified":"2025-02-18T09:35:29","modified_gmt":"2025-02-18T17:35:29","slug":"efrein","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=123504","title":{"rendered":"What in the World Happened at Jonestown, Guyana on November 18, 1978?"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Editor’s note<\/b>: This article was originally published by Covert Action Magazine<\/a> on\u00a0June 27, 2023, and is reprinted with permission.)<\/em><\/p>\n

Evidence Suggests that the CIA Murdered One of Its Staunchest Critics in the mid-1970s and then Covered It Up by Blaming Jim Jones\u2019s Peoples Temple Cult<\/strong><\/p>\n

[CAM has undertaken\u00a0<\/em>previous\u00a0<\/em><\/a>reporting<\/a>\u00a0on the infamous 1978 Jonestown massacre and explored CIA involvement\u2014largely to cover up clandestine drug testing and other illicit operations that were being carried out in a commune that Peoples Temple leader Jim Jones had set up in Guyana. In this article Laurie Efrein Kahalas, a former Peoples Temple member, explores the death of Leo Ryan, a critic of the CIA who may have been lured to Jonestown to his death, which she argues was carried out by elements of the CIA and\/or U.S. military, and not members of the People\u2019s Temple\u2014Editors, Covert Action Magazine].<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Intel Turned On Its Head<\/strong><\/p>\n

I am Laurie Efrein Kahalas, survivor of the Peoples Temple.\u00a0I never lived in Jonestown, but I held a key position in the States up through the time of the tragedy on November 18, 1978. I am also the author of the \u201cIn Plain Sight (IPS)\u201d project<\/a>, the documented deconstruction of the Port Kaituma airstrip massacre (where Leo Ryan was killed), which preceded the deaths at Jonestown.\u00a0Hard to deconstruct what was accepted as \u201chistory\u201d in just this single article, but the IPS project fills that out.<\/p>\n

I realize that, from out of the deep dark jungle, headlines ablaze. From them all the public retains to this day is \u201cdrink the kool-aid.\u201d\u00a0For years following, it was even \u201ca bizarre murder\/suicide ritual.\u201d Twin tragedies: Congressman Leo Ryan murdered\u2014a foremost CIA critic and sponsor of the Ryan Hughes amendment requiring the president to report all covert operations to Congress sent to investigate the People\u2019s Temple in Guyana\u2014and then close to a thousand deaths at Jonestown. Not just that you can\u2019t have one without the other, but that\u00a0the same party must have been guilty of both<\/em>.<\/p>\n

That was never true; but there was never any investigation, just blaring headlines.\u00a0I was in D.C. personally a year after,<\/strong>\u00a0when congressional aides admitted that they\u00a0had<\/em>\u00a0the on-site NBC film footage (NBC had accompanied the congressman).\u00a0But when I demanded that they blow up the faces and bring in survivors to identify the so-called \u201cTemple killers,\u201d they adamantly refused.\u00a0Even though that would have been Burden of Proof 101, especially in the face of massively contradictory so-called \u201ceyewitness IDs\u201d!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
The bodies of\u00a0San Francisco Examiner\u00a0photographer Greg Robinson, center under engine, and U.S. Representative Leo Ryan, on the opposite side of the plane under the word \u201cGuyana,\u201d lie on the ground beside an airplane at the Port Kaituma airstrip. [Source:\u00a0nydailynews.com]<\/figcaption><\/figure>It took\u00a0me\u00a028 years to so much as be able to compare the on-site NBC film footage of\u00a0a mature Black man\u00a0as the tractor driver, when literally 13 so-called \u201ceyewitnesses\u201d had fingered\u00a0a young blond white kid\u00a0for same because that\u2019s who they had seen on the airstrip\u00a0earlier!<\/p>\n

I will now tell you how this happened from the inside. I am not re-emerging to defend mass suicide, much less the preventable deaths of children.\u00a0I wept for years. Even though the counter-wrenches to my heart included a smeared group trapped in a foreign jungle, in hostile\u00a0political\u00a0territory, and terrified of imminent military invasion\u2014one of\u00a0many\u00a0factors which marked the Jonestown Tragedy as way more complex and multi-sided than the public was ever led to believe.<\/p>\n

I am just here to clarify what happened as best I can and address who was behind Leo Ryan\u2019s killing.\u00a0So what was Peoples Temple in the first place? And who was Congressman Leo Ryan?<\/p>\n

