Anyone researching Jonestown<\/span> is bound to bump into John Judge\u2019s essay The Black Hole of Guyana<\/a><\/em> sooner or later. His purpose for writing the piece was to warn readers everything you know about Jonestown is wrong! <\/em>but then assure them\u00a0I know what\u2019s right! <\/em>by explaining Jonestown was a secret CIA mind control experiment!<\/em><\/p>\n Judge\u2019s warning, assurance, and explanation all fly in the face of any accepted narrative of the Peoples Temple tragedy. This is quite intentional. His explanation is quite popular. It is also (in my simple opinion) quite wrong<\/em>.<\/p>\n But that\u2019s jumping ahead in the narrative… so let\u2019s bounce back for some quick context.<\/p>\n Judge wrote Black Hole<\/em> back in 1985, and since then it has certainly gained a following among conspiracy theorists who eschew any \u201cofficial explanation\u201d of Peoples Temple and the ensuing fatalities. Then again, Judge himself has long been a celebrity among groups who are (depending on your point of view) the Champions of The Real Truth™ or<\/em> The Tin Foil Hat Crowd. Judge preferred to describe himself as an \u201calternative historian\u201d and once quipped \u201cI tell people you can call me a conspiracy theorist if you call everyone else a coincidence theorist.\u201d<\/p>\n I actually appreciate that! However, appreciating\u00a0<\/em>something and agreeing\u00a0<\/em>with it are not always the same thing. I appreciate\u00a0<\/em>Andy Warhol\u2019s rebellion against artistic conventions, but I can\u2019t stand\u00a0<\/em>his paintings or films.<\/p>\n I consider myself something of a conspiracy theory connoisseur<\/em>, though my criterion is \u201chow silly is it?\u201d A Branch Davidian once described me as \u201c…someone with *way* too much time on their hands and a twisted sense of humor.\u201d I agree! In that capacity, when David Icke<\/a> claims that Queen Elizabeth II and George W. Bush are shape-shifting reptilian aliens, he gets high points from me\u00a0\u2014 for amusement value<\/em>.<\/p>\n Judge scores lower, as his central thesis\u00a0\u2014 Jonestown was a CIA-run MK\u2011ULTRA experiment\u00a0<\/em>\u2014 is comparatively pedestrian. It is also, in my humble opinion, completely wrong<\/em>. But wait, there\u2019s more! Black Hole\u00a0<\/em>is actually a fractal. In it are several subsections, each of which are also\u00a0<\/em>wrong, but some of those fiefdoms of factual failure get heavy with what the kids these days call facepalm<\/em>. Those I kind of like, though for reasons Judge would have been horrified by.<\/p>\n Basically,\u00a0Black Hole\u00a0<\/em>is a surreal journey into a nightmare realm that relies on a twisted internal logic that doesn\u2019t work in the Real World. So yes: it\u2019s the written equivalent of a David Lynch film, except it has footnotes instead of midgets.<\/p>\n Sardonic snickering aside, I actually have a genuine interest in account accuracy. This is especially true with two areas that have long fascinated me:\u00a0religious groups in some sort of End Times scenario, and theological cognitive dissonance. Jonestown is brimming with both, so I\u2019d like to know what really\u00a0<\/em>happened down there, or as close to such as can be glimpsed through a mirror darkly.<\/p>\n I have no doubt about Judge\u2019s sincerity: I believe that he\u00a0<\/em>believed what he wrote in Black Hole\u00a0<\/em>was correct. Then again, I also have no doubt that Gene Ray believed his \u201c\u200a\u22121\u00a0\u00d7\u00a0\u22121\u00a0=\u00a0\u22121\u201d Time Cube<\/a>\u00a0conspiracy theory, or that Marshall Hall<\/a> and his crew believe that NASA is conspiring to hide the truth of geocentrism. Just because you believe\u00a0<\/em>something to be true doesn\u2019t mean that it actually is\u00a0<\/em>true.<\/p>\n This paper will attempt to demonstrate that Black Hole<\/em>\u2019s CIA\/MK\u2011ULTRA thesis isn\u2019t factually \u201ctrue.