What follows is an interim report about Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple. In so far as it has a central thesis, it is that the “mass-suicide” that took place at Jonestown in 1978 was, in reality, a massacre. It seems to me that this much can be proven by reference to the medical evidence\u2014particularly the evidence collected by the Guyanese pathologist, Dr. Leslie Mootoo.<\/p>\n
The importance of this conclusion should be obvious. To suggest that hundreds of members of the Peoples Temple murdered their children and killed themselves is, in this writer\u2019s view, a blood libel on those who died there. Indeed, it seems comparable to contending that because Jews worked in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany, and walked to their deaths in gas-chambers, they, too, committed “suicide.”<\/p>\n
A second argument put forward in these pages is that Jones instigated the massacre because he feared that Congressman Leo Ryan\u2019s investigation would disgrace him. Specifically, Jones appears to have been terrified that Ryan and the press would uncover information that the leftist founder of the Peoples Temple was for many years a witting stooge, or agent, of the FBI and the CIA. This concern was, I believe, mirrored in various precincts of the U.S. intelligence community, where it was feared that Ryan\u2019s investigation would embarrass the CIA by linking Jones to some of the Agency\u2019s most volatile programs and operations.<\/p>\n
This may be why the cult-leader\u2019s 201-file was purged by the CIA immediately after Jones\u2019s friend, and suspected case-officer, Dan Mitrione, died.[1] <\/span><\/sup><\/a> And it may also be why Congressman Ryan’s contingent was escorted to Jonestown by the CIA’s undercover chief-of-station in Guyana, Richard Dwyer.[2]<\/span><\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n What I believe and what I can prove are, in some instances, two different things. There is no smoking gun in the pages that follow. But I think the reader will agree that there are certainly a great many empty cartridges lying about\u2014enough, perhaps, to stimulate further investigation by others.<\/p>\n That said, it must also be said that I am hardly the first to suggest that the Jonestown massacre was the outcome of someone\u2019s secret machinations. The affair is inherently mysterious, and conspiracy theories abound\u2014the most prominent among them that “Jonestown” was a CIA mind-control experiment.<\/p>\n The view has been put forward in a number of venues. Congressman Ryan\u2019s close friend and chief-of-staff, Joe Holsinger, is persuaded of it. The Edwin Mellen Press has even published a book on the subject, answering its titular question \u2014 Was Jonestown a CIA Medical Experiment?<\/em> \u2014 in the affirmative.[3]<\/span><\/sup><\/a> By no means, finally, there is the work of well-intentioned conspiracists such as John Judge, one of the first writers to approach the story with as much skepticism as horror.<\/p>\n I.1 RYAN AND THE NUMBERS<\/strong><\/p>\n In the Fall of 1978, with Thanksgiving less than two weeks away, Congressman Leo Ryan (D-CA) flew to Georgetown, Guyana accompanied by a contingent of “concerned relatives” and members of the press. The purpose of the trip was at once simple and difficult: to determine whether or not American citizens were being abused or held against their will at the Peoples Temple agricultural settlement in Jonestown.<\/p>\n Reports to that effect had been received from a number of sources, including former members of the Temple, their relatives and the press. Whether those reports should be believed was a separate matter. An American-based political organization that used the trappings of religion to attract members and avoid taxes, the Temple was a controversial institution\u2014a personality cult that put itself forward as a vehicle of “apostolic socialism.” Though its membership was predominantly black, the group was run by a white matriarchy that was, in turn, under the spell of a Bible-hating, charismatic sadist named Jim Jones.[4]<\/span><\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n Escorted by Richard Dwyer, Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy, Congressman Ryan and a part of his contingent visited the remote commune on the afternoon of November 17, a Friday.<\/p>\n Though the visit was an unwelcome one, and filled with tension, Temple attorneys Charles Garry and Mark Lane arranged for the delegation to be given a tour of the settlement, food and a place to sleep. Accordingly, members of the Ryan party met with the Temple\u2019s leader, Jim Jones, and spoke with many of the organization\u2019s rank-and-file. Speeches and entertainment went on until late at night.<\/p>\n By Saturday afternoon, November 18, though Ryan himself had spoken favorably about several aspects of the settlement, a number of “defectors” had declared themselves, saying that they wanted to leave. It was then, as the congressman and his company were preparing to depart, that Ryan was suddenly, freakishly, attacked by a knife-wielding man. Though the scuffle was quickly broken up, and Ryan uninjured, the provocation put an end to the uneasy truce that both sides had cultivated.