First, Peoples Temple had a remarkably pristine reputation when it was based in the Bay Area\u2014as unfailingly progressive and community-minded. In the fall of 1976, it was honored by the Mayor of San Francisco, the Lieutenant Governor of California, the leader of the State Assembly, and many others. Why a foreign haven was sought to build an egalitarian community from out of substantially people who had been trapped in city ghettoes, was in no way nefarious; indeed, it was widely praised by visitors to the community,\u00a0including Congressman Ryan.\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
[Source:\u00a0ntnews.com]<\/figcaption><\/figure>The secret \u201cdown side\u201d of that move (though utterly unbeknownst at the time!) was that the Guyana option had been located and facilitated by our then top attorney at the time, Timothy Stoen, who was a) considered implacably loyal, once even considered for \u201csuccessorship\u201d; yet b) it was later discovered (through a news article that he himself had saved) that he had run a secret spy mission into East Germany (where he claimed he had never been) and also his own handwritten fiercely anti-communist notes. (Jim Jones himself presented himself as implacably\u00a0pro-communist.)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Jim Jones [Source:\u00a0history.com]<\/figcaption><\/figure>We also had no knowledge at the time that the CIA (as revealed in recent years in the State Department\u2019s own records) had been fixing elections in Guyana since 1964 to keep that nation out of Fidel Castro\u2019s orbit during the Cold War. By the time of the tragedy, there were imminent plans to send a scouting party to the then-USSR to look into re-relocation, as confirmed in a post-tragedy book authored by the Russians. (I had personally been told as well.) The trip had been set for\u00a0December 1978, a mere month after the tragedy happened instead.<\/p>\n

In other words, Jim Jones and his flock had been unknowingly planted into a hotbed of anti-communist plots; and to boot, in an isolated jungle setting. Set up by our own attorney, who then \u201cdefected\u201d at a moment of his choice and spearheaded the rabid drive to \u201cinvestigate Jonestown.\u201d\u00a0As perilous, he was legal father of Jim Jones\u2019s own biological child, John; and drove escalating pressures to \u201crelease the child\u201d whom he and the child\u2019s mother had already legally signed away.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, in the state-side absence of Jim Jones and a bulk of the membership, bad press was successively raised to fever pitch, starting with an early Murdoch publication,\u00a0New West<\/em>, and escalating to an ongoing hysteria to \u201cinvestigate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then it got a step worse.\u00a0Both\u00a0Jim Jones and Congressman Leo Ryan were targeted by the CIA: Jim Jones as a popular but pro-communist icon in the U.S., now nurturing ties with the then-USSR; and Leo Ryan for the likes of the Hughes-Ryan\u00a0Amendment to the 1974 Foreign Relations Act, requiring the CIA to report all their \u201cblack ops\u201d to several congressional committees.<\/p>\n

But there was yet another deadly catch:\u00a0Neither Jones nor Ryan knew who the other was!\u00a0Jim Jones thought that Ryan was \u201ca fascist congressman calling the shots\u201d due to a single bad vote on South Africa. Ryan thought that Jones was just a cult leader holding another man\u2019s child hostage! Ryan was vulnerable in that one of his daughters, Shannon, was with Bagwan Rajneesh in Oregon at the time, and had already marked himself as anti-cult in Congress. So Ryan was\u00a0not fed one word about politics\u2014just that he was to be the crusader who could stop a deadly cult!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Leo Ryan [Source:\u00a0nbcbayarea.com]<\/figcaption><\/figure>That the congressman might be headed into a\u00a0political assassination\u00a0was the last thing on his mind that November day. Much less that he and Jim Jones might be headed for an\u00a0inextricably intertwined\u00a0fate. A proverbial \u201ckill two birds with one stone\u201d:\u00a0Use false flag to kill one and frame it on the other.\u00a0Jim Jones himself, though consummately political (hard line on the left), did not see political assassination coming either that day. His primary concern was that his people (all\u00a0of them, not just John) would not somehow wind up being dragged away under the guise of rescuing a little boy.<\/p>\n

In a way, this was just a classic intelligence op. Use people\u2019s\u00a0personal\u00a0<\/em>vulnerabilities to mask the true goal: to kill Leo Ryan and frame it on Jim Jones. When really, it was at its root all about\u00a0politics (The CIA wanted Ryan dead because of his anti-CIA bill, the\u00a0Hughes Ryan amendment<\/a>).<\/p>\n

But how to entrap the anti-CIA congressman into targeting his anti-cult bent against\u00a0Jonestown?<\/p>\n

