(Laurie <\/em>Efrein Kahalas is a regular contributor to<\/em> the jonestown report. Her previous writings may be found <\/em>here<\/em><\/a>. She <\/em>can be reached through <\/em>dan_laurie44@comcast.net<\/em><\/a>.)<\/em><\/p>\n I was born gentle into a harsh world, mere days shy of D-Day. Both sets of grandparents had fled pogroms in Eastern Europe, were strictly Orthodox, and spoke only Yiddish. My parents, in rebellion, wound up as Jewish atheists, common enough in New York through the tumult of the Great Depression, then World War II with its horror of The Holocaust.<\/p>\n By the time I was born, my mother had been a card-carrying Communist for four years. I, meanwhile, was writing poems about angels and God by age 8, and no one knew from whence it came. As I matured, I longed to be an artist and an activist\u00a0both<\/em>. (Being psychic was wholly unplanned! And I was left as burdened by it as empowered.) I was in D.C. in August, 1963, to hear MLK\u2019s \u201cI have a dream\u201d speech live. It never occurred to me that art and activism could be cast as diametrically opposed.<\/p>\n By the time I was 17, I had landed the first of two mentors who both went on to win a Pulitzer Prize for musical composition. Each in turn had boundless faith in\u00a0me<\/em>, as a shy, yet brilliantly gifted\u00a0girl<\/em>\u00a0in a field of ambitious grown men. I was an anomaly.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, my undiagnosed, untreated manic depressive mother (now called \u201cbi-polar\u201d) had taken to screaming out at night, \u201cI wish she would die!\u201d about\u00a0me<\/em>.<\/em>\u00a0She told me that \u201cYou just think you have friends. They will all leave you by the wayside when they find out what you are really like.\u201d She berated me with the likes of, \u201cYou\u2019re as cold as ice. You\u2019re incapable of loving another human being.\u201c<\/p>\n My artistic dreams fared no better: \u201cMusic is just an escape for you. But it won\u2019t work!\u201d \u201cYou can\u2019t compose music all the time. Even Beethoven didn\u2019t compose music all the time!\u201d Finally the\u00a0coup de grace<\/em>: \u201cI could commit\u00a0suicide<\/em>\u00a0and you wouldn\u2019t care. You\u2019d just keep playing your music!\u201d<\/p>\n I didn\u2019t leave the house that day. I feared that the price of freedom might be a dead mother.<\/p>\n Yet she told her friends that she loved me dearly, and how worried and frightened she was for\u00a0me<\/em>. (\u201cI\u2019m not the one who\u2019s sick! You\u2019re the one who\u2019s sick!\u201c) They thought that she was the best mother in the world! She was like one of those Munchausen-Syndrome-by-Proxy moms before anyone even knew they existed. Nor was there a moment\u2019s retraction or regret. No \u201cI shouldn\u2018t have said that,\u201d \u201cI\u2018m sorry,\u201c or even \u201cMaybe I went too far.\u201d \u201cMother\u201d (I could never manage to call her \u201cMom\u201d) was always right.<\/p>\n I was terrified \u2013 too young and fragile to absorb, much less combat insanity; and paralyzed that the lunatic was my own mother. Yet it was also surreal. I was frozen. I told no one.<\/p>\n Nor did I tell her, nor my plastic father, of my ambitions, my accomplishments, much less the praise from others. It was like I had one life of promise that I could not sustain, and another one locked into a dark vault of parental abuse. I would retreat to the bathroom and cry my eyes out in despair.<\/p>\n People adopt ways of coping with stress. Mine was stoicism, protective in part, but it also kept me frozen, leaving me prey to further harm. I failed to master self-protection, lest a reactive explosion from within might shatter\u00a0me<\/em>.<\/p>\n Finally one night, asleep and unaware of how or why I \u201ccracked.\u201d I awoke unable to compose a note and panicked. I had not yet turned eighteen.<\/p>\n I finished college, then my second mentor got me a full scholarship to graduate school, which unthinkably, I blew. I wondered if I would fail at everything I touched.<\/p>\n Yet, as a wholly unexpected diversion \u2013 maybe as Maria\u2019s solace in The Sound of Music<\/em>, that \u201cWhen God closes a door, He opens a window\u201d \u2013 it was at that very juncture of worldly failure that Spirit began speaking to me.