[5] <\/span><\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n Driven to the airstrip at Port Kaituma, where two small planes waited for them, Ryan and his party were ambushed as they prepared to embark. When the shooting ended, five people, including the congressman, lay dead on the tarmac. Nearby, and in the surrounding jungle, survivors of the delegation, having fled from the shooting, hid from sight, tending each other\u2019s wounds. Meanwhile, as the death-squad returned to Jonestown, one of the small planes, its engine damaged, took off for Georgetown, transporting both flight crews and all the bad news it could carry.<\/p>\n As night fell, both the wounded and the well concealed themselves in a rum shop at Port Kaituma, awaiting evacuation in the morning. Meanwhile, some five miles away, and unknown to anyone in Port Kaituma, a holocaust was unfolding in Jonestown.<\/p>\n Guyanese defense forces arrived at the airstrip shortly after dawn that Sunday morning. Securing the runway, the troops turned toward Jonestown, marching down the long, rough road to the commune. Arriving there at mid-morning, they were horrified to find a field of cadavers: men, women and children lying in an arc around the settlement\u2019s central pavilion.<\/p>\n Some two-hundred bodies were quickly counted, but the numbers of dead continued to climb throughout the days that followed. Revisions to the toll were continual, and sickening: 363, 405, 775, 800, 869, 910, 912, 918\u2026 To newspaper readers and watchers of the evening news, it seemed almost as if the slaughter was on-going, rather than a fait accompli.<\/p>\n Amid the confusion and horror, the escalating body-count provoked suspicions, though explanations abounded. It was said, for example, that the count was consistently low because the bodies of children lay unseen beneath the corpses of adults. Skeptics, however, pointed out that some of the earliest reports listed 82 children among 363 dead.[6]<\/span><\/sup><\/a> Baltimore Sun<\/em>, November 21, 1978. A subsequent report, by the Associated Press on November 25, listed 180 children among 775 cadavers. The final count, recorded by the Miami Herald<\/em> on December 17, reported that 260 children were among the dead. It seemed fair to say, therefore, that the children\u2019s presence was known from the beginning, and ought to have been taken into account. Moreover, even if the dead had been counted from the air, and even if one assumed that all of the children had been hidden from sight\u2014which, as photos attest, was not the case\u2014the body-count ought to have been more than 600 from the very first day.<\/p>\n But it wasn\u2019t. Of course, conditions were primitive, and the circumstances ghastly. Mistakes were inevitable. Nevertheless, 789 American passports had been found at Jonestown within a few hours of the troops\u2019 arrival.[7]<\/span><\/sup><\/a>This discovery, coupled with the low body-count, had somehow caused those at the scene to believe that hundreds of “cultists” were “missing.” Indeed, it was to find these supposedly missing Templars that military search-parties were sent by foot, plane and helicopter to comb the surrounding area.<\/p>\n And meanwhile, incredibly<\/em>, the dead lay in plain sight\u2014nearly a thousand of them in an area the size of a football field.<\/p>\n It was a almost a week, then, before the body-count stabilized at 918 and, when it did, skeptics wondered how it was possible that 363 bodies had concealed 550\u2014particularly when 82 of the 363 were said to have been small children.<\/p>\n Even mathematically, and from its inception, “Jonestown” did not make sense. Something was wrong with the reports from the very first day.<\/p>\n I.2 THE CAUSE AND MANNER OF DEATH<\/strong><\/p>\n More than 900 men, women and children were suddenly, violently dead under circumstances that, even at this late date, remain mind-boggling. The mounting body-count, as well as the subsequent handling of the bodies, threatened to make conspiracy-theorists of even the most gullible.<\/p>\n It was alleged, of course, in newspapers and instant-books,[8] <\/span><\/sup><\/a> that upwards of a thousand brainwashed religious fanatics committed suicide in the jungle because their leader, Jim Jones, told them to. One by one, they\u2019d come forward without protest to drink cyanide-laced “Kool-Aid” from a vat.[9] <\/span><\/sup><\/a>It was as simple as that. Jonestown was proof-positive of the effectiveness of brainwashing, and of the dangers inherent in the new religions.<\/p>\n As it happened, however, this was only a theory and, as it turned out, an inaccurate one. Viz.:<\/p>\n Seven months after the massacre, the New England Journal of Medicine<\/em> commented on the handling of the bodies at Jonestown.[10] <\/span><\/sup><\/a> Citing the criticisms of forensic experts and organizations,[11] <\/span><\/sup><\/a> the Journal<\/em> noted that:<\/p>\n only one-third of the bodies at Jonestown had been positively identified more than six months after the massacre;<\/p>\n no death certificates had been obtained on any of those who\u2019d died in Guyana;<\/p>\n a medicolegal autopsy ought to have been performed on every body to establish the cause and manner of death in each case.