Congressman Ryan was from San Mateo County, just south of San Francisco, the location of Peoples Temple in the States. His personal tie, to be exploited, was that he had been befriended by Sammy Houston, an AP photographer who was father of one Bob Houston, a Temple member who was pretty much on the way out to join his then-fianc\u00e9e, Joyce Shaw. Ryan early in his career had taught school, and Bob had been one of his students.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Bob Houston [Source:\u00a0findagrave.com]<\/figcaption><\/figure>Bob worked on the railway system down the Coast. Then one night, his dead body was found at a railway yard. (Never investigated.) An hysterical fianc\u00e9e was ready to assert that \u201cJim Jones [who was already in Guyana] must have done this!\u201d Tim Stoen (the only one with anything to\u00a0gain\u00a0by Houston\u2019s death!) swooped right in to secure Ryan\u2019s support.<\/p>\n

Ryan, now emerging as an anti-Jonestown icon, coincided nearly exactly with the courts suddenly nullifying both Stoen\u2019s legal relinquishment of little John, and his finally emerging publicly full force as a Temple opponent. To boot, Sammy Houston\u2019s small granddaughters were now living at Jonestown and Bob\u2019s sister was included in the investigative trip which then turned deadly.<\/p>\n

There was precious little missing from this drama about\u00a0how people are set up.\u00a0Again,\u00a0not\u00a0defending the ultimate drastic final act, but just, finally, laying the predicates down in terms that humans can understand. So that we do\u00a0not\u00a0have to jump right to \u201ccrazy cult\u201d; but can at least grasp an isolated community set up in politically hostile territory and under extreme, escalating pressures, including being kept in the dark regarding what they may have needed to know the most.<\/p>\n

But there was yet one more deadly deception preceding the catastrophic events at both the Port Kaituma airstrip and community of Jonestown that terrible day:<\/p>\n

The cast of anti-Temple characters was partly open, partly hidden, partly sincere, partly duped. And since no one anywhere was saying a word about\u00a0politics, the true plans for the Jonestown excursion were left not just unexposed, but undiscovered until the time of the tragedy and past.<\/p>\n

Which brings us to the final critical link, now directly transitioning to the assassination of Congressman Leo Ryan:<\/p>\n

Joseph Mazor<\/strong>. A name hardly broadcast to the world, but about whom Peoples Temple was acutely aware going back to a September 1977\u00a0Berkeley Barb<\/em>\u00a0article, \u201cA Conspiracy Behind Peoples Temple Expose?\u201d\u00a0A conman with a long criminal record, now mysteriously granted a PI license by the State, hired by a pricey PR firm to smear Peoples Temple, and allegedly in play to \u201cretrieve kidnapped children.\u201d (Of whom there were none.)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Joe Mazor<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I remember watching San Francisco TV stations in the wake of the tragedy. And there was Joseph Mazor, right there! And what I heard him say, literally word for word, was\u00a0\u201cIt was considered that Jim Jones would become a major political force in the Caribbean within five years.\u201d Which was, of course,\u00a0an intelligence assessment.<\/p>\n

And why was this mostly unknown person central to the assassination of Congressman Ryan? First, why was he even invited in, as he was in September 1978, just two months prior to the tragedy? Well, Mark Lane brokered that. (Anyone who thinks that Mark Lane was a good guy\u2014no, he was never that. Indeed, he wound up representing Willis Carto and the notoriously anti-semitic Liberty Lobby!) Mazor had claimed to have led a sniper raid against Jonestown in September 1977. That they left when the community looked peaceful, but that the plan had been to \u201cknock out the electrical generators, kidnap the children, and kill all the adults.\u201d\u00a0Lane told that to a small group in San Francisco mid-October 1978, including me.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Mark Lane [Source: discogs.com]<\/figcaption><\/figure>But Mazor now claimed to be fabulously impressed by Jonestown!\u00a0Ready to become a friend.<\/p>\n

We already knew that Mazor was a bad guy, a dangerous guy, a skilled conman, with a long prison record for fraud, impersonation and the like. I even had Terri Buford, a top aide to Jim Jones, tell me that \u201cwe have Mazor\u2019s Interpol number.\u201d I myself wrote State authorities asking why they had given a PI license to someone with multiple imprisonments for fraud. He obviously had secret government ties\u00a0somehow.<\/p>\n

But Jim Jones (already gravely ill personally\u2014a deadly fungus that no one else had appeared to contract) was under the gun with press attacks and Stoen\u2019s incessant drives to invade Jonestown, so he was desperate for help. Mazor claimed he was implacably\u00a0against Tim Stoen; and it was that that was \u201ccalling card material.\u201d Stoen had \u201cvowed to destroy Jonestown,\u201d and that \u201cwe\u2019re counting on Jim to overreact [to the congresssman\u2019s visit].\u201d<\/p>\n

