{"id":137983,"date":"2026-06-12T11:51:49","date_gmt":"2026-06-12T18:51:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=137983"},"modified":"2026-06-12T15:19:22","modified_gmt":"2026-06-12T22:19:22","slug":"light-vs-dark-republic-vs-empire","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=137983","title":{"rendered":"Light vs. Dark, Republic vs. Empire"},"content":{"rendered":"

[<\/em>Editor\u2019s note<\/em><\/strong>: This is the first of three articles by Mark Rathbun exploring the connections between the CIA, Rep. Leo Ryan and Jonestown. This is an abridgement of Mr. Rathbun\u2019s original article, which appears <\/em>here<\/em><\/a>. It is republished with permission.<\/em><\/p>\n

[The other two articles in this series are The Jonestown Massacre and the Assassination of Leo J. Ryan<\/a> and Jonestown Aftermath \u2013 The\u00a0Cover-Up<\/a>.]<\/em><\/p>\n

Mr. Ryan Goes to Washington<\/strong><\/p>\n

Leo Ryan began his public service career as a WWII naval veteran Ryan, after which he was a High School English and Math teacher in South San Fransico, also serving as a city council member. In 1961 he chaperoned his school\u2019s marching band to Washington D.C. for John F. Kennedy\u2019s inaugural parade. He said that the experience inspired him to run for higher office.\u00a0In the sixties he served as a California state assemblyman and in the seventies as U.S. Representative for the 11th\u00a0US Congressional district covering the San Francisco Peninsula. Ryan became a sort of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington<\/a> figure, a regular Joe with little tolerance for corruption. He was a hands-on investigator. He once posed as a prisoner and lived for weeks under cover in general population in the California prison system in order to see the conditions for himself. He also doggedly pursued investigations and reforms of the U.S. intelligence apparatus, which by the time he arrived in Congress was giving the United States a huge international black eye.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, Ryan became the greatest threat to the unlawful and immoral, yet routine, CIA clandestine operations. From his position on the House Foreign Affairs Committee (and its CIA subcommittee), he co-authored legislation with Senator Harold Hughes (D-Iowa) that did more to reign in the rogue CIA than any other act of Congress. The purpose was to a) prevent the CIA from continuing unlawful domestic operations in violation of its charter and b) prevent the CIA from running its own rogue foreign policy hit squad as it had done for forty years, seriously damaging the United States\u2019 image and global moral authority. The Hughes-Ryan Amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act of 1974 required the CIA to clear covert operations with the President of the United States beforehand and inform Congress of the fact of such approvals in a timely manner. Thereafter, Ryan continued to police the enforcement of the Act through close scrutiny of the CIA.<\/p>\n

CIA hunts the Policeman<\/strong><\/p>\n

Throughout the seventies the CIA was closely monitoring Ryan\u2019s efforts to increase control over the unruly agency. For example, its 27 June 1975 briefing to the DCI (Director of Central Intelligence) notes the tracking of \u201cH.R. 8203 (Edgar and about 10 others,\u00a0including Leo Ryan) Designates Majority and Minority Leaders of each house of Congress as members of the National Security Council.\u201d Another measure to tighten oversight of the CIA by ten members of Congress, and the CIA only saw fit to mention one name, that of Ryan. (see,\u00a0CIA Monitors Ryan<\/a>)<\/p>\n

While President Carter was quickly brought to bay by the CIA, Ryan was not so easily contained. By January 1976 his watchdogging had incurred the wrath of both the Director of the CIA William Colby and the President of the United States (and Warren Commission member) Gerald Ford. According to New York Times investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, Ford was upset that reports of the CIA\u2019s meddling in Italian elections were published. Apparently, he was all for election interference in democratic western nations, it was the disclosure of the skullduggery that had him alarmed. Ryan was quoted \u201cThe passage of my amendment (Hughes-Ryan) was supposed to open things up. Somehow the assumption was that if the CIA has to tell more people, things will change. Well, they didn\u2019t. What we don\u2019t have is some form of approval and disapproval.\u201d Hersch wrote, \u201c[Ryan] said that he was disturbed by the fact that he and his colleagues learned of the CIA programs only after they had been formally approved by the President and put into effect.\u201d\u00a0 (New York Times,\u00a0CIA Aid Reports Evoke Ford Anger<\/a>, January 7, 1976).<\/p>\n