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n In fact, however, only seven autopsies were carried out among the 918 victims\u2014an appalling figure. (As one forensic expert, Dr. Cyril Wecht, remarked: every American who dies under suspicious circumstances has a right<\/em> to an autopsy.) Even then, the autopsies that were<\/em> carried out were hardly conclusive: all of the bodies had been embalmed in Guyana, using a procedure that “ripped up” the internal organs, almost a month before<\/em> the autopsies were conducted.[12] <\/span><\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n This was unfortunate, to say the least.[13] <\/span><\/sup><\/a> Indeed, six leading medical examiners described the handling of the bodies (by the military and others) as “inept,” “incompetent” “embarrassing,” and a case of “doing it backwards.”[14] <\/span><\/sup><\/a> Dr. Rudiger Breitenecker, who assisted at the seven autopsies, agreed. There had been “a series of errors,” he said. “We shuddered about the degree of ineptness.”[15] <\/span><\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n Despite the difficulties, “probable cyanide poisoning” was listed as the cause of death in five of the seven autopsy reports\u2014though, as it happened, only one<\/em> of the five bodies, that of Maria Katsaris, showed any traces of cyanide (“although carefully searched for\u2026”).[16] <\/span><\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n Still, the suspicion of cyanide poisoning in the absence of cyanide itself is not as strange as it may at first seem. As one of the examining physicians pointed out, cyanide is unstable in “the postmortem interval.” Perhaps, then, it broke down in the victims\u2019 tissues. In any case, the “relevant body fluids” may have been contaminated by the embalming process itself or, in the course of that procedure, the fluids may have been diluted or discarded. The fact that Diphenhydramine was found in the stomachs of several victims and in the “poison-vat” as well, suggested that the victims had drunk from the vat\u2019s contents. That the contents of the vat included cyanide could not, however, be proven from an examination of the vat itself\u2014which, upon study, betrayed no traces of the poison.[17] <\/span><\/sup><\/a> (The explanation was offered that the vat had an acid pH at which cyanide is unstable. The assumption, then, was that the poison broke down in the days after the massacre.)<\/p>\n “Probable cyanide poisoning” was, therefore, a conclusion based upon circumstantial evidence: i.e., reports, including press reports, from the scene. These accounts noted the presence of cyanide salts in the inventory of Jonestown\u2019s medical dispensary; and, also, the discovery of cyanide in syringes and bottles in the area around the pavilion. Finally, there was the account of Dr. Leslie Mootoo, chief medical examiner and senior bacteriologist for Guyana, who examined scores of bodies within a day or two of the disaster. According to Dr. Mootoo, who labored long and hard, taking specimens and samples from many of the dead, cyanide was present in the stomachs of most of those whom he examined. Unfortunately, evidence of his findings disappeared soon after it was collected. According to Dr. Mootoo, his specimens and samples were given to “a representative of the American Embassy in Georgetown, expecting that they would be forwarded to American forensic pathologists.” They weren\u2019t. No one knows what happened to them.<\/p>\n Of the two remaining bodies that were autopsied, Jim Jones was found to have been killed by a gunshot wound to the head. As for Temple member Ann Moore, her death was attributed to two<\/em> causes because it was impossible to say which came first. She had been shot in the head; and, unlike the others, a massive quantity of cyanide was found in her body\u2019s tissues. (Why the poison should have broken down in the bodies of the other victims, but not in the body of Ann Moore, is unknown.)<\/p>\n All in all, physicians were able to determine the cause of death in only two of the more than 900 cases\u2014though Dr. Mootoo\u2019s field-work lent considerable weight to the conclusion that most had died of cyanide-poisoning.<\/p>\n As for the manner<\/em> of death, whether suicide or homicide, the best evidence was again Dr. Mootoo\u2019s. The Guyanese physician, trained in London and Vienna, concluded that more than 700 of the victims had been murdered<\/em>. This conclusion was based on several observations. In the case of the 260 children, for example, they could hardly be held responsible for their own deaths. They\u2019d been killed by others. As for the adults, Dr. Mootoo reported that 83 of the 100 bodies that he examined had needle-punctures on the backs of their shoulders \u2014 suggesting that they had been forcibly held down and injected against their will.