We needed intel on\u00a0Stoen\u2019s\u00a0moves, and Mazor, feigning intense dislike of Stoen, apparently stood ready, willing and able to track his moves, or so he said. Sort of like \u201cThe enemy of my enemy is my friend.\u201d<\/p>\n

But what of the real reason for Mazor\u2019s visit? Well,\u00a0you can\u2019t do a duplication for false flag without photographs of what you are going to duplicate! And Mazor, personally into Jonestown just two months prior to the congressman\u2019s visit, came of course with a camera! He was working as a PI at the time: \u201cHave camera, will travel.\u201d As for Jonestown, they\u00a0loved\u00a0having their beautiful home-grown community photographed!<\/p>\n

Some aspects of this were complex, twisty. This one wasn\u2019t. It was one step.<\/p>\n

And now, with that last essential piece fastened in, the scene was set to orchestrate the kill:<\/p>\n

Congressman and cult leader had both been targeted\u00a0politically, unbeknownst to either one. Jim Jones, red-hot paranoid and persistently distracted by threats against the community over\u00a0the child custody suit,\u00a0lets in a deadly dangerous opponent (Joseph Mazor) to (allegedly)\u00a0praise\u00a0the community, and to (allegedly) help in tracking\/stopping arch-enemy Timothy Stoen, but he is really there to \u201ccase the joint.\u201d<\/p>\n

On November 17, 1978, Congressman Leo Ryan arrived at Jonestown. Where the stage had been set\u2014by misdirection, disinformation, deception, smears, public threats, dirty tricks,\u00a0all of it.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Tim Stoen<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A\u00a0Very\u00a0<\/em>False-Flag Frame\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

For a whole year following the tragedy, I was NOT looking for false-flag frame at all. We knew that the leaders of the anti-Temple defectors were all far-right wing: anti-communist Tim Stoen, of course; and Elmer and Denna Mertle and Al and Jeannie Mills, who had been members of the John Birch Society. Nor did any of those leaders have any relatives at Jonestown.<\/p>\n

And yeah, we knew that they didn\u2019t like us politically. We even exposed that one of the Mills acolytes, one David Conn, had tried to bribe\/blackmail Native American movement leader Dennis Banks to turn against Jim Jones over the child custody suit or face harsh retribution in South Dakota. We just weren\u2019t thinking false-flag frame. Not even in the ballpark. Maybe because (at the least) it was never on our radar that any of our opponents would want to kill\u00a0the Congressman!<\/p>\n

Thus\u00a0most\u00a0ironically, although at Jonestown, they did believe that they could be targeted for a political frame-up,\u00a0they were entirely blind-sided by\u00a0this.<\/p>\n

I even believed (not having any default position to believe in yet) that our guys had killed Leo Ryan, because everyone said so and no one was going in another direction. But then came the first anniversary of the tragedy on November 18, 1979. I was glued to the television screen in New York on a lesser channel\u2014I mean not ABC, NBC or CBS. It was either channel 9 (WOR) or channel 11 (WPIX). And to my astonishment, this one network (only one ever) showed\u00a0the entire snuff film at the airstrip. Where they obtained it, what happened to it\u2014that I never learned.<\/p>\n

I was shocked, of course! But transfixed. What emerged was what looked to my untrained eye like the assassins first fanning out and then forward charge. With the lead assassin (my impression of him being\u00a0exceptionally tall!<\/em><\/strong>) coming right up to the NBC photographer, Bob Brown, and sending his camera into snow.<\/p>\n

But, beside me on both sides, were people who were far more specific. One was Chris Kice, visiting from California, whose husband Tom was one of the accused assassins. She peered at the screen and said, \u201cI don\u2019t see Tom. None of those men are Tom.\u201d<\/p>\n

On my other side was my dear friend, Al Morrison (now gone), who had been in the military in World War II. He looked carefully at the screen and his comment was, \u201cI know what that is. It\u2019s a squad diamond formation. You learn that in basic training.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jonestown, of course, never had \u201cbasic training\u201d (or\u00a0any\u00a0military training) in the slightest! But he was clear and then\u00a0I\u00a0was clear, that this was in no way a half-cocked cult crazy operation in the slightest. It was\u00a0professional military.<\/p>\n

I was quite upset, just didn\u2019t know where to go. But Al had a lawyer client in D.C. at the time who was acquainted with a Florida congressman who happened to be on the wrap-up committee for Jonestown. And, although I never got to meet that Congressman personally, he was able to arrange a meeting for me in D.C. with two aides, which took place on January 4, 1980.<\/p>\n