The Washington Star reported, \u201cComplaining bitterly about secrets that were exposed as a result of congressional briefings, CIA Director William E. Colby today urged Congress to sharply reduce the number of lawmakers entitled to know what intelligence agencies are doing\u2026BUT COLBY reserved most of his criticism for the House Intelligence Committee and for Rep. Leo Ryan, D-Calif., a member of the CIA subcommittee of the House International Relations Committee.\u201d In the same breath as fingering Leo Ryan for shining light on the CIA, the Director was most alarmed by Congress shining that light on the author and director of the CIA\u2019s most notorious decades-long crime against America, the MK Ultra Mind Control program.<\/p>\n

Ryan\u2019s concerns were further articulated and reported that same month. \u201c\u2018I know there are three other CIA operations going on,\u2019 Rep. Leo J. Ryan, D-Calif., told a news conference. \u2018I am aware of CIA activities around the world to which I have strong objection,\u2019 said Ryan, a member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence. \u2018I know about them, but you do not, I will not mention them because they are secret.\u2019 But Ryan attacked Ford\u2019s \u2018national security\u2019 reasons for keeping the two reports secret. \u2018I think they endanger our national reputation rather than security,\u2019 he said.\u201d We all know how that \u2018national security justifies government secrecy\u2019 debate went. Sadly, Leo J. Ryan was the last elected official in America who literally risked his life in favor of maintaining an open, democratic society \u2013 which is why we have the opposite today instead. (See,\u00a0Ryan \u2013 United Press International<\/a>).<\/p>\n

By early 1977, the CIA was actively working to combat reforms authored and policed by Ryan.\u00a0 In its April 27, 1977 \u201cAction Plan on congressional oversight\u201d, the CIA legislative affairs office notes, \u201cthe Hughes-Ryan Amendment would have to be repealed or amended.\u201d (see,\u00a0CIA Action Plan<\/a>)<\/p>\n

The Clash of the Titans<\/strong><\/p>\n

By late 1978 when Director of Central Intelligence Frank Carlucci was handed the keys to reinstate the military-industrial-intelligence complex (MIIC) total autocratic control, only one person stood in his way. At that moment, Leo J. Ryan was the greatest threat to unlawful and immoral, yet routine, CIA clandestine operating basis. He would represent the last hope for significant and lasting reforms to the rogue agency.<\/p>\n

In late August 1978 Ryan visited Patricia Hearst at the Pleasanton, California Federal prison.\u00a0 He reported to the press that he believed the prison population was growing hostile toward Hearst.\u00a0 (see,\u00a0SF Gate Ryan visits Hearst<\/a>) It might have been there that Ryan learned first-hand about the strange origins of Donald \u201cCinque\u201d DeFreeze, the apparent MK Ultra Manchurian candidate (see\u00a0CIA and SLA Cult Part II<\/a>). So moved was Ryan by whatever he learned from and about Ms. Hearst and her erstwhile SLA cult leader, that he \u2013 along with California Senator S.I. Hayakawa \u2013 personally delivered a petition to the White House to have Hearst\u2019s sentence commuted.<\/p>\n

Exactly two days later brings us back to\u00a0Ryan\u2019s September 27, 1978 letter<\/a>\u00a0to the CIA Director demanding answers as to the CIA\u2019s possible creation of an MK Ultra Manchurian candidate in Donald Defreeze. Note that Ryan is so confident there is fire behind the smoke he gives the Director an out from the specter of more embarrassing CIA scandal headlines: \u201cIn the event your investigation produces an affirmative response, I would appreciate a personal conversation with you about the matter before anything is done with the information.\u201d This has led to speculation that Ryan intended to allow the explosive facts concerning CIA MK Ultra training and experimenting at Vacaville to remain a secret, provided DCI Turner could arrange for its ultimate victim \u2013 Patty Hearst \u2013 to be freed.\u00a0 The tone of the letter makes it sound as if the former naval officer Ryan had a friendly relationship with Admiral Turner.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, by then Turner had been stripped of control over \u201cday to day operations\u201d of the CIA. We can now divine the significance of the reform-minded DCI Turner being elbowed out of the picture by dark ops master D\/DCI Frank Carlucci. On October 18, 1978 Carlucci issued a lawyerly non-denial denial to Ryan: \u201cThank you for your letter of 27 September to Admiral Turner requesting confirmation or denial of the fact of CIA experiments using prisoners at the California medical facility at Vacaville.\u00a0It is true that CIA-sponsored testing, using volunteer inmates, was conducted at that facility<\/em>.<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>The project was completed in 1968. Your letter referred to Donald DeFreese, known as CINQUE, and Clifford Jefferson, both of whom were inmates at Vacaville. In so far as our records reflect the names of the participants, there is nothing to indicate that either was in any way involved in the project\u201d (emphasis added). As noted in my earlier blogpost\u00a0CIA and SLA Cult Part II<\/a>, \u201cas far as our records reflect\u201d was meaningless in the light of the CIA\u2019s proven record of mass destruction of incriminating records. The last thing Ryan could be expected to do in light of Carlucci\u2019s slippery response, would be to put the matter to rest. Unfortunately, there is no record of how Ryan responded to Carlucci\u2019s obstruction. The entire matter was about to be forgotten because of the scandal that would eclipse both the Manson and Hearst affairs and every other media shock of the seventies.<\/p>\n

