By the late spring of 1978, most of the events that culminated in Jonestown on November 18 had already been set in motion. The Concerned Relatives were actively pursuing ways to repatriate their family members; Jonestown had suffered several significant defections, including that of Debbie Blakey; and several government agencies in the U.S. \u2013 some in response to lobbying efforts by Temple critics \u2013 were conducting investigations of the Jonestown community.<\/p>\n
The American presence on the ground in Guyana was the Embassy in Georgetown. Its officials had provided consular services for the American immigrants to the country, it was aware of \u2013 if not directly involved in \u2013 contacts between Jonestown residents and officials from the Guyana government, and it had been informed of some of the problems which were alleged to be emerging from the isolated community.<\/p>\n
In early June 1978, likely in response to a query from Washington, the Embassy gave a\u00a0 straightforward description of Jonestown to the State Department in Log 126. The State Department replied with Log 130, which is written in similarly neutral language.<\/p>\n
Following the deaths in Jonestown, critics of the government\u2019s relationship with the Temple pointed to these two logs as indicative of the Embassy\u2019s refusal to seriously consider \u2013 much less act upon \u2013 the charges that had been lodged from a multitude of sources against the Temple. State responded that it had carried out its statutory obligations, and that both the Freedom of Information Act and Privacy Act precluded further or more aggressive actions.<\/p>\n
The Embassy\u2019s response was the subject of much of the Crimmins Report<\/a> on the State Department\u2019s handling of Peoples Temple in Guyana. The two logs were the only documents appended as a supplement to the 782-document that the Staff Investigative Group submitted to the House Foreign Affairs Committee in May 1979. Finally, these logs \u2013 as part of the Embassy and State Department\u2019s handling of Jonestown \u2013 were the subject of a two-day congressional hearing in 1980. A discussion of the various congressional hearings may be found here<\/a>.<\/p>\n Logs No. 126 & 130<\/b>, The Death Of Representative Leo J. Ryan, People\u2019s Temple, And Jonestown: Understanding A Tragedy<\/i>, Appendix 1 & 2, pp. 60-62. Array<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"parent":13225,"menu_order":40,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-13103","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/13103","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\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13103"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/13103\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":126932,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/13103\/revisions\/126932"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/13225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nPDF<\/a><\/span>
\nText of Log No. 126<\/a><\/span>
\nText of Log No. 130<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"