Talk about non-cooperation! They admitted that they\u00a0had<\/em>\u00a0the complete film in their possession, but when I suggested o.k., let\u2019s blow up the film and bring in survivors from Jonestown (who obviously\u00a0knew<\/em>\u00a0the people there) and let them give positive IDs\u2026 (which obviously would have been\u00a0none<\/em>), I got no further than a blank stare with that one \u201cWhy would we do that? All of the principals are dead.\u201d\u00a0(Really?)<\/em><\/p>\n

Moreover, when I asked them point-blank \u201cWho was the government eyewitness [that they deleted from the transcript\u2014no surprise]?\u201d they responded, \u201cJim Cobb.\u201d\u00a0But Jim Cobb said in your own report that he was 50 yards away running for his life in the other direction! (Actually worse. When I finally located the schematic of that airstrip, Cobb would have had to see through the body of a plane!)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
David Brinkley [Source:\u00a0247wallst.com]<\/figcaption><\/figure>It remained pointless. I got nowhere. I did locate quotes from a broadcast of David Brinkley, then lead anchor on NBC, the network that had lost the newsmen, from the first anniversary, when he said that\u00a0the killing of the congressman was never investigated because\u00a0\u201call of the principals are dead.\u201d Moreover, he added, \u201cBesides, nobody\u00a0liked<\/em>\u00a0that particular congressman.\u201d<\/p>\n

Really? Well, aside from the abject callousness of the remark, they had certainly \u201cliked\u201d Congressman Ryan enough to pass his Hughes-Ryan\u00a0Amendment to the Foreign Relations Act of 1974! Trying to force the CIA to report all \u201cblack ops\u201d to several congressional committees.<\/p>\n

But wasn\u2019t this all just supposed to be about crazy cultists?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Then when I returned from D.C. to New York, I and everyone helping me was harassed to hell and gone. Rummaging through garbage, wake-up calls at 3 a.m., trailing in the streets, peering over my shoulder in the Post Office, spraying a psychedelic drug in the face of someone helping me, trying to assault another friend in his own apartment. They even harassed\u2026my mother<\/em>\u00a0when she was entering her apartment to install colored wires all over the place to \u201cre-wire the phone system.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Pretty soon I got the idea: If I were wrong, no one would be doing this to me. This was a trademark of being\u00a0right<\/em>. But I also was thinking: \u201cThis may take twenty years to prove.\u201d Well, I was a bit off on that. I could not even begin until\u00a028\u00a0years later. But the time did come, upon release of at least the first six seconds of the assassins\u2019 disembark. Then that part of the script began writing itself and the rest of the story folded in and made perfect (if disturbing!) sense.<\/p>\n

I just made sure that I had included the\u00a0\u201csquad diamond\u201d\u00a0seen at the first anniversary in my book\u00a0Snake Dance<\/em>\u00a0(at the 20th<\/sup>\u00a0anniversary mark). Not because I expected the film to re-emerge, even abridged, but I just wanted to be sure that, should it ever, I had clearly marked in advance what I had seen so many years ago.<\/p>\n

Now we can get right into\u00a0the anatomy of the false-flag frame:<\/p>\n

A\u00a0tractor-trailer\u00a0was the vehicle of choice for the assassins. First\u00a0the tractor:<\/p>\n

Okay. The tractor used for the hit was a different tractor than the real one from Jonestown. It was structurally modified. Namely, a HUGE difference: No driver\u2019s inset!!\u00a0Tc3 The Vehicle Used in the Attack: THE TRACTOR VISUAL PROOFS \u2013 Alternative Considerations of Jonestown & Peoples Temple (sdsu.edu)<\/a>\u00a0Every Massey Ferguson tractor of the day (and nearly any tractor\u00a0period<\/em><\/strong>) had a wide open space where the tractor driver stepped in, to then be quite visible, his body literally sticking up into the air as he drove the vehicle.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

But this tractor, with the driver\u2019s inset entirely sealed off, was modified to look more like a tank. Which was not new, incidentally. Turning tractors into tanks was a decades\u2019 old technology. Turns out that, as far back as 1941, with Germans attacking Russians during the Siege of Odessa, a whole factory was converting to \u201ctractor-tanks\u201d for defense. Jonestown was hardly the first time such modifications had been done.<\/p>\n