Jim Jones and Peoples Temple<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ryan\u2019s district also happened to contain the largest number of loud defectors from the infamous Bay Area Peoples Temple cult of Jim Jones.\u00a0Years earlier the controversy surrounding the Temple had become so deafening that Jones and his several hundred followers had set up a compound called Jonestown in the remote jungle of Northwest Guyana.<\/p>\n

Throughout 1978 Ryan\u2019s constituents had been demanding that the U.S. government do something about reports that Jones was running strange mind control operations against his several hundred, mainly African-American, followers.\u00a0Detailed sworn accounts told of large caches of weapons maintained to keep members imprisoned, dispensation of large amounts of psychiatric drugs, and regular instructions from Jones that he and his followers needed to prepare to commit suicide when the government ultimately swept down upon them.<\/p>\n

The State Department and its embassy were unnaturally nonchalant about the matter.\u00a0Two screaming oddities about the embassy were thoroughly overlooked by the federal government, Congress, and the media when Jonestown ultimately imploded and became the biggest cult scare in world history.\u00a0First, the US Embassy in Guyana was primarily a CIA controlled operation. That is because in the sixties when Guyana was swinging to the left politically, the CIA swooped in with its patented regime change ops and helped install a tin pot dictator, Forbes Burham. The CIA\u2019s continuing presence throughout the seventies was required as Burnham\u2019s popularity was so dismal it took election meddling and propaganda operations to keep him in power. Why Guyana was so important was made crystal clear earlier this year when a US \u201cspecial military operation\u201d kidnapped the elected President of its neighbor Venezuela. Why?\u00a0Venezuela is the most mineral rich country in the world.\u00a0Guyana was also the world\u2019s greatest exporter of aluminum bauxite \u2013 the raw ore used to produce aluminum.<\/p>\n

The second strange fact about the CIA-controlled US Embassy in Guyana was that it was suspiciously friendly with Jim Jones.\u00a0 Reports of Jones\u2019 abuses were becoming more alarming and frequent throughout 1978 by first-hand witnesses who had managed to escape Jonestown. Yet, every \u201cinspection\u201d of Jonestown by embassy personnel to verify the claims were always preceded by ample warning to Jones directly from the embassy.\u00a0Predictably, the embassy never found anything to act upon.\u00a0The U.S. government reports were effectively gaslighting Jonestown victims.<\/p>\n

Leo J. Ryan decided that for whatever reasons the State Department and CIA were going to protect Jim Jones and Jonestown over the rights and concerns of his constituents. On November 14,1978 while Ryan was contemplating his next step to get around the obstruction of D\/DCI Frank Carlucci concerning Patty Hearst and Donald DeFreeze, he boarded a flight out of Washington D.C. to Guyana.\u00a0It was an attempt to do what the CIA and State Department refused to do, to save underprivileged, minority Peoples Temple members from the clutches of a suicide-bound mind control experiment.<\/p>\n

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[Editor\u2019s note: This is the first of three articles by Mark Rathbun exploring the connections between the CIA, Rep. Leo Ryan and Jonestown. This is an abridgement of Mr. Rathbun\u2019s original article, which appears here. It is republished with permission. [The other two articles in this series are The Jonestown Massacre and the Assassination of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":137999,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-137983","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/137983","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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=137983"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/137983\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":138004,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/137983\/revisions\/138004"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/137999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=137983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}