Throughout 1978, as pressure mounted on Jonestown as a result of the Concerned Relatives protests and of the Stoen custody battle, the leadership of Peoples Temple worked to strengthen its relationships with Guyana government officials. The Temple needed the country\u2019s support for a number of reasons, including to serve minimally as a buffer between the United States governmental entities and sometimes to act as an outright advocate for Jonestown\u2019s cause. But there was also the matter of depending upon the Government of Guyana for intelligence to learn what it was hearing through official sources and how to prepare for \u2013 and possibly pre-empt \u2013 the actions anticipated against the community.<\/p>\n
One illustration is a snippet of a phone call between Temple leader Jean Brown and the Guyanese ambassador to the United States, Laurence Mann. In this undated transcript \u2013 likely from mid-1978 \u2013 Mann tells Brown about a San Francisco newspaper reporter who has been looking for verification of some negative information he has heard about the Temple, and what the ambassador said in response. \u201cHe asked if I didn\u2019t find the Bishop to be a bit of a con man.\u2026 I said, if you are the chairman of a housing authority, if you are a public office holder in your own country and own city, would you expect us to believe you are a con man?\u201d<\/p>\n
Conversation between Jean Brown and Laurence Mann,<\/strong> RYMUR 89-4286-I-1-a-7; also at RYMUR 89-4286-FF-1-6. Throughout 1978, as pressure mounted on Jonestown as a result of the Concerned Relatives protests and of the Stoen custody battle, the leadership of Peoples Temple worked to strengthen its relationships with Guyana government officials. The Temple needed the country\u2019s support for a number of reasons, including to serve minimally as a buffer between the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":13225,"menu_order":31,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-19057","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/19057","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=19057"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/19057\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":126859,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/19057\/revisions\/126859"}],"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=19057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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