But why? First, the driver of the assassins\u2019 vehicle (which I believe would have been the gunman way out front firing a diversionary shot into the air) could not be allowed to be sticking up into the air where any onlooker might say, \u201cWho is that guy? He\u2019s\u00a0not\u00a0from Jonestown!\u201d Second, we have no idea what tech was concealed in that sealed off driver\u2019s inset. This tractor was way speedier than any ordinary tractor! And that awful clanging sound accompanying the assassins\u2019 disembark (to disorient the victims and paralyze any communications) had to have come from the tractor. The engines of the plane had just revved\u00a0down.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Next,\u00a0the trailer:<\/p>\n

This\u00a0posed different issues for duplication: It was done from photos taken two months prior to the event itself. It just did not guarantee what that vehicle would look like two months later on (only the NBC camera on site during the congressman\u2019s visit could confirm that). This was a\u00a0flexible\u00a0vehicle. So the wooden slats on the real Jonestown trailer were green-on-top, pink-on-bottom as filmed on site on November\u00a017, 1978, at the Port Kaituma airstrip. But the wooden slats on the trailer used by the assassins was pink-on-top green-on-bottom on November\u00a018, 1978.\u00a0Tr1 The Vehicle Used in the Attack: THE TRAILER VISUAL PROOFS \u2013 Alternative Considerations of Jonestown & Peoples Temple (sdsu.edu)<\/a>\u00a0i.e.,\u00a0not the same vehicle.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The other notable difference was that\u00a0the hitch\u00a0connecting trailer to tractor was visually quite different from the real Jonestown trailer on November 17, 1978 (as filmed by NBC on site at the airstrip); and the assassins\u2019 trailer November 18.\u00a0Tr4 The Vehicle Used in the Attack: THE TRAILER VISUAL PROOFS \u2013 Alternative Considerations of Jonestown & Peoples Temple (sdsu.edu)<\/a>\u00a0As you will note, on the 17th<\/sup>, there is a large rotating under-wheel, covered by what looks like corrugated rubber, then extending into a long metal bar underneath the trailer. But on the 18th<\/sup>, there is just a single metal hitch connecting trailer to tractor. There is ZERO possibility that these two vehicles were the same. Even though the duplicated trailer on the 18th<\/sup>\u00a0may, indeed, have looked like Mazor\u2019s original photos from two months earlier.<\/p>\n

There were two different vehicles: different tractor, different trailer. First-hand from NBC film footage.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

As for the Temple truck (the three finally accused \u201cassassins\u201d were on the Temple truck, never any tractor-trailer!), I doubt that it even crossed Mazor\u2019s mind that that truck would wind up on the airfield at all. When he arrived with Mark Lane, it was just a two-person visit and the tractor-trailer transport was quite sufficient. So that\u2019s what was photographed and duplicated.<\/p>\n

But not only Jim Jones, but\u00a0no one\u00a0<\/em>at Jonestown had a clue that they were being set up for a false-flag frame. The webs of deception, camouflage and misdirection had well set the stage. And as for the so-called \u201cdefector\u201d group from the Temple: They hadn\u2019t a clue either! They were as misled and used as anyone else.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Next, no one from Jonestown returning from the airstrip following the assassination actually\u00a0saw\u00a0<\/em>the attack. (Heard it? Undoubtedly. Just did not see it.) Those three guys (the official \u201caccused\u201d) were spotted on the airstrip\u00a0on foot<\/strong>\u00a0walking toward the congressman\u2019s plane just prior to the attack, by\u00a0Washington Post<\/em>\u00a0reporter Charles Krause and that \u201cThey did not look threatening.\u201d<\/p>\n

My own best surmisal (well, it\u2019s just logic) is that those three guys rushed over after the extremely violent yet also\u00a0quick\u00a0attack, with the attack vehicle speeding up-runway, saw the dead bodies, and\u00a0presumed\u00a0(utterly tragically!) that it had been done by guys from Jonestown. (A la deep dark jungle\u2014\u201cWho else could it have been?\u201d) Hence the reported explosion upon their return to Jonestown of \u201cWe got the Congressman!\u201d But\u2026who\u00a0\u201cgot\u201d the Congressman? (I confirmed that\u00a0no one\u00a0confessed.)<\/p>\n

Then at Jonestown, they were expecting an imminent military invasion in retaliation for what they had not even done! But did it even matter? Their \u201cguilt\u201d was already being broadcast all over the world.<\/p>\n

Plus, for anyone who thinks, \u201cThey should have known this; they should have known that\u2026\u201d: Jonestown was so remote that there was not even a phone! Just a ham radio lined up for a limited time each evening.<\/p>\n

