{"id":13930,"date":"2013-02-17T21:50:43","date_gmt":"2013-02-17T21:50:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alternativejonestown.com\/?page_id=13930"},"modified":"2024-04-24T10:32:54","modified_gmt":"2024-04-24T17:32:54","slug":"ryanfactsheet","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=13930","title":{"rendered":"Fact Sheet on Leo Ryan"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Nota del editor<\/strong>: una traducci\u00f3n al espa\u00f1ol de hoja informativa se encuentra aqui<\/a>.)<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

From the moment Peoples Temple learned that Rep. Leo Ryan was planning to come to Guyana, with press and relatives in tow, the leadership was divided as to how the congressional party should be received: should they try to block his entrance altogether; should they allow the congressman and his staff in, but keep everyone else out; or \u2013 the view that ultimately prevailed \u2013 should the people of Jonestown demonstrate they had nothing to hide and let in everyone.<\/p>\n

The debate went on for two weeks, and did not end until November 17, with Ryan and most of his party on the ground at the Port Kaituma airstrip. Along the way, the community had held meetings, passed resolutions and signed petitions against the visit.<\/p>\n

Part of the Temple\u2019s problem was they did not really know who Ryan was. A three-term congressman \u2013 he won his race for re-election to a fourth term during the few weeks between his decision to go to Jonestown and his death there \u2013 representing a district on the Peninsula below San Francisco, he was best known for the Hughes-Ryan Act designed to rein in the CIA\u2019s covert activities. He had constituents who had emigrated in Jonestown,\u00a0 but his interest in the Temple might not have been sparked if his friend Sam Houston \u2013 the father of Temple member Bob Houston, who died in a railway yard two years earlier \u2013 hadn\u2019t asked the congressman to look into the group.<\/p>\n

To assist the leadership in Jonestown formulate a response to the impending visit, an anonymous Temple worker \u2013 likely someone in San Francisco \u2013 put together a fact sheet on Leo Ryan. It describes the congressman as a liberal in a \u201cgenerally Republican district\u201d that voted for Gerald Ford by a 53-47 margin in 1976. Ryan\u2019s voting record, \u201cwith only a few exceptions, is straight liberal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite all the positions that Jim Jones would have found himself in agreement with Ryan \u2013 for cuts in defense spending, for cuts in military aid to South Korea, for a ban on chrome imports from Rhodesia \u2013 the congressman had two blemishes: \u201cHe voted for military aid to [Chilean dictator Augusto] Pinochet, and was against opening up the House assassination investigations (King and JFK assassinations).\u201d And it was the blemishes that Jones focused on.<\/p>\n

In a November 7 announcement<\/a> to the community regarding Ryan, Jones said, \u201cWe may have the invasion, not with guns, but with hostile racists, one hostile racist congressmen that voted for Pinochet who cruelly killed the president of Chile [Salvador Allende] and represents all<\/em> anti-black feeling.\u201d During a reading of the news on November 10<\/a>, he described Ryan as someone \u201cwho has voted sharply in racist terms and fascist terms, who is a supporter of Pinochet of Chile.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fact Sheet on Leo Ryan<\/strong>, RYMUR 89-4286-E-3-A-2 (10)
\nPDF<\/a><\/span>
\nText<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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