[18] <\/span><\/sup><\/a> (A second possibility is that they may have given coup de grace<\/em> injections, perhaps after feigning death.) Moreover, Dr. Mootoo noted, syringes containing cyanide, but lacking needles, lay everywhere on the ground at Jonestown \u2014 a circumstance which led him to conclude that the syringes had been used to squirt poison into the mouths of those (children and others) who\u2019d refused to drink. Still others seem to have duped into thinking that they were taking tranquilizers: bottles containing potassium cyanide, but labelled “Valium,” were scattered on the ground around the pavilion.[19]<\/span><\/sup><\/a> Based upon this evidence, a conservative estimate would be that as many as 700, and possibly more, of Jonestown\u2019s victims were murdered.<\/p>\n No other conclusion seems reasonable.Once Dr. Mootoo\u2019s findings are accepted with respect to the cause<\/em> of death, cyanide poisoning, we have little choice than to accept his judgment upon the manner<\/em> in which the vast majority of the victims died. As the only physician to gather evidence at the scene and to examine the dead where they lay, Dr. Mootoo based his findings upon the best (and, sometimes, the only) evidence that was available.<\/p>\n An eye-witness account would help to answer many of the lingering questions, but none would appear to be forthcoming. Those who survived the massacre \u2014 Charles Garry, Mark Lane, the Carter brothers, Michael Prokes, Odell Rhodes and others \u2014 did so because they fled the scene.[20]<\/span><\/sup><\/a> The only exceptions to this were an elderly woman named Hyacinth Thrash, who slept through the massacre and remembered nothing of it; a man named Stanley Clayton, who hid through the night in a tree;[21]<\/span><\/sup><\/a> and a third person whose identity will be discussed subsequently.<\/p>\n Just as the cause and manner of death were to be obscured by the decision to embalm the corpses before they could be autopsied, identities of those who died were also encrypted. Why this was so is a mystery in its own right.<\/p>\n “Lots of people had identification tags on their wrists, usually their right one,” said Frank Johnston, an American magazine photographer who toured the commune shortly after the massacre.[22]<\/span><\/sup><\/a> Some of these tags were hand-made, apparently by the communards themselves, while others were issued by the medical clinic at Jonestown. Still other victims had been identified on the ground by Ms. Thrush and others who\u2019d known them. These bodies had then been tagged by the military. Relatives of the dead, including Stanley Clayton, saw the tags. So did anyone who glanced at the Newsweek<\/em> cover to the issue in which the massacre was reported.<\/p>\n Inexplicably, however, the wrist-identification bracelets and tags were removed<\/em> prior to the bodies\u2019 return to the United States.<\/p>\n In a real sense, therefore, the bodies were dis<\/em>-identified, though no one is able to say why. According to Newsweek<\/em>, however, the order to remove the tags was issued by Robert Pastor, the National Security Council\u2019s staff coordinator for Latin American and Caribbean affairs. Asked about this, Pastor denies that he gave such an order, adding that it would have been senseless for him to have done so. He\u2019s right, of course, but the mystery remains: why were the tags removed?<\/p>\n A great deal more could be said about the mishandling of the bodies. It may be enough, though, to call attention to news reports published as recently as last year. According to UPI and the Los Angeles Times<\/i>, three of the Jonestown dead were discovered in January, 1986<\/i> stacked in caskets inside a Storage-R-Us facility in Southern California.[23]<\/span><\/sup><\/a> They’d been forgotten, and were still awaiting burial.<\/p>\n I.3 THE NOIWON ALERT<\/strong><\/p>\n As Dr. Mootoo\u2019s best evidence established, most of the people at Jonestown were murdered. How is it, then, that Jonestown has become synonymous with “mass suicide”? An “After Action Report” of the Joint Chiefs of Staff helps to establish the chronology of the myth.<\/p>\n According to the Pentagon, which took responsibility for transporting the dead back to the United States, the National Military Command Center (NMCC) was first notified of a disaster in Guyana at 7:18 P.M. on Saturday, November 18.[24]<\/span><\/sup><\/a> This information, apparently based upon the reports brought back from Port Kaituma by the escaping small plane, was that Congressman Ryan had been shot at the jungle airstrip.<\/p>\n At 8:15 P.M., a Department of Defense MEDEVAC was requested by the State Department. Its mission: to evacuate the wounded from Port Kaituma, and to return the bodies of those who had been killed at the airstrip.[25]<\/span><\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n At 8:49 P.M., the State department relayed a request from the Prime Minister of Guyana, Forbes Burnham, asking that a pathologist accompany the MEDEVAC. Why Burnham should have requested a pathologist from the U.S. is, under the circumstances, a considerable mystery. The information available to him at that time would seem to have been restricted to the news that Congressman Ryan and others had been ambushed by small-arms fire. At the very least, therefore, it may be said that Burnham\u2019s request demonstrated remarkable prudence \u2014 if not prescience.