And, of course, anyone who wants to peruse the mass of conflicting so-called \u201ceyewitness reports\u201d in the 400-page FBI report is welcome to do so, though I would call that pointless. Besides, I did that all myself for the \u201cIn Plain Sight\u201d project.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s make something clear: Remember first, that in determining what is true and what is speculation and\/or disinformation, the name of the game is (in so far as possible)\u00a0sourcing. Not second-hand stories or third-hand smears. Even for presumed first-hand accounts: Accounts of\u00a0what? Where were you\u00a0standing, Mr. or Mrs. \u201cEyewitness\u201d? Did you have to see through the body of a plane? Did you stand there for even a second to just look? Were you running in the opposite direction? Did you just arbitrarily name guys you had seen on the airstrip\u00a0earlier? Were you on the second plane that was already taxi-ing for lift-off?<\/p>\n

Me, I was lucky. I had retained the schematic of that airstrip, drawn up less than 24 hours after the event by Tim Reiterman (premier reporter on site). And the lines of vision and\/or lack thereof, are\u00a0clear.\u00a0I analyzed how a couple of dozen so-called \u201ceyewitnesses\u201d somehow came up with\u00a0not\u00a0just multiple conflicting \u201csuspects\u201d (well, that they did) although NONE of them was actually guilty of this crime.<\/p>\n

And\u00a0that\u2019s the essence of\u00a0research versus rumor mills. So I\u2019ll not sop up space discounting rumors and lies which NEVER had any sourcing: Brazil, Angola, ex-military guys claiming they were right into Jonestown but with zero paperwork, alleged right-wing ties for Jim Jones\u00a0anywhere, and the like. That was all\u2014all\u00a0of it\u2014just garbage for a runaway rumor mill. Not worth\u00a0anyone\u2019s\u00a0time. However, there is a wealth of\u00a0documented sources\u00a0and that\u2019s the only place I go. I was not in Jonestown personally, but I was in a catbird\u2019s seat insofar as document retention was concerned; plus\u00a0much\u00a0work done in tragedy\u2019s wake.<\/p>\n

So far as the assassins\u2019 identities are concerned, there was not even the slightest attempt to make them look like anyone from Jonestown. Like the lead assassin was freakishly tall and dressed in solid green military camouflage.\u00a0IN PLAIN SIGHT: Proof that it was NOT Peoples Temple Who Killed the Congressman \u2013 Alternative Considerations of Jonestown & Peoples Temple (sdsu.edu)<\/a>\u00a0(See \u201cWere\u00a0ANY<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0of These Assassins from Jonestown?\u201d Also note: In the entire 400-page FBI report,\u00a0no one<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0<\/em>was spotted dressed that way!) And these guys were highly trained into rapid, perfect step-by-step formation, when\u00a0there was no military training at Jonestown at all. These guys were rapid, professional, brutally violent and\u00a0quick!<\/em><\/p>\n

Next: The clumsy classical after-action attempt to\u00a0plant the murder weapon on the accused\u00a0(touted a month later on in\u00a0The New York Times<\/em>) just resulted in a young woman\u00a0both poisoned and then (allegedly) self-shot! Moreover, by a long-barreled rifle from the wrong side of her head (the left\u2014she was right-handed). All confirmed at autopsy. To allegedly \u201cprove\u201d that a rifle with a dum-dum bullet (Jonestown did not know squat from dum-dum bullets) used to shoot the congressman came from\u2026 Jonestown?? How much cover-up gets to be \u201cenough\u201d?<\/p>\n

The issue of so-called \u201ceyewitness identifications\u201d (even though many people were on\/airfield or down\/airfield or departing from the airfield) gets torn apart even from the Reiterman Schematic of the airstrip\u2014the exact layout of equipment, victims and assassins drawn up within 24 hours of the event, showing multiple blockages of lines of vision. And the Feds literally wound up with the so-called \u201cgovernment eyewitness\u201d admitting he was running for his life 50 yards in the opposite direction and would have had to see through the body of a plane!<\/p>\n

It was even a false assumption (well, reported in the media but entirely uninvestigated)\u00a0that there was NO government military on that airstrip when the hit happened, or that there was no post-tragedy direction right on site. There were both:<\/p>\n

