{"id":66814,"date":"2016-04-30T11:26:03","date_gmt":"2016-04-30T18:26:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=66814"},"modified":"2017-03-18T16:44:21","modified_gmt":"2017-03-18T23:44:21","slug":"q249-summary","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=66814","title":{"rendered":"Q249 Summary"},"content":{"rendered":"

Summary prepared by Fielding M. McGehee III. If you use this material, please credit The Jonestown Institute. Thank you.<\/strong><\/i><\/p>\n

To read the Tape Transcript, click here<\/a>. Listen to MP3 (Pt. 1<\/a>, Pt. 2<\/a>).
To return to the Tape Index, click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

FBI Catalogue<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Jones Speaking<\/p>\n

FBI preliminary tape identification note: <\/strong>Labeled in part “Sept 7 News”<\/p>\n

Date cues on tape:<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 While some news items seem consistent with the tape identification note, others place it around August 20\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

People named:<\/b><\/p>\n

Public figures\/National and international names:<\/i>
\nJimmy Carter, U.S. President
\nJody Powell, White House press secretary
\nRick Hernandez, White House aide
\nGerald Ford, former U.S. President
\nLyndon B. Johnson, former U.S. President
\nCyrus Vance, U.S. Secretary of State
\nAnthony M. Solomon, Undersecretary of the Treasury
\nMalcolm Toon, U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union (by reference)
\nSen. Russell Long (D-GA), chair of Senate Finance Committee
\nSen. William Roth (R-Delaware)
\nRep. Ron Dellums (D-CA)
\nRep. Jack Kemp (R-NY)
\nBaltasar Corrada del R\u00edo, Resident Commissioner of Puerto Rico, non-voting member of Congress (by reference)
\nMilton Gross, Chief of FCC Fairness and Political Broadcasting Division
\nRonald Reagan, former California governor
\nDennis Kucinich, mayor of Cleveland<\/div>\n
Adolf Hitler, German Fuhrer
\nKurt Waldheim, Secretary General of United Nations
\nPope John Paul
\nJames Callaghan, British Prime Minister (by reference)
\nJohn Jeremy Thorpe, head of British Liberal Party
\nMargaret Thatcher, leader of British Conservative Party
\nBruno Kreisky, Chancellor of Austria (by reference)
\nLeonid Brezhnev, Secretary of the Communist Party in USSR
\nAndrei Gromyko, Foreign Secretary of the Soviet Union
\nAlexei Kosygin, Premier of the Soviet Union
\nFrancis Jay Crawford, International Harvester executive arrested in Soviet Union<\/p>\n

Menachem Begin, Israeli Prime Minister
\nAnwar Sadat, President of Egypt
\nIan Smith, prime minister of Rhodesia (by reference)
\nP.K. van der Byl, foreign minister of Rhodesia
\nJoshua Nkomo, leader of Zimbabwean Patriotic Front in Rhodesia
\nRobert Mugabe, leader of Zimbabwean Patriotic Front in Rhodesia
\nJohannes Vorster, prime minister of Republic of South Africa
\nEmmanuel Erskine, leader of UN peace-keeping force in Lebanon
\nMoammar Khadafy, Libyan leader
\nFerdinand Marcos, president of Philippines<\/p>\n

Anastasio Somoza, President of Nicaragua<\/p>\n

Ptolemy Reid, Deputy Prime Minister of Guyana
\nLeonard Duvant, Guyanese regional minister<\/p>\n

Ralph Nader, consumer advocate
\nJulian Bond, civil rights activist
\nBen Chavis, member of Wilmington 10
\nJ. B. Stoner, Ku Klux Klansman
\nGeorge Busbee, Georgia governor
\nAntonio Provenzano, union official convicted of embezzlement
\nUnnamed 23-year-old daughter of Antonio Provenzano
\nRobert Luisi, official in Provenzano\u2019s union
\nBertell Ollman, Marxist political scientist at University of Maryland
\nJohn Toll, University of Maryland president
\nBob Greene, columnist for New York Times<\/em> (by reference)<\/p>\n