<\/p>\n I know that that is a mystery for most. Except that that inner guidance, unthinkable to even me at the time, came true! The first signpost (as recounted in my book Snake Dance<\/em>) arrived when barely 18 and knowing nothing of Peoples Temple, I was flooded first with the marvelous opening line of John Keats\u2019 \u201cOde to a Nightingale\u201d: \u201cMy heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains my sense, as though of\u00a0hemlock<\/em>\u00a0I had drunk.\u201d Hemlock being the poison of choice for ancient Greek suicide. (Note Jim Jones 16 years later on the final tape: \u201cStep over to the other side, like the ancient Greeks,\u201d although ancient Greece had never before arose.)<\/p>\n It then coursed through my young brain that a huge number of people had died \u2013 as if it had\u00a0already happened<\/em> \u2013 but that I was left to survive. And in its wake, in a then-distant future, I had produced an emotionally wrenching\u00a0musical<\/em>\u00a0work. I saw people weeping upon witnessing the power of that work, as grief poured forth from their souls and they were released from pain. And I too wept. Right there on the street.<\/p>\n And every now and then (again, years prior to Peoples Temple,) I would dream of mass death, unrelated to my then-current life on the East Coast.<\/p>\n I had never heard of Peoples Temple. Fast-forward to 1970, now on the West Coast, I had different plans. But my married lover had just accidentally impregnated his wife with their sixth child (ouch!) and I was distraught. I thought I might have a nervous breakdown. I did not know what would become of me.<\/p>\n Then suddenly, on April 14, 1970, I was sitting, just sitting alone, and an actual audible whisper shot out: \u201cApril 19th<\/sup>.\u201d And I was lifted. My heart soared and the pathway was clear, but with no idea what was about to come.<\/p>\n Three days hence, on April 17, Kay, a friend of that time, told me that a friend of hers named David Shular (who himself joined the Temple) had invited her to an upcoming meeting with a Native American healer named Jim Jones. She ignored the flyer; but me, I took it and found my way to the Fillmore that weekend to meet my fate. I arrived and was called out by Jim Jones to join Peoples Temple on Sunday,\u00a0April 19th<\/em>.<\/p>\n I was enchanted and amazed. Whatever Jim Jones\u2019 persona later on, his passion to lift, to heal, to transform, left me in awe. I did not know how to wrench myself free from the doomed love affair, but Jim, who brought me to Redwood Valley that very night, derailed my uncertainty with his own absolutes: \u201cYou knew this would happen on this date. You\u00a0belong<\/em>\u00a0here. This is your destiny point!\u201d He hurriedly rounded up loyalists to pull me aside and ensure that I would stay. They were also certain that any thought of poetry, music, much less unseen spiritual guides (\u201cThat had to have been Jim Jones!\u201d) had to be gone.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, there were no cell phones, no e-mails in those days. I never got to bid my besieged lover goodbye. And though the pull to Peoples Temple was indeed inexorable, the depression alone was unbearable for months. Though I did remember that I had known love. I never at any time demanded Jim Jones\u2019 attention, affection, much less sex. I was unclear whether this man even\u00a0liked<\/em> me. And any thought of joining in on \u201cassembly line sex\u201c \u2013 how many? No one even knew \u2013 just unnerved me.<\/p>\n So where did my loyalties, my ultimate commitments lie? With hope of again pursuing an independent life, filled with joy, passion, love? With a restless creativity which would never die down? With whatever unseen Power had led me to the doors of People Temple? Or with\u2026 Jim Jones<\/em>?<\/em>\u00a0In the long hard wield of time, that might actually come in\u00a0fourth!<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>But now, instead, it was the\u00a0imperative.