\u201d I strongly suspect that Judge created his conclusions first and then worked backwards to prove them. Certainly he cherry-picked his data, ignoring what didn\u2019t fit his thesis and incorrectly interpreting much of the rest.<\/p>\n To be vulgarly blunt, I think Black Hole\u00a0<\/em>is more full of bullshit than a manure pi\u00f1ata. Hopefully I can convince readers of this.<\/p>\n Since I\u2019m about to take on a darling of the conspiracy community, I feel I should preemptively tip my hand as to who I am (and am not<\/em>)\u00a0\u2014 lest I subsequently be accused of being some sort of misinformation \u201cshill\u201d or counter-intelligence operative.<\/p>\n I was 10 years old when Jonestown self-destructed, and I have no relationship to any of its members (other than occasionally writing for this present site<\/a>). I am not connected to any government agencies and have never served in the military. In short: I\u2019m just an outsider looking in. I genuinely have no agendas other than \u201ccan I figure out what happened?\u201d and \u201ccan I make myself laugh?\u201d while doing so.<\/p>\n My own opinion of events can be summed up thus:\u00a0Jim Jones started off as a con artist who used Peoples Temple for a combination of profit and self-aggrandizement, but after a decade-plus of amphetamine abuse he developed \u201cspeed psychosis\u201d and by The End fully believed 99% the bullshit he was spewing. I see no overt conspiracy here.<\/p>\n Despite my having a soft spot for complex webs of Machiavellian intrigue, I find such things are best left to novels or movies as they rarely \u201cwork\u201d in the real world. Jonestown wasn\u2019t in a hollow volcano, Jim Jones wasn\u2019t bald with a white Persian cat. Ockham\u2019s Razor\u00a0<\/strong>is a time-tested solution to most problems, and I think it (and two related blades) fit the puzzle pieces together much better than any overly-elaborate conspiratorial scheme. Those two extra concepts are Hanlon\u2019s Razor\u00a0<\/strong>and Hosty\u2019s Razor<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Hanlon\u2019s Razor:\u00a0<\/strong>named after its originator, Robert J.\u00a0Hanlon, and first appearing in Murphy\u2019s Law Book Two:\u00a0More Reasons Why Things Go Wrong!\u00a0<\/em>by Arthur Bloch, it states:<\/p>\n Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity<\/strong><\/p>\n Hosty\u2019s Razor:\u00a0<\/strong>my own creation, named after James Hosty. Hosty was an FBI agent in Dallas during the early 1960s, and part of his case load was investigating Lee Harvey Oswald. Hosty claimed he never met Oswald and that the closest he came was interviewing his wife Marina. This apparently spurred Oswald to go to the FBI building and leave a nasty note for Hosty saying something to the effect of \u201cleave my wife alone!\u201d After Oswald\u2019s death, Hosty was debriefed by J.\u00a0Edger Himself and told to destroy the note. Hosty subsequently spoke of this incident as a \u201cbenign conspiracy\u201d (his words) which he attributed to damage control by the Bureau hiding the fact that it had so obviously dropped the ball. In that\u00a0<\/em>spirit:<\/p>\n Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by people My Sources<\/span><\/p>\n The irony that this present paper is a deconstruction of Judge\u2019s deconstruction is not lost on me. Black Hole<\/em>\u2019s premise of everything in the official version is a lie!\u00a0<\/em>causes an obvious dilemma about\u00a0what sources are true?\u00a0<\/em>This applies to both Judge and myself. I have the benefit of time: in the 33\u00a0years since Judge wrote Black Hole<\/em>, new information has come out and old information has become more readily accessible. I will let readers decide if Judge was genuinely unaware of them or just chose to ignore them because they contradict his theory.