John Barbagelata, San Francisco councilman, Moscone opponent
\nHerb Caen, Columnist for San Francisco Chronicle<\/em>
\nDon Freed, author and screenwriter
\nMark Lane, author and lawyer
\nJoe Mazor, private detective hired by Concerned Relatives (by reference)<\/div>\n

Temple adversaries; members of Concerned Relatives:<\/em>
\nJim Cobb
\nDeanna Mertle
\nTim Stoen
\nDavid Conn, Elder in Disciples of Christ denomination, Jones critic<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Bible verses cited:<\/strong> \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 None
\n <\/p>\n

Summary:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Jim Jones reads the news, inserting only a few announcements for the Jonestown community.<\/p>\n

As he does in other tapes from this period, Jones has an admonition for his followers regarding the impending arrival of Joe Mazor<\/a>, a private investigator who had been hired by Concerned Relatives to spirit various family members out of Jonestown, and who in the course of his work, became disenchanted with the message of the oppositional group and switched his allegiance to Peoples Temple. Jones warns people about engaging in conversation with the man \u2013 who could, in fact, be a double agent \u2013 and advises them to smile and to be polite, limiting their conversation to observations on how much they enjoy life in Guyana.<\/p>\n

The balance of the tape consists principally of news items, most of them read in the hurried \u2013 almost staccato \u2013 style of a 1940\u2019s radio announcer, presented as bulletins as they come over the wire. Only at the end of the tape does Jones read longer, more detailed pieces, including an analysis of tax legislation recently passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, the problems resulting from a design flaw in the Ford Pinto which causes gas tanks to explode, and the speculation that former California Governor Ronald Reagan will run for president in 1980.<\/p>\n

Whether the item is long or short, Jones often includes his own commentary and editorial asides. The United States is generally characterized as fascist and run by monopoly capitalists, and he invokes the specter of Adolf Hitler on three separate occasions in connection with American allies. The Soviet Union and its allies, on the other hand, are uniformly brave and courageous. He ends one story with a description of the Soviet people as \u201cvery lenient and understanding \u2026 very compassionate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jones also makes other asides which are familiar to the community: \u201ccapitalists always sell out capitalists,\u201d he comments at the end of an item about employees of the United Nations buying and selling defense secrets; our tax dollars support right wing dictatorships and regimes that suppress resistance movements; and in the course of reading the story about proposed tax breaks for the rich \u2013 combined with increased Social Security taxes on the poor and middle class \u2013 he chides the malcontents in Jonestown, \u201csome of you still talk of USA as a place you\u2019d like to go. You must have a masochistic complex.\u201d<\/p>\n

Also characteristic of many of these readings, Jones inserts his views on the dangers \u2013 and sometimes the inevitability \u2013 of nuclear war. The Camp David peace process \u2013 which he often denigrates as Egyptian capitulation to the Israelis \u2013 will either lead to a settlement or \u201cit\u2019s going to be a nuclear war.\u201d President Carter has not committed to a resumption of the SALT talks, because he\u2019s \u201clike a little child that\u2019s spoiled. He will do nothing more to try to stop nuclear war.\u201d The Soviet Union is not afraid of the West, as demonstrated by recently-leaked documents showing they \u201care in a position to wipe out all of the capitalist world.\u201d Jones reiterates the final point in commenting on a later item about a potential outcome of the Camp David talks \u2013 the presence of an American military base in the Middle East, or even the creation of a NATO-styled alliance in the region \u2013 and the Soviet condemnation of the idea: \u201cthe only statement Moscow said [was], \u2018Try it, and you\u2019ll find yourself dead.\u2019 The war talk is very heavy these days. But America started it, and I guess the Soviet Union is showing they can finish it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Among other items in the news:<\/p>\n