{"id":71730,"date":"2017-11-11T15:59:08","date_gmt":"2017-11-11T23:59:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=71730"},"modified":"2020-12-30T11:27:48","modified_gmt":"2020-12-30T19:27:48","slug":"appendix-west-germanys-red-army-faction-in-jim-jones-jonestown-news-broadcasts","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=71730","title":{"rendered":"Appendix: West Germany\u2019s Red Army Faction in Jim Jones\u2019 Jonestown news broadcasts"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Heidi K\u00f6nig-Porstner<\/strong> is an author and award-winning translator of poetry, who lives in Vienna, Austria. She works as an editor for the Austrian Committee for Social Work, and has been a research worker in projects on Philosophy of Science and Contemporary History at the University of Vienna. Her publications cover the areas philosophy and history of science, literature and science, and political philosophy. As a literary translator, her focus is on Spanish poetry, and on biographical works. She can be reached at adelheidanna@gmx.at<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

(The main article is here<\/a>.)<\/em><\/p>\n

The very last thing one would expect when listening to Jim Jones\u2019 \u201cstriking news\u201d from 1978 now, in 2017, is \u201cnews.\u201d And yet there is news, and it is striking indeed.<\/p>\n

Following the \u201cGerman Autumn\u201d of 1977, a significant number of (Red Army Faction) RAF members suspected of the murders of J\u00fcrgen Ponto, Hanns Martin Schleyer, and Siegfried Buback were still free. The German Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) which conducted the investigation had information that no fewer than eight people might have found sanctuary in Yemen or Nicaragua. The search for them continued for more than a decade, without any result. \u00a0It was as if they\u2019d disappeared from the face of the earth.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t until 1990, shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the breakdown of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), that the world learned that they\u2019d spent the previous ten years in East Germany \u2013 under a new identity, which was scrupulously veiled and protected by the East German Secret Security Service (Stasi). Within two weeks, all eight of them \u2013 Susanne Albrecht, Werner Lotze, Monika Helbing, Silke Maier-Witt, Henning Beer, Inge Viett, Sigrid Sternebeck, and Ralf Friedrich \u2013 were found, and some, like Albrecht, even presented themselves deliberately. All subsequently stood trial for their roles with the RAF, all were sentenced to prison for between six and thirteen years, and all were released before time.<\/p>\n

West Germany was shocked. The GDR had strictly denied contacts with \u201cWest German terrorists,\u201d especially during the 1980s, when diplomatic ties between the two Germanys had intensified. Over the course of the years, the BKA had of course sent a whole series of requests, asking their East German colleagues to help investigate, which they supposedly did, but (apparently) without any results.[1]<\/a><\/p>\n

The danger that one of their new Western guests might be recognized even in the GDR was, by the way, considerable. They had intense training on how to behave like East Germans, and even so, one of them had to change her identity twice. In the meantime, East Germans began to have access to Western TV, and time and again, photographs of the eight fugitive RAF members appeared on the screen.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, the whereabouts of the radical groups\u2019 members was a matter of utmost secrecy, even in the GDR. But surprisingly, this was not so in Jonestown. To judge from Jones\u2019 exhortations, literally everyone must have known about it. In a tape from the spring of 1978,[2]<\/a> Jones reported:<\/p>\n

The most striking news is that the Red Brigade has been supported by the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union is giving funds to help them in their guerilla activities. The Republic of Yemen has offered to give sanctuary to any of them that are captured and let them use Yemen as a base of their operations. East German Democratic Republic, the communist free<\/em> part of Germany \u2026 has offered sanctuary to the Red Brigade, as well as has Yemen.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Moreover, Jones wanted to be sure that Jonestown residents paid attention to the news.\u00a0 \u201cAll will be tested,\u201d he says immediately reporting on the news of the offer of sanctuary. \u201cOne and all. Everyone in socialist classes on Friday must give a one-page written test, a write-up of all the news, not just part, but all the news of the week.\u201d<\/p>\n

In other words, while the rest of the world remained in the dark about the fugitive RAF members, an enclave of 1000 Americans living in South America was apparently aware.<\/p>\n

It is hard to believe that Jim Jones could have had access to information the West German secret service didn\u2019t. It\u2019s also hard to believe that the GDR would reveal its intention to offer sanctuary to the radicals in a news broadcast. The first explanation would be that this must be a mistake. Jones may have genuinely meant the Italian Red Brigade \u2013 which had just executed former Italian Prime minister Aldo Moro, a news item Jones had reported a few minutes before \u2013 although he often referred to the Red Army Faction as to Germany\u2019s Red Brigade.<\/p>\n

Further evidence that Jones was merely mistaken was that the members of the Red Army Faction (and Movement June 2) came to stay in the GDR in 1980, two years after Jones\u2019 broadcast.<\/p>\n

More recent revelations have disclosed that negotiations over sanctuary had taken place much earlier than initially thought, that they began in spring 1978, with Harry Dahl, leader of the GDR\u2019s anti-terrorism office. This would have made them shortly about the time Jones reported on the agreement.[3]<\/a><\/p>\n

What remains unclear, however, is who would have disclosed that kind of information, and to what end.\u00a0 Fielding McGehee, who transcribed and summarized the tape, mentions wire services from the Soviet Union, Warsaw Pact nations, and Radio Free Cuba as possible sources. There is no independent information of that belief, and certainly the FBI description of the tape is silent on the point.<\/p>\n