<\/p>\n Still, I will shatter Irony Meters everywhere by primarily relying on those same sources that Judge himself preferred. He seemed to think they were reliable… except when they contravened his thesis, in which case they weren\u2019t. There are times when the information in a source he uses is demonstrably wrong, but I will give Judge the benefit of the doubt that he worked in good faith that it was right.<\/p>\n Black Hole\u00a0<\/em>has 291 footnotes. Broken down (and not counting periodicals), his three most used sources are Hold Hands and Die!<\/a><\/em> by John Maguire and Mary Lee Dunn (cited 86\u00a0times), White Night<\/a><\/em> by John Peer Nugent (cited 42\u00a0times), and Raven\u00a0<\/em>by Tim Reiterman and John Jacobs (which only gets 24).<\/p>\n Raven\u00a0<\/em>should need no introduction, though when I reference it hereafter I\u2019m using the 2008 reissue which (due to formatting changes) has different page numbering than the original printing. For those unfamiliar with the other two works:<\/p>\n Hold Hands <\/em>~ hereafter HH<\/em>. Copyright 1978, which even Judge seemed puzzled by: \u201c…so instant (12\/10\/78) [<\/strong>it]\u00a0<\/strong>seemed to have been written before the event!\u201d It gets a few minor details wrong, but nit-picks aside, HH\u00a0<\/em>otherwise seems to be a retrospectively accurate account.<\/p>\n Judge certainly thought so of all three, given his reliance on them all.<\/p>\n If a piece of information is in all three, I will consider it \u201ccommon knowledge\u201d and skip triple-citing it.<\/p>\n Finally, I will frequently be forced to rebut a Judge-claim with \u201cthere is no evidence for this.\u201d I am aware this is argumentum ad ignorantiam<\/em>: just because I\u2019m not aware of something does not mean it does not exist. Likewise, \u201cabsence of evidence is not evidence of absence.\u201d The variant of this is that a Judge-claim actually has supporting proof which I have innocently forgotten learning about. I can remember Monty Python\u00a0<\/em>dialogue from 30\u00a0years ago but not where I left my keys 30\u00a0minutes ago, so there is an honest possibility of this happening. Any such lack\u2011of\u2011fact lapses are not<\/u> intentional. And last: I am keenly aware that it is extraordinarily difficult to prove a negative<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 prove to me I don\u2019t<\/em> have an invisible unicorn in my garden.<\/p>\n Well, Judge is claiming he has a CIA unicorn in his Jonestown garden. I\u2019ll do my best to dispute that.<\/p>\n Standard disclaimer<\/u>: I freely admit I could be wrong about something. If presented with compelling evidence, I will\u00a0<\/em>modify my thoughts accordingly. My own views on Jonestown have evolved since I first began researching it 18\u00a0years ago, and I retrospectively renounce some of the opinions I\u2019ve previously penned on the topic. The Text Itself<\/span><\/p>\n It is my intention to directly quote Judge\u2019s original essay and then offer my own rebuttal to his commentary. I\u2019m going to let him stand-or-fall on his own wording… and let the reader decide what\u2019s what.<\/p>\n Black Hole\u00a0<\/em>is a lengthy\u00a0<\/em>essay: printed out it is about 17\u00a0pages (with an additional 22\u00a0pages of footnotes). Fortunately, I\u2019m \u201c…someone with *way* too much time on [my] hands and a twisted sense of humor.\u201d So, grab a pot of your favorite coffee and get comfortable, because this will take a while\u00a0<\/em>to dispute.<\/p>\n I will use this present site\u2019s version<\/a> of Black Hole<\/em>, which \u201ccorrects several typographical errors and standardizes some footnotes.\u201d <\/em>This is for the convenience of both the reader and myself, as I\u2019d get tired typing [sic]\u00a0<\/strong>over and over. That\u2019s just for grammar; occasionally I will take Judge to task on specific verbiage that I\u2019m convinced (with offered proof) he mangles.<\/p>\n Quotes from Black Hole<\/em>\u00a0are indented and in Calibri font<\/span>. Judge\u2019s footnotes are links that jump from this present article to the original\u2019s Sources section. My own citations will be embedded in my rebuttals.