<\/em><\/p>\n Already political from birth, I was still a child of the McCarthy age and the imperatives of reversing societal injustice. I was guided to Peoples Temple and there I stayed. But had I any inkling that it was\u00a0this<\/em>\u00a0group that would eventually implode into the mass deaths I had foreseen? That answer would be \u201cNo.\u201d Consciously at least, I hadn\u2019t a clue.<\/p>\n I had a great mentor many years back who once told me, \u201cThere are three kinds of people in the world: Those who move with, those who move against, and those who are apart from.\u201d The stand-aparts, the stand-alones, even at times the \u201crise-aboves\u201d are the relative rarities. As a culture, we need such people, or many doors in life would remain shut. Most will not risk differences in motives or accomplishments, either one. But others here and there are just\u00a0born<\/em>\u00a0that way. Like me. I was\u00a0born<\/em>\u00a0that way. \u201cNot Like the Others.\u201d<\/p>\n So how could I fit in in Peoples Temple? Although I was yes, loyal, hard-working, compliant, I never did fit in. I wasn\u2019t social. I was in no clique. I never manipulated. I never curried favor. I never jockeyed for position. Nor did I ever think that I was there to take. I thought that I was there to give, to serve. I look back and now think, maybe too much \u2013 way too much. I was left prey to cultist vultures who would attack-attack-attack rather than even\u00a0talk<\/em>\u00a0to me.<\/p>\n But supposed to be there? \u201cYou\u00a0belong<\/em>\u00a0here\u201d? Very much so. I was just apparently there for some other, distinct purpose than were others. As has been borne out. All while I\u00a0felt<\/em>\u00a0for our collective plight. I\u00a0felt<\/em>\u00a0for every knock, every boost, every crisis, every victory. Being noisy or being mute is no barometer of what people feel. I felt with all my heart for this work (which was so very constructive!) to\u00a0succeed<\/em>. For others.<\/p>\n That I also wound up so outspoken in tragedy\u2019s wake, that indeed I was the\u00a0only<\/em>\u00a0one to ever investigate the very\u00a0two<\/em>-sided tragedy at Jonestown, was itself an anomaly, I suppose that my goal in life is to arrive at what is authentic and true, even though overriding accepted norms. So much has seemed like happenstance, that I can only think that destiny can indeed land us into unfamiliar, if challenging roles. But I get ahead of myself a bit.<\/p>\n Mr. Jones was likely right with his \u201cThis is your destiny point!\u201d flourish. No, not because he favored me personally (obviously not at all!) much less that it was clear then what it meant. I just seemed slated to foresee and record what\u00a0would<\/em>\u00a0happen. His own avowed mission (at least in the States) was to\u00a0prevent<\/em>\u00a0it.<\/p>\n Jim Jones did not hate me; he just could not\u00a0tolerate<\/em>\u00a0what my \u201cbelonging\u201d in Peoples Temple came to mean. I certainly never wanted mass death!; and Jim Jones would not have said that\u00a0he<\/em>\u00a0wanted it either. (The whole \u201cself-fulfilling prophecy\u201d can get twisted.) But then, despite\u00a0both<\/em>\u00a0of us, \u201cFate won.\u201d<\/p>\n This is what happened, via my enigmatic \u201cCassandra\u201d tale:<\/p>\n Some years in, but four years before the tragedy, in 1974, when Guyana was still barely-cleared brush, Spirit came to me in force and successively dictated word-for-word the epic poem, \u201cAllegory,\u201d unfolding vividly (and, as it turned out, accurately!) what would happen in Guyana, November 1978. I was in awe of the unseen Spirit, yet also shocked \u2013 not just at what I was told inwardly, but fear of the wrath of Jim Jones! I hoped against hope that either it had somehow come from\u00a0him<\/em>, or that he would at least discern enough of my state to comfort me, reassure me, not burst into a rage that I was somehow traitorous or wanted everyone dead!<\/p>\n In trepidation, I wrote a brief note reminding him that he had told me, \u201cYou can write one great work\u201d; that I believed that this was it; but that it was about \u201cyour death and the death of many of our people,\u201d and that \u201cit frightens me.