* * * * *<\/p>\n

On June 12, 1978, Jones reported:<\/p>\n

\n

Trial in Switzerland for three West German activists of the Red Brigade, the Baader-Meinhof accused for attempted murder. Large number of police were put in the courtroom to such a degree that the defense attorney, appointed by the state in Switzerland, said \u201cI have to in good conscience refuse to defend my client on the grounds that I have no privacy to counsel with them.\u201d[4]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The “Baader Meinhof” trial to which Jones refers is the terrorism trial of Pruntrut, Switzerland, which began June 12, 1978, against Christian M\u00f6ller and Gabriele Kr\u00f6cher-Tiedemann, members of Movement June 2. The mistake is not Jones\u2019: In order to evoke the image of a Switzerland massively threatened by German terrorism, Swiss newspapers had referred to them as to \u201cthe most dangerous members of Red Army Faction.\u201d As a result, hysteria seriously hampered the trial.<\/p>\n

M\u00f6ller and Kr\u00f6cher-Tiedemann had been stopped as they had tried to cross the border from France to Switzerland. Kr\u00f6cher-Tiedeman shot and injured two border officers and \u2013 accidentally \u2013 also her companion. The police found that they had with them what later turned out to be the ransom money from the 1977 kidnapping of the Austrian industrial Walter Palmers. The charge in Pruntrut was attempted murder.<\/p>\n

The proceedings on June 12, the first day, ended quickly, because, as Jones correctly reported, the courtroom was so crowded with policemen that the defense attorney, Hans Zweifel, left in protest less than two hours after the trial had begun. At a press conference he called immediately afterwards, he gave the statement which Jones quoted.<\/p>\n

The trial had to be rescheduled. [5]<\/a><\/p>\n

* * * * *<\/p>\n

In early June 1978, Jones reported:<\/p>\n

West Germany. The minister of interior [Werner Maihofer] has resigned, because he is not taking strong enough tactics against what the capitalists call the terrorists. Several of the members of the Baader-Meinhof activist Red Brigade have been allowed to escape from Germany, the crackdowns have not found any to arrest, and the leader of the Baader-Meinhof activist Red Brigade in West Germany, fascist Federal Republic of West Germany, escaped the best fortress prison in capitalist Germany. So, the interior minister is taking the brunt. He must resign.[6]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Werner Maihofer indeed had to resign and did so on June 6, 1978, after the disclosure that he\u2019d ordered an (illegal!) bugging of a German citizen\u2019s residence who\u2019d presumably had contacts with terrorists.[7]<\/a> At the same time, it is unclear to which jailbreak Jones refers. There were several, though no \u201cleader of the Baader-Meinhof\u201d-group ever escaped \u201cthe best fortress prison.\u201d<\/p>\n

* * * * *<\/p>\n

On a tape labelled as having been recorded on August 27, 1978, Jones reported:<\/p>\n

West Germany, or should we say, neo-fascist Germany, where every tombstone of every Jewish grave bears a swastika mark, is becoming more and more repressive, but they seem to be unable or incapable of catching the three most wanted members of the Baader-Meinerhof [Meinhof] gang. Today, just a few minutes ago, these three were almost apprehended, as they landed a helicopter in which they were making a trial run, to free more political prisoners. As you know, they\u2019ve had two successful jailbreaks. They managed to elude the police in their Mercedes-Benz car that was waiting [for] them at the landing strip.[8]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Despite the tape\u2019s label, Jones\u2019 description of what happened \u201ctoday\u201d happened instead on August 6, 1978; it could have been that the tape librarian made a mistake on the date, or that Jones was reading from older news copy. In any event, the helicopter flight sounds like a scene from a Louis de Fun\u00e9s film, and it made German investigators and policemen look like fools. Christian Klar, Willy Peter Stoll, and Adelheid Schulz, the main suspects in the assassinations of German Attorney General Siegfried Buback and German industrial leader Hanns Martin Schleyer, had rented a helicopter to fly over the area between Heidelberg, Frankfurt, and Wiesbaden. While some American authors[9]<\/a> have claimed that their goal was to prepare an attack against \u201cUS imperialism,\u201d it is much more likely that they were planning to free their RAF co-member, Stefan Wisniewski, who was on trial for the kidnapping and murder of Schleyer, and who served time in the prison of \u00a0Frankenthal.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t their first helicopter trip, but rather their fourth. Klar, Stoll, and Schulz \u2013 indeed \u201cthe most wanted members\u201d of the group, and whose mug shots were known all over the country \u2013 had posed as a film team. The plot of the film they were planning to make \u2013 or so they told the pilot \u2013 was about freeing a family who\u2019d been kidnapped and imprisoned in a Spanish fortress. On one occasion, they asked if it was possible to land a helicopter in a courtyard exactly the same size as the courtyard of the prison Wisniewski was in. One of the pilots realized that their cameras were not of the kind a professional film team would use. Also, she was sure that one of the two men looked very much like Christian Klar, \u201cGermany\u2019s most wanted terrorist.\u201d She informed the police, and gave them the details of the next flight the \u201cfilm team\u201d had scheduled. BKA investigators came to observe them. What they saw was Schulz \u2013 an elegantly dressed young woman \u2013 accompanied by two neatly dressed and very agreeable young men. This was apparently not what they had expected. The three of them parked their Mercedes, and went to have a drink before starting the flight. From a nearby table, the investigators secretly took some pictures. But so improbable it seemed to them that this trio of pleasant young people could be terrorists that they let them enter the helicopter, complete their flight, and return to their Mercedes. Only then they started to follow them \u2013 with five cars, and in a rather obvious manner. The \u201cfilm team\u201d in their Mercedes forced the pace, took a sudden and sharp turn behind a farmhouse, and disappeared.<\/p>\n

As to the eventual fates of these RAF members:<\/p>\n