<\/p>\n I intend to present a truncated version of Black Hole<\/em>. Specifically, I prune down or weed out some of his lengthier digressions that either go way\u00a0<\/em>off tangent, are redundant, or that he (gasp!<\/em>) gets correct. These are indicated by the […]\u00a0<\/strong>ellipses peppered throughout. This is not intended as censorship.\u00a0<\/strong>I think of it as an act of mercy on the reader necessitated by both Judge\u2019s long-windedness and my own.<\/p>\n I am aware this has the potential of some Judge-supporter saying \u201cHA! You didn\u2019t rebut Claim\u00a0X so it must be true!\u201d Responding to everything\u00a0<\/em>in Black Hole\u00a0<\/em>would turn this into an opus of Tolkien proportions, so I\u2019ll stick to the major points. I only address a minor point if it\u2019s the foundation for a larger argument of his that I (and the facts) disagree with.<\/p>\n Black Hole\u00a0<\/em>is divided into ten parts, not all of which need inclusion or rebuttal. I\u2019ll remove the bready filler at the beginning and end to focus on the meat in between. The parts (and how I handle them) are:<\/p>\n (untitled preamble)\u00a0<\/strong>~ Judge\u2019s opinions justifying the piece. It can be distilled to:\u00a0you\u2019re being lied to about Jonestown! Shake off the apathy and wake up!\u2009\u00a0<\/em>I skip this section entirely. (\u200a<\/strong>If Black Hole were a movie, think of this section as the opening crawl\u00a0<\/em>\u2014\u2018A long time ago in a Guyana\u200a far, far away…\u2019\u200a<\/em><\/p>\n You Know the Official Version\u00a0<\/strong>~ It\u2019s exactly that: an acceptable retelling of the public narrative that Judge intends to expose as a lie. I also skip this section. (<\/strong>This is the part at the beginning of the film where the two detectives are driving out to a fresh crime scene and give background exposition about the victims and what they think they\u2019re going to find<\/em>.<\/p>\n But Just Suppose It Didn\u2019t Happen That Way…\u00a0<\/strong>~ Judge\u2019s reconstruction of the White Night\u2019s aftermath where he begins poking holes in the official story. (\u200a<\/strong>The two cops snoop around the scene and notice things don\u2019t add up. Also includes the equivalent of that part in Jaws<\/u> where Richard Dreyfus looks at the body and screams \u201cThis was no boating accident!\u201d\u200a<\/em><\/p>\n Who Was Jim Jones?\u00a0<\/strong>~ A biography of Jones. (\u200a<\/strong>After trailing the villain,\u00a0the Scooby Doo gang rips off the monster\u2019s rubber mask and cries \u201cIt\u2019s Mr. CIA!\u201d\u200a<\/em><\/p>\n What Was Jonestown?\u00a0<\/strong>~ An explanation of the real\u00a0<\/em>purpose of the place: MK\u2011ULTRA. (\u200a<\/strong>Judge, dressed as Hercule Poirot, gathers the suspects in the parlor and points an accusing finger at the butler who built the deadly Rube Goldberg device. He then explains the butler\u2019s plot with superimposed flashbacks.<\/em><\/p>\n One Too Many Jonestowns\u00a0<\/strong>~ Tangential commentary claiming there are similar sinister plots still going on. (\u200a<\/strong>As the butler is being led away in cuffs, there are jump-cuts to his accomplices still at large<\/em>.<\/p>\n The Links to U.S. Intelligence Agencies\u00a0<\/strong>~ Attempts to tie Peoples Temple to groups Judge doesn\u2019t like. (\u200a<\/strong>Back in the parlor, Inspector Judge lists some of the clues that helped him crack the case<\/em>.<\/p>\n The Strange Connection to the Murder of Martin Luther King\u00a0<\/strong>~ A collection of things like \u201cMark Lane was an attorney for Jim Jones and\u00a0<\/em>James Earl Ray!\u201d Not relevant to the thesis, so I skip 99%\u00a0of it. (<\/strong>A glitch in the DVD suddenly causes the Deleted Scenes to start playing<\/em>.<\/p>\n Aftermath<\/strong> ~ Some \u2018where are they now?