<\/p>\n At 3:04 A.M. on November 19, the C-141 MEDEVAC left Charleston, N.C. for Guyana.<\/p>\n Twenty-five minutes later, at 3:29 A.M., the JCS chronology indicates that “CIA NOIWON reports mass suicides at Jonestown.”[26]<\/span><\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n All entries in the JCS chronology are Eastern Standard Time. In Guyana, however, it was one hour and fifteen minutes later than it was in Washington, D.C.\u2014which means that the CIA notified the Defense Department of the “mass suicides” at 4:44 A.M. (Guyana-time).<\/p>\n This is clearly one of the most important mysteries in the entire affair. How did the CIA know that anyone<\/em> was dead in Jonestown \u2014 let alone so many as to justify the notion of “mass suicides”? And how could it be so mistakenly certain of the manner<\/em> in which the dead had died: i.e., suicide as opposed to murder?<\/p>\n Obviously, the CIA somehow learned of the massacre in Guyana prior to 4:44 A.M. Which is to say, while it was still dark, and hours before Guyanese Defense Forces arrived at the commune.<\/p>\n How the Agency was able to do this is uncertain\u2014the matter remains classified nine years after the events. Satellite imagery is only the most remote possibility, given the darkness and the low-priority of Guyana as a surveillance site. Radio intercepts are a second, more likely, possibility; at present, however, it is unknown if there were transmissions from Jonestown that would have permitted an eavesdropper to report the occurrence of “mass suicides.” A third possibility, and the one that seems most likely, is the existence of a CIA officer or agent in Jonestown at the time of the massacre.<\/p>\n We\u2019ll return to this third possibility momentarily. Before we do so, however, it is worth quoting from the “narrative summary” of the JCS report:<\/p>\n At approximately 1800 that same evening (November 18), Reverend James Warren Jones, the founder and leader of the Peoples Temple cult, held a meeting of all members. He convinced them that they and their children would have to die. The members of the cult lined up and began receiving a poison drink. Guards were stationed around the compound to insure that no one left the camp\u2026”<\/em>[27]<\/span><\/sup><\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n While we do not know the extent to which the military\u2019s perspective was shaped by the press reports that followed, it may be assumed that the CIA\u2019s early notification, alleging mass suicides even before the bodies had been discovered by the Guyanese, must have affected the way in which the tragedy came to be seen and reported.<\/p>\n But how did<\/em> the CIA learn of the deaths? Who was its witness?<\/p>\n I.4 RICHARD DWYER<\/strong><\/p>\n Author’s note:<\/b> When this article was first written, suspicion fell on Richard Dwyer, the Deputy Chief of Mission, who accompanied Congressman Ryan to Jonestown and, fatefully, to the Port Kaituma airstrip. That suspicion is elaborated in the paragraphs that follow, but the reader should know that, in fact, the elaboration is mistaken in its central premise. While Dwyer was certainly a spook, his likely affiliation was with the State Department’s Intelligence & Research Bureau, rather than with the CIA – and that, moreover, it was not he, but the actual CIA chief of station in Georgetown, who was the first to notify Washington of the horror in Jonestown. (How Adkins learned of the murders and suicides, and got the word out, is discussed in my article, Jonestown and the NOIWON Alert<\/a>.) With that proviso, I leave my original text unchanged in the paragraphs that follow, so that the reader may be able to consider the persistent mysteries that surround Dwyer’s identity and whereabouts during the massacre.<\/span><\/p>\n Dwyer\u2019s background is that of a sheepdipped CIA officer whose State Department cover had long ago worn thin. After graduating from Princeton in 1957, he\u2019d gone to work at the State Department\u2019s Bureau of Intelligence and Research until February, 1959. In the years that followed, he was posted to Damascus (1960-63), Cairo (1963-66), Washington (1966-68), and Sofia, Bulgaria (1970-72).[28]<\/span><\/sup><\/a> After returning home in 1972, he was subsequently shifted to Chad until, in 1977, he was brought home again to become part of the State Department\u2019s Inspection Corps. In that role, he traveled throughout much of western South America: Bolivia, Peru, Chile and Ecuador. Finally, on April 14, 1978 he arrived in Georgetown, Guyana to take up his responsibilities as Deputy Chief of Mission.<\/p>\n That Dwyer was a deep-cover CIA officer is apparent. Dr. Julius Mader, an East German author with ties to the Stasi intelligence service, alleged as much in a book that he\u2019d written ten years prior to Jonestown: Who\u2019s Who in the CIA<\/em>. Joseph Holsinger, Leo Ryan\u2019s best friend and chief of staff, echoes the charge, citing congressional sources. Not finally, the same allegation is made by the defense attorney for Larry Layton, recently convicted for his role in the assassination of Congressman Ryan.