There were three soldiers down-runway with M-16s for no reason that made any sense, and who refused to intervene when Bob Flick, NBC producer on site, hysterically appealed to them to intervene.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Richard Dwyer, U.S. Embassy Guyana (right) with Jim Jones. [Source: californiarevealed.org]<\/figcaption><\/figure>There was also Richard Dwyer, attached to the U.S. Embassy in Georgetown. On-site filming\u00a0revealed him sashaying\u00a0himself\u00a0out of the line of fire (the only one to do so) less than a minute prior to the attack; and Jackie Speier (on post-tragedy television coverage, where I had heard it) noting that, when the shots rang out, Dwyer fell\u00a0face up rather than protectively face down. She speculated that it might have been so that he could be\u00a0recognized\u00a0by the assassins, hence spared. Dwyer himself claimed to have been \u201cslightly grazed in the buttocks\u201d (sort of impossible had he fallen face up!) and, of course, no one was asking him to lower his drawers to check.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Jackie Speier, then a legislative counsel for Congressman Leo Ryan was shot five times and had to wait 22 hours for help. [Source:\u00a0dailymail.co.uk]<\/figcaption><\/figure>Moreover, even Tim Reiterman on his schematic marked that the assassination was radioed in from the plane. So why did it take\u00a020 hours\u00a0(as per the Embassy\u2019s own log) to get medical help in, which nearly cost Jackie Speier, Ryan\u2019s aide, her arm from gangrene?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Still on tap: I\u2019m working on securing exact, visually clear (for an old degraded film) visual tracking of the assassins, even for that short six-second stretch that was finally released to the public. (\u201cIn Plain Sight,\u201d section 6, 2, Part 2.) A so-called \u201csquad diamond formation\u201d: first identified for me by an ex-military friend at the first anniversary, then I claimed it in my book\u00a0Snake Dance<\/em>\u2014not because I thought it would re-emerge, but because if I did, I wanted the credibility of having known all the way back what it was\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>before\u00a0the on-site filming was re-released. In other words, I saw what I said I saw at the first anniversary of the tragedy in the first place.<\/p>\n

Even when I did finally land the first six seconds of the assassins\u2019 disembarkation, I ran it repeatedly, again and again and again, to be sure of what I was looking at. Then meticulously freeze-framed the assassins\u2019 successive steps. I never would have gone public with it shy of being sure.<\/p>\n

But anyone seriously looking at this should also look at the squad diamond dissembling in the \u201cIn Plain Sight\u201d project. It\u2019s not that complicated. Two triangles back-to-back. Front triangle spreads out three assassins. Back triangle protects the perimeters.<\/p>\n

I want to close with an overriding question: If this were just a crazy cult, then why did all the copious disinformation on the heels of the tragedy have to do with\u2026politics?\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>It sort of makes \u201cI think thou dost protest too much\u201d look like child\u2019s play! That alone should get people thinking outside the box.<\/p>\n

Me, it took me a whole year to start thinking outside that box. Until then, I thought that our guys must have done it because everyone seemed to say so and I wasn\u2019t there. And I was angry at \u201cwhoever did it\u201d because it endangered\u00a0everyone. If there was no assassination, then no suicides. Then it took\u00a028 years\u00a0after the tragedy, to finally land the damning on-site NBC film footage, then to complete the \u201cIn Plain Sight\u201d project. Though that so cut against \u201caccepted\u201d media coverage, that it has been daunting to gain a voice.<\/p>\n

And yes, it\u2019s fair to say that the date of the tragedy, November 18, 1978, changed my life forever. But that same date a year later, November 18, 1979, changed it all over again. And then, I guess I would have to say that late 2006 again whiplashed my life into finally completing what I had so long ago set out to do. Though now,\u00a044\u00a0years later, I might finally be entering into a more receptive public arena.<\/p>\n

Life can be pretty strange that way\u2026.Though I thank whatever Powers That Be to have come this far. It\u2019s hardly the whole of my own life by far\u2014I was blessed with an immensely happy marriage, and wise souls who eased my way ahead. But this has always been worth the effort. God bless my doomed friends.<\/p>\n

(Laurie Efrein Kahalas<\/em><\/b>, a long-time Temple member and author of Snake Dance, created the website <\/em>www.jonestown.com which now appears on this site here<\/a>. Her collection of articles for this site appears here<\/a>. She can be reached through dan_laurie44@comcast.net<\/a>.)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Editor’s note: This article was originally published by Covert Action Magazine on\u00a0June 27, 2023, and is reprinted with permission.) Evidence Suggests that the CIA Murdered One of Its Staunchest Critics in the mid-1970s and then Covered It Up by Blaming Jim Jones\u2019s Peoples Temple Cult [CAM has undertaken\u00a0previous\u00a0reporting\u00a0on the infamous 1978 Jonestown massacre and explored […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"parent":123916,"menu_order":6,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-123504","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/123504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=123504"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/123504\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":129557,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/123504\/revisions\/129557"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/123916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=123504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}