\u2019 (as of 1985) and more \u2018this is still going on!\u2019 examples. Mostly it\u2019s polemical rhetoric intended to provoke outrage in the reader at having been lied to about Jonestown and other events. I originally started a claim-by-claim rebuttal to this, but it immediately got out of hand and threatened to double the length of this present piece. Since much of it is Judge\u2019s opinion, I retroactively decided to skip 99%\u00a0of it. (\u200a<\/strong>A combination of more deleted scenes, out-takes, and an extensive blooper reel. Interspersed is the trope from those 1940s \u2018public service\u2019 films like Reefer Madness<\/u> where the Expert Authority Figure comes on at the end to give a sermonized lecture about the evils of the subject. Finally, the EAF warns with wagging finger \u201cdon\u2019t let this happen to you<\/u>!\u201d Patriotic music swells as \u2018\u200aThe End\u200a?<\/strong>\u2019 appears on screen.<\/em><\/p>\n Sources\u00a0<\/strong>~ Judge\u2019s \u2018works cited\u2019 section. Skipped. End Credits<\/em><\/p>\n So… got coffee and got comfortable?<\/p>\n Good<\/em>; let\u2019s get going!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n But Just Suppose\u00a0It Didn\u2019t Happen That Way…<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n The headlines the day of the massacre read: \u201cCult Dies in South American Jungle:\u00a0400 Die in Mass Suicide, 700 Flee into Jungle.\u201d<\/a>[13]<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Some other\u00a0<\/em>headlines from the day of their respective events include: \u201cTitanic Sinking; No Lives Lost\u201d (The World<\/em>, 4\/15\/1912), \u201cRAAF Captures Flying Saucer On Ranch in Roswell Region\u201d (Roswell Daily Record<\/em>, 7\/8\/1947), \u201cDewey Defeats Truman\u201d (Chicago Daily Tribune<\/em>, 11\/3\/1948). The moral of my point here: newspapers can occasionally get things wrong when they do\u00a0<\/em>have a pressing deadline but do not\u00a0<\/em>have all the correct information.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong> The press accounts used Peoples Temple\u2019s own propaganda to get the 1,100\u00a0number. Jones was known to exaggerate things, and even before 1978 was inflating the Jonestown population count to make his commune seem larger (and more prosperous) than it really was. Indeed, in Footnote\u00a014 (citing WN<\/em>,\u00a0p.224) Judge acknowledges that Jones occasionally inflated the number as high as 1,200. A more accurate census is 1,000 (I\u2019ll show my math for that shortly). A demographics study of Jonestown<\/a> backs me up.<\/p>\n There were 809 adult passports found there, and reports of 300 children (276 found among the dead, and 210 never identified). The headline figures from the first day add to the same number: 1,100.<\/a>[15]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong> As said, all this is a minor point; Judge would probably call it nit-picking and say it\u2019s within the margin of error for reaching his beloved 1,100\u00a0tally. I\u2019m just setting a quick precedent for a recurring trend: his methodology is often flawed, and it contributes to his reaching the wrong conclusion about something.<\/p>\n The original body count done by the Guyanese was 408, and this figure was initially agreed to by U.S. Army authorities on site.<\/a>[16]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong> However, over the next few days, the total of reported dead began to rise quickly. […]<\/strong>The new total, which was the official final count, was given almost a week later by American authorities as 913.<\/a>[17]<\/a> A total of 16 survivors were reported to have returned to the U.S.<\/a>[18]<\/a> Where were the others?<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong> Although I don\u2019t have access to Judge\u2019s source (Guyana Daily Mirror<\/em>) for context checking, I assume the 16\u00a0returning survivors\u00a0<\/em>mentioned were the 16\u00a0defectors who skipped out with Congressman Ryan shortly before the Flavor Aid Festivities. That too is off by 1, as it includes faux defector <\/em>Larry Layton, who was a gunman in the airport shootout. He was subsequently arrested by the Guyanese and thus did not return home.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/GRAPHIC-1.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/GRAPHIC-2.jpg\")