[29]<\/span><\/sup><\/a> Unfortunately, Justice Department attorneys (representing Dwyer) and the judge (who presided over the Layton case)[30]<\/span><\/sup><\/a> refused to let Layton\u2019s defense attorney question Dwyer about his work for the CIA.[31]<\/span><\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n The information that a CIA agent (or officer) was at the scene of the Port Kaituma ambush was given to Joe Holsinger by a Washington colleague whom Holsinger regards as an unimpeachable source. Despite the efforts of Layton\u2019s defense attorney, this evidence was not admitted in court. Nevertheless, it\u2019s clear that the CIA man was present at both<\/em> the ambush and<\/em> the massacre.<\/p>\n A tape-recording found at the scene of the massacre was transcribed by the FBI. This is the so-called “Last Tape” that Jones recorded while urging his followers to commit suicide.[32]<\/span><\/sup><\/a> Against a background of wailing and screams, one hears<\/p>\n JONES: “And what comes, folks, what comes now?”<\/p>\n UNMAN[33]<\/span><\/sup><\/a> [in background]: “Everybody\u2026hold it! Sit down right here\u2026” [loud background noises, agitated]<\/p>\n JONES: “Say peace, say peace, say peace, say peace\u2026what comes, don\u2019t let\u2026take Dwyer on down to the middle (?) of the East House. Take Dwyer on down.”<\/p>\n UNWOMAN: “Everybody be quiet, please!”<\/p>\n UNMAN: “Show you got some respect for our lives.”[34]<\/span><\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n UNMAN: “Let me sit down, sit down, sit down.”<\/p>\n JONES: “I know\u2026 (Jones begins to hum, or keen.) “I tried so very very hard\u2026 Get Dwyer out<\/em> of here before something happens to him.”<\/p>\n UNMAN: “Ujara?”<\/p>\n JONES: “I\u2019m not talking about Ujara, I said Dwyer<\/em>.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The Last Tape is anything but indistinct, and there would seem to be only one way of making sense out of it: that is to say, it means what it says. Jones is giving orders to his followers to protect “Dwyer” by taking him to East House (a part of the Jonestown encampment from which attorneys Charles Garry and Mark Lane had already escaped). There is no other “Dwyer” associated with the Peoples Temple, so it would seem fair to conclude that it was Richard Dwyer whom Jones intended to protect. Why Jones should have wanted to protect a CIA agent is an interesting and important question. So, too, it seems important to ask whether or not Dwyer\u2019s appointment to the Embassy post in Guyana was in any way connected to the presence of the Peoples Temple in that country. And, also, whether it was a coincidence that Congressman Ryan\u2019s tour-guide at Jonestown was, secretly, the CIA\u2019s Chief of Station in the country?<\/p>\n Here, however, we are concerned, not with Jones\u2019s motives and relationships, but with tracking down the origins of reports about the supposed “mass suicides.”<\/p>\n According to Richard Dwyer, he did not leave Port Kaituma that evening. On the contrary, he says, he tended the wounded throughout the night. If few people noticed his presence, as some have remarked, athen it must be because he was moving back and forth between the two locations at which the wounded were being kept.<\/p>\n “What reasons people may have had for saying these things, I don\u2019t know,” Dwyer has testified. “I was not present in the tavern, obviously, when I was at the tent. I wasn\u2019t present in the tent when I was in the tavern. But that\u2019s it.”[35]<\/span><\/sup><\/a> One would like to enlighten Dwyer about the reasons why people felt that he had left Port Kaituma that night but, unfortunately, the Last Tape was not admitted into evidence in the Layton trial\u2014which meant that no questions were asked about its contents.<\/p>\n We might speculate about the means<\/em> by which the CIA was notified of the supposed “mass suicides.” A burst-transmitter, concealed in an attache-case, has been suggested, but there is no way of knowing for certain if Dwyer carried such a device.<\/p>\n I.5 DR. SUKHDEO AND DR. HERSH<\/strong><\/p>\n The CIA\u2019s relationship to Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple, and therefore to the Jonestown massacre, is an important issue that will be discussed in subsequent pages.<\/p>\n Here, however, we are concerned with the initial reports of the massacre. And, in particular with those responsible for labeling the disaster a “mass suicide” \u2014 contrary to the evidence being gathered by Dr. Mootoo. And while the CIA report was undoubtedly a significant source of misinformation, an even more important source of spin was a psychiatrist named Dr. Hardat Sukhdeo.<\/p>\n Dr. Sukhdeo is, or was then, “an anti-cult activist” whose principal interests (as per an autobiographical note) are “homicide, suicide, and the behavior of animals in electro-magnetic fields.” His arrival in Georgetown on November 27, 1978 came only three weeks after he had been named as a defendant in a controversial “deprogramming” case.