\u201d Then I held my heart in my hands as he briefly, sharply looked at me like I was mad, and did not respond.<\/p>\n Within months, I thought I might burst[!], and gathered together a small group for a reading of \u201cAllegory.\u201d An avid listener passed it up the leadership chain, and that\u2019s when all hell broke loose against Laurie. In disgraceful breaches of humane norms, rife with bullies at his back, Jim finally let loose with, \u201cYou want me to\u00a0die<\/em>, don\u2019t you?\u201d I didn\u2019t want\u00a0anyone<\/em>\u00a0to die. I was horrified.<\/p>\n Yet apparently, even people who were there for the worst assault against me, in L.A., never grasped that I was not just a scapegoat, but the\u00a0wrong<\/em>\u00a0scapegoat. I was the straightest straight-arrow Peoples Temple had. I, perhaps more than anyone, stayed clear of sex, manipulations, fantasies, delusions, notes I never wrote, thoughts I never had, demands I never made, or whatever else I eventually learned in horror, were post-tragedy smears behind my back. I finally found a ringleader in late 2006[!], only to wind up appalled when he refused wholesale to defuse the lies!<\/p>\n I could not handle the bizarre power plays back then, not just on the part of Jim Jones, but by sadistic bullies at his back, some of whom survive to this day and it appears that they never changed.<\/p>\n This started just days after Jim got wind of \u201cAllegory.\u201d He railed at me, \u201cRead! I\u00a0command<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>you to read,\u201d like writing poetry was an act of royal treason! Not only was there no \u201cdefense\u201d I could offer, but it was from the start,\u00a0twisted:<\/em><\/p>\n To my astonishment, he suddenly shot out, \u201cIs it\u00a0sex<\/em>\u00a0that you want?\u201d Writing poetry? Sex? Related? How? It literally took me decades to piece together the fibs concocted to protect Jim Jones and smear Laurie \u2013 anything to eradicate that a shy, soft-spoken young woman could possibly know what she knew, or wrote what she wrote, or \u2013 the worst! \u2013 that the haunting reverie of mass death could possibly turn out to be\u00a0true<\/em>.<\/p>\n No. I had to want Jim Jones dead because he was not screwing [excuse] me. I had to be a callous iceberg who gleaned no sympathy, even in the face of flagrant abuse. I had to be a delusional lovesick cow or a rampant manipulator or someone who plagued the poor leader with endless narcissistic notes.<\/p>\n I look back now and think that people must be really\u00a0threatened<\/em>\u00a0to act that way. But I had no way to defend myself. What would I say? \u201cGod<\/em>\u00a0made me write the poem\u201d? (To people who some of them thought that\u00a0Jim Jones<\/em>\u00a0was God?!) I was frightened of being labeled traitorous or delusional as is. I could not stand, though nor could I run. I would have felt like I was abandoning people, however they were treating\u00a0me<\/em>. I did not know that the tragedy\u00a0would<\/em>\u00a0happen, but I\u00a0feared<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>it would. I stayed put.<\/p>\n And indeed, a few short months after the anti-poetry assault, I found myself \u2013 a quirk of wrong place at the wrong time? \u2013 turned into a scapegoat for whomever\u2019s\u00a0actual<\/em>\u00a0transgressions, at that time sexual ones.<\/p>\n Kill two birds with one stone: Scapegoat someone wrongly, but with enough aggression and harm, and then who will believe anything they have to say?\u00a0Discredit the messenger so as to cripple the message<\/em>.<\/p>\n Scapegoats are easy. Truth not that much.<\/p>\n I could not handle the bullying; and along with a mob screaming, \u201cYou can\u2019t defend yourself!\u201d I did not stand a chance that night. Yet even while devastated by the horror in L.A., I seemed to realize that however this seemed so\u00a0personal<\/em>, the real rub was \u201cAllegory.\u201d So when Sharon Amos, fanatic extraordinaire, came to me with a lame, \u201cJim is sorry about what happened. It was a new therapy,\u201d[??] I instinctively shot back, \u201cTell Jim that I destroyed my poetry. All except the poem about his death. I need to know from him that it\u2019s all right to\u00a0keep<\/em>\u00a0it.