\u2028You will have to be… corrected<\/em>.\u201d<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\nsimply covering their asses after they royally screw up<\/strong><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/flavaFINAL.jpg\")
<\/a>White Night\u00a0<\/em>~ hereafter WN<\/em>. Copyright 1979. It too gets some details wrong, like \u201c…strawberry Flavour-Aide…\u201d (p.205)\u00a0\u2014 aside from misspelling the brand name, I don\u2019t have to tell anyone it was grape<\/em>, do I? Still, it comes across as the less sensationalist of the two. Unlike HH<\/em>, it has a subject index and \u2018Sources and Bibliography\u2019 section, complete with the disclaimer \u201cIn the process of researching, more than a hundred persons were interviewed on numerous subjects.\u201d Alas, they are not always identified within the text itself. Still, in historical hindsight the book seems to be a solid study on the subject.<\/p>\n
\n\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/GRAPHIC-4.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/GRAPHIC-5.jpg\")
<\/span>CONSPIRACY!!!<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\nBy all accounts in the press, as well as Peoples Temple statements there were at least 1,100 people at Jonestown.<\/a>[14]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n
\nAlthough the main bee in Judge\u2019s bonnet (in this section at least) is the discrepancy between the \u2018initial vs<\/em>.\u00a0final\u2019 casualty count, he does go on a tangent about the \u2018casualty count vs<\/em>. overall population\u2019 and eventually asks \u201cwhat happened to the rest?\u201d That\u2019s a valid question, assuming his math is accurate<\/em>. It isn\u2019t, so let\u2019s make a preemptive digression into the matter.<\/p>\n
\nMinor point, but using passports as a factor in counting the \u2019Town\u2019s population is a bit risky. Later on in a part of Black Hole <\/em>I trim out, Judge talks about how Jones and Mark Lane discussed smuggling a witness of the MLK assassination out of the U.S.\u00a0and into Jonestown for \u201csafe keeping.\u201d Jones offered Lane the use of Maxine Swaney\u2019s passport to do so. Swaney had died several years previously in California and there is no evidence she ever set foot in Guyana. Judge acknowledges both facts and says \u201cJones apparently kept her passport with him.\u201d If Jones had her passport in Jonestown, it seems reasonable to wonder if he had other passports from past-tense\u00a0<\/em>members as well. There were 7\u00a0adult deaths in Jonestown before The Finale<\/a>, and presumably Jones still had theirs, too. Obviously, the matter would be settled with an index of the names on those 809\u00a0passports, though I have not seen such a list publicly available for comparison. Still, the passport count is certainly inflated by 1, quite likely by 8, and potentially even higher than that.<\/p>\n
\nJudge is a bit disingenuous here based on what the sources in the footnote actually say: \u201cGuyanese troops in Jonestown were reporting a dead-body count there of at least four hundred…\u201d (note the \u201cat least\u201d qualifier), \u201c…As the count leapt up hourly, however…\u201d (WN<\/em>,\u00a0p.223).<\/p>\n
\nThe 913\u00a0dead\u00a0<\/em>parses out to 909 at Jonestown and 4\u00a0at the Georgetown station (1 woman first killed her 3\u00a0children and then herself). The tally overlooks the 5 deaths at Port Kaituma: 3 journalists, 1\u00a0Congressman, and 1\u00a0Temple member. So 914 (dead) Temple members total.<\/p>\n