[36]<\/span><\/sup><\/a> It is not entirely surprising, then, that within hours of his arrival in the capital, Dr. Sukhdeo began giving interviews to the press, including the New York Times<\/em>, “explaining” what had happened.<\/p>\n Jim Jones, he said, “was a genius of mind control, a master. He knew exactly what he was doing. I have never seen anything like this\u2026but the jungle, the isolation, gave him absolute control.” Just what Dr. Sukhdeo had been able to see in his few minutes in Georgetown is unclear. But his importance in shaping the story is undoubted: he was one of the few civilian professionals at the scene, and his task was, quite simply, to help the press make sense of what had happened and to console those who had survived. He was widely quoted, and what he had to say was immediately echoed by colleagues back in the States.<\/p>\n That Sukhdeo\u2019s opinions were preconceived, rather than based upon evidence, seems obvious. Nevertheless, it is clear that he was aware of the work that Dr. Mootoo had done\u2014which, as we have seen, contradicted Sukhdeo\u2019s statements about “mass suicides.” In an interview with Time<\/em>, Sukhdeo refers to an “autopsy” that had been performed on Jim Jones in Guyana. This can only have been a reference to Dr. Mootoo\u2019s somewhat cursory examination, in which Jones was slit open on the ground. It is difficult to understand how Sukhdeo could have been aware of that procedure\u2019s having been conducted without also knowing of Mootoo\u2019s finding that most of the victims had been murdered.<\/p>\n Dr. Sukhdeo was himself a native of Guyana, though a resident of the United States. He claimed at the time that he\u2019d come to Georgetown at his own expense to counsel and study those who had survived. But that is in dispute.<\/p>\n According to his own attorney, Robert Bockelman, the psychiatrist retained him to prevent his having to testify at the Larry Layton trial in San Francisco. Dr. Sukhdeo\u2019s primary concern, according to Bockelman, was that it should not be revealed that the State Department had paid his way to Guyana. You see the problem: was Sukhdeo there to help the survivors\u2014or to debrief them on behalf of some other person or agency?[37]<\/span><\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n Nor was this all. Prior to retaining counsel in San Francisco, Dr. Sukhdeo had himself been retained by Larry Layton\u2019s defense attorneys and family. (Indeed, he testified in Layton\u2019s trial in Guyana, where “most of his testimony concerned cults in general and observations about conditions at Jonestown.”)[38]<\/span><\/sup><\/a> And, during the time that he was helping Layton\u2019s defense, Dr. Sukhdeo was meeting\u2014surreptitiously, according to his own lawyer\u2014with FBI agents. Asked about this, Sukhdeo says that at no time during these meetings did he disclose any confidential communicatins between himself and Layton.[39]<\/span><\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n The suggestion that Dr. Sukhdeo may have secretly “debriefed” Jonestown\u2019s survivors on behalf of the State Department (or some other government agency) may seem unduly suspicious. On the other hand, a certain amount of suspicion would seem to prudent when discussing the unsolved deaths of more than 900 Americans who, in the weeks before they died, were preparing to defect en masse<\/em> to the Soviet Union. The government\u2019s interest in this matter would logically have been intense.[40]<\/span><\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n It is true, of course, that not every psychiatrist agreed with Dr. Sukhdeo\u2019s analysis. Dr. Stephen P. Hersh, then assistant director of the National Institutes of Mental Health (NIMH), commented that “The charges of brainwashing are clearly exaggerated. The concept of \u2018thought control\u2019 by cult leaders is elusive, difficult to define and even more difficult to prove. Because cult converts adopt beliefs that seem bizarre to their families and friends, it does not follow that their choices are being dictated by cult leaders.”<\/p>\n The massacre, according to Dr. Hersh, was “an isolated thing” and “not something the public should fear from other” groups. “We have no information that\u2026(the new religions)\u2026are vulnerable to this type of extreme behavior,” Dr. Hersh said.[41]<\/span><\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n That said, there is more at stake here than public perceptions. Investigators of the Guyana tragedy have a responsibility to both the living and the dead: to find out what actually happened, and to make certain that it cannot happen again.<\/p>\n II. 1 THE DOG THAT DIDN’T BARK<\/strong><\/p>\n To understand the fate of the Peoples Temple, one must first understand why the intelligence community seemed (against all odds) to ignore the organization for so long\u2014appearing to become interested in it only when Congressman Ryan began his investigation. Consider:<\/p>\n The Peoples Temple was created in the political deep-freeze of the 1950s. From its inception, it was a leftwing ally of black activist groups that were, in many cases, under FBI surveillance.