\u201d Jim was sitting up front. Sharon went up to him stiffly, returning with, \u201cHe said yes.\u201d<\/p>\n That was at best an uneasy truce. People did not realize, but he was relentless in his fury and mistrust of me, and that it was\u00a0all<\/em> about\u2026 Laurie must want me dead! He was playing for keeps, even though I was clearly \u201cthe wrong enemy.\u201c So when I finally approached him shyly with, \u201cI don\u2019t think I can handle what happened in L.A. I\u2019m starting to cry all the time,\u201d he looked\u00a0away<\/em>\u00a0from me, muttering \u201cSomeone may need to talk to you,\u201c and\u2026. walked away! No one seemed to care if I could still live or breathe so long as I had no\u00a0power<\/em>.<\/p>\n Another year later, he was screaming at me over the church-wide P.A. system[!] that he would \u201cf\u2013k me with a bulldozer\u201d and then that, \u201cThe people here are saying she [meaning\u00a0me<\/em>] must want you to die, Father. Why don\u2019t you just drop me in boiling oil?\u201d I fell to the ground weeping, \u201cWhy are you doing this? You\u2019re losing me, you\u2019re losing me, you\u2019re losing me\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n And he personally did lose me. I finally told Mr. Jones that \u201cI would rather you had put a bullet through my brain\u201d than endure \u201cthose bizarre ordeals with no redeeming value.\u201d Then lo and behold, suddenly I was treated with great respect! (Hint to anyone: Stand up to bullies!)<\/p>\n Shortly before Jim Jones left to Guyana for good, he sent someone to me with, \u201cJim wants to know if you have something to confess.\u201c I didn\u2019t. I just realized that Jones\u2019 paranoia was intact\u00a0whatever<\/em>\u00a0I said or did.<\/p>\n I did try to sound an alarm following the widely-reported \u201cgrape juice test\u201d in early 1976, where people were fooled into believing they were drinking a poison. I wrote him that if anything like this happened, it would not be in the States, but in Guyana and only if\/when our backs were up against the wall\u00a0militarily<\/em>\u00a0(as actually did happen). But that he had to know that by then, Peoples Temple would be divided into \u201ctwo families\u201d \u2013 the family of death in Guyana and the family of life in the States (= survivors.) That \u201cthe family of life\u201d would be left massively bereaved and up against a hostile world. So what were his plans, his contingencies (if any) for this?<\/p>\n Jim sent an aide to me to say something palliative like, \u201cJim says that now you\u2019re really thinking,\u201d but it was apparently an illusion that he would\u00a0do<\/em>\u00a0anything about it. (When tragedy struck, we in San Francisco did not even get a goodbye note.)<\/p>\n I just could not go when finally bidden to go to Jonestown myself (\u201cYou can leave tonight if you like\u201d =\u00a0a choice<\/em>). I was alarmed at the group coming under media\/political attack, and I wanted fervently for Jonestown to succeed. But whenever I imagined going there myself, I felt suffocated.<\/p>\n \u201cAllegory,\u201d meanwhile, remained locked into raw fear. But then, a single month prior to the tragedy, I suddenly felt impelled to re-surface the work. I read it to Marceline Jones, Jim\u2019s compassionate wife, in anguish over were we facing a happy future or were we facing\u00a0this<\/em>. She looked ashen, then said quietly, \u201cIt\u2019s beautiful. You keep it.\u201d<\/p>\n Finally, mere days\u00a0following<\/em>\u00a0the tragedy, drowned in grief, I opened \u201cAllegory\u201d to \u201cThe song rises from a thousand unmarked graves\u2026\u201d Finally I knew, for certain, what I had done. I was\u00a0there<\/em>. I was taken\u00a0there<\/em>\u00a0years earlier. I was shown through \u201cAllegory,\u201d\u00a0exactly<\/em>\u00a0what would happen, in detail. I am still in awe of whatever Personage presaged this and flooded my doomed friends with Grace from another world, whatever the scorn spewn from\u00a0this<\/em>\u00a0one.<\/p>\n I just want anyone reading this who, either out of ignorance, callousness, or (God forbid) enjoyment, has spread, heard or believed foul gossip about\u00a0me<\/em>,<\/em>\u00a0thinking that I was stupid, guilty, deluded, manipulative, or\u00a0whatever<\/em>\u00a0you thought: I will forgive you if you figure out how to apologize. But you will have to ask for that forgiveness. I\u2019m not here to play saint to scoundrels.<\/p>\n Please also remember that I am the\u00a0only<\/em>\u00a0one to ever question the official story of the assassination, with startlingly different facts brought to light. I had thought (apparently wrongly!) that by exposing the tale of abuse against me\u00a0myself<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 as I did in my book Snake Dance<\/em> \u2013 that that would somehow \u201cinoculate\u201d me from backroom smears enough to move forwards with investigative work credibly,\u00a0should that be possible<\/em>.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t know what was the bigger shock: That the outlandish smears \u2013 from fellow survivors! \u2013 stretched out for decades post-tragedy, or that it ever became possible to proceed with hard evidence, but both happened in spades! Meanwhile, I have yet to see the former defused or the latter credited.<\/p>\n Now it\u2019s late in life. I\u2019m tired. I\u2019ve heard\u00a0everything<\/em>. I have been called deluded, lovesick, manipulative, steeped in sick fantasies, wanting the leader dead, colluding in my own torture \u2013 nay, putting it in writing! \u2013 all 100% false. I have been told that I had it coming to me. Someone apparently even spread that I \u201cenjoyed\u201d it \u2013 an incident that I wrote brought on fears of gang rape! I saw a survivor leering and laughing at how I was tortured, in a nationally-released film as late as 2006. A survivor I had given 20 years of good friendship to, landed on me to my horror, \u201cWho cares about you, Laurie? You\u2019re not even worth a gossip session.\u201d Another strung me along for a whole decade of pretend-friend charade while stabbing me behind my back. Another one complained to me bitterly that, “Why did\u00a0I<\/em>\u00a0have to say that this [the abuse] was wrong? Why not someone else?”<\/p>\n Maybe because\u00a0anyone<\/em>\u00a0humane should know the difference? This has been\u00a0abhorrent!<\/em> Not just then, but now. And this is not even a complete list.<\/p>\n If any survivors out there want to make amends, I’m right here and I welcome it. Otherwise, I’m done. I have grieved for whoever lost loved ones. I wept for years myself. But human cruelty then and human cruelty now is still human cruelty. Even major tragedy did not teach people that? Tragedy, for all its pain, is supposed to make people\u00a0better<\/em>.<\/p>\n Meanwhile,\u00a0I had to do an exhaustive research project (“In Plain Sight”) in the face of: I must have wanted Jim Jones\u00a0dead!<\/em>\u00a0I must be\u00a0defending<\/em>\u00a0Jim Jones! I was secretly traitorous! I was fanatically loyal!<\/p>\n But say, how could that all even co-exist?<\/p>\n So which \u201cside\u201d am I on? Well, I\u2019m not on a\u00a0side<\/em>. I am with the tragic\u00a0overview<\/em>\u00a0from the high Spirit Who showed me the event years in advance, and dictated \u201cAllegory\u201d to me. It is the pure stark\u00a0tragedy<\/em>\u00a0of it. It is what I saw when I burst out weeping in the street all the way back in 1962, not even knowing who would die, when, how, why, or what that could possibly have to do with\u00a0me<\/em>.<\/p>\n Yet I also remain astounded at the unquestioning embrace of the official story by those who should care the most: the survivor group. Even though the first several seconds of the assassins\u2019 disembark were finally released to the public, no one but me\u00a0ever<\/em>\u00a0even questioned, \u201cWho were those assassins?\u201d Because there was\/is no way to match them against the accuseds, nor were there any\u00a0confessions<\/em>\u00a0at Jonestown. I clinched that to a certainty. Not even Jim Jones (terminally ill by then, miles away from the attacks, and dependent upon unreliable aides) knew the identities of the killers. He said so seven times on the final tape!<\/p>\n Good God \u2013 this was\u00a0an unsolved Congressional assassination!