[42]<\/span><\/sup><\/a> During the 1960s, when the Bureau and the CIA mounted Operations COINTELPRO and CHAOS to infiltrate and disrupt black militant organizations and the Left, the Temple went out of its way to forge alliances with leaders of those same organizations: e.g., with the Black Panthers\u2019 Huey Newton and with the Communist Party\u2019s Angela Davis. And yet, despite these associations, and its ultra-left orientation, we are told that the Temple was not a target of investigation by either intelligence agency.<\/p>\n In the early 1970s, suspicions began to surface in the press, implicating the Peoples Temple in an array of allegations including gunrunning, drug-smuggling, kidnapping, murder, brainwashing, extortion and torture. Under attack at home, and feeling the pressure abroad, Temple officials undertook secret negotiations with the Soviet Embassy in Georgetown, laying the groundwork for the en masse defection of more than a thousand poor Americans. According to the CIA, it took no interest in these discussions.<\/p>\n Nevertheless, when Congressman Ryan began to scrutinize the Temple in 1978, two things happened. First, according to his aides, he was stonewalled by the State Department. Second, upon arriving in Guyana, he was given an escort who had been identified a decade earlier as a ranking CIA officer.[43]<\/span><\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n This second fact would seem to explain how it is that the CIA was the first to learn of the deaths at Jonestown, describing them as “mass suicides” \u2014 hours before<\/em> the bodies were discovered by the Guyanese Defense Forces.<\/p>\n Under the circumstances, only the most naive could fail to be skeptical of the disinterested stance that the FBI and the CIA claim to have taken. But what does it mean? Why would these agencies give a de facto grant of immunity to the Peoples Temple? And why would the CIA maneuver its Chief of Station into position to surveil Congressman Ryan, the co-author of legislation curtailing CIA activities abroad, on his trip to Jonestown?<\/p>\n The answers to those questions are embedded in the contradictions of Jones\u2019s past and, in particular, in that most mysterious period in the preacher-man\u2019s life: the 1960-64 interregnum that every biographer has preferred to gloss over. As I intend to show, the enigmas of Jones\u2019s beginnings do much to explain the bloodshed at the end.<\/p>\n II. 2 JONES AND MITRIONE IN RICHMOND<\/strong><\/p>\n Jim Jones was born in Crete, Ind. in 1931. When he was three, he moved with his family to the town of Lynn.<\/p>\n His father was a partially disabled World War I vet. Embittered by the Depression and unable to find work, he is alleged (without much evidence) to have been a member of the Ku Klux Klan. Jones\u2019s mother, on the other hand, was well-liked, a hard-working woman who is universally credited with keeping the family together.<\/p>\n Jones\u2019s religious upbringing took place outside his own family. Myrtle Kennedy, a friend of his mother\u2019s who lived nearby, saw to it that he went to Sunday School, and gave him instruction in the Bible<\/em>. While not yet a teenager, Jones began to experiment, attending the services of several churches.[44]<\/span><\/sup><\/a> Before long, he came under the spell of a “fanatical” woman evangelist, the leader of faith-healing revivals at the Gospel Tabernacle Church on the edge of town.[45]<\/span><\/sup><\/a> (This was a Pentecostal sect of so-called “Holy Rollers,” a charismatic group then believed in faith-healing and speaking in tongues.) Whether there was more to their relationship than that of a priestess and her protege is unknown, but it is a fact that Jones\u2019s association with the woman coincided with the onset of nightmares. According to Jones\u2019s mother, he was terrorized by dreams in which a snake figured prominently.[46]<\/span><\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n Whatever the nature of his relationship to the lady evangelist, Jones soon found himself in the pulpit, dressed in a white sheet, thumping the Bible<\/em>. The protege was a prodigy and, by all accounts, he loved the attention.<\/p>\n In 1947, 15-years-old and still a resident of Lynn, Jones began preaching in a “sidewalk ministry” on the wrong side of the tracks in Richmond, Indiana \u2014 sixteen miles from his home. Why he traveled to Richmond to deliver his message, and why he picked a working-class black neighborhood in which to do it, is uncertain.<\/p>\n What is certain, however, is that, while in Richmond, Jones established a relationship with a man named Dan Mitrione. Like the child evangelist, Mitrione would one day become internationally notorious and, like Jones, his violent death in South America would generate headlines around the world. As Jones told his followers in Guyana,<\/p>\n “There was one guy that I knew growing up in Richmond, a cruel, cruel person, even as a kid, avicious racist\u2014Dan Mitrione.<\/em>“[47]<\/span><\/sup><\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Myrtle Kennedy has confirmed that the two men knew one another, saying that they were friends.