<\/em>\u00a0I finally solved it myself in exhaustive detail; but it bruised me that\u00a0no one else even asked or cared. Especially when I have been so thorough, so credible, and so willing to address questions that were never before posed.<\/p>\n Understand, I cannot fully grasp \u201cwhy me\u201d with the investigative work any more than \u201cwhy me\u201d with the precognitive art work. This was truly happenstance, since for a whole year following the tragedy, I believed that it\u00a0was<\/em>\u00a0men from Jonestown who had killed the Congressman because there was nothing else to go on.<\/p>\n But then, at the first anniversary of the tragedy, November 18, 1979, to my shock[!] the complete \u201csnuff film\u201d of the ambush (filmed by Bob Brown of NBC before he was slain) was shown right on TV, on a local station in New York (most other survivors were still in California) called WPIX, channel 9. At which point it was clear that this was a\u00a0military<\/em>\u00a0op (I happened to be watching with an Army veteran), hardly an ad hoc hit by bumbling amateurs from Jonestown. The veteran sitting on my right i.d.\u2019ed the attack formation on screen as a \u201csquad diamond.\u201d<\/p>\n We know for sure that I\u00a0did<\/em>\u00a0see that snuff film because in my book Snake Dance<\/em>, published years before I learned that\u00a0any<\/em>\u00a0of the filming had been retained, I detailed being told that the attack formation was a squad diamond.<\/p>\n By the time of publishing Snake Dance<\/em> in 1998, I felt it unlikely that the snuff film had\u00a0not<\/em>\u00a0been confiscated. Especially since I had gone to the Congressional investigating committee all the way back in January, 1980 to demand that they blow up the film \u2013 which they acknowledged was in their possession \u2013 to identify and\/or rule out the assassins. The reception was predictably hostile. So I thought it likely that\u00a0I<\/em>\u00a0had provoked confiscation of the NBC on-site filming.<\/p>\n Apparently \u2013 I did not know until late 2006 \u2013 a scant six seconds of filming of the assassins\u2019 disembark\u00a0were<\/em>\u00a0saved and later publicly released, perhaps to verify the brutality of the sneak attack, not realizing what could be gleaned from the short span.<\/p>\n I was shocked that even that much was now in the public domain! When I identified the squad diamond military formation in Snake Dance<\/em>, it was a \u201cHail Mary\u201d at best. I expected that it was something that I would\u00a0not<\/em>\u00a0be able prove due to confiscation of evidence.<\/p>\n In early 2007, heart in throat, I meticulously freeze-framed the newly-released film, and \u2013 as printed in successive freeze-frames in the In Plain Sight project \u2013 the squad diamond was indeed there, as well as views of the assassins which definitively rule out the assassin i.d.\u2019s given out both publicly and in the FBI report. (To be more frank, black isn’t white, for one thing.)<\/p>\n The reported FBI i.d.’s are clearly wrong; and I\u2019ve done no guesswork on that. I have been specific and thorough as to why in my \u201cIn Plain Sight\u201d project. I want people to understand that, as it also goes to motive. My<\/em>\u00a0motive. Namely, that I have wanted the authentic truth\u00a0period<\/em>.<\/p>\n That is (of course!) part of why it has been so wrong to be recklessly discredited by the rumor mill. It is not only deeply personal offense. It has assaulted my credibility, my\u00a0highly<\/em>\u00a0credible work about a major world event.<\/p>\n I subsequently also obtained the schematic of the airstrip at the time, the FBI reports, additional NBC footage, news reports of the time, autopsy and inquest reports, and much else. Thus was I able to reconstruct the airstrip scene with certainty in the \u201cIn Plain Sight\u201d project, detailing that it was\u00a0impossible<\/em>\u00a0that the assassins at the Port Kaituma airstrip were from Jonestown.<\/p>\n It even became clear\u00a0why<\/em>\u00a0none of the so-called \u201ceyewitness i.d.s\u201d were credible. Blocked lines of vision; already airborne in a different plane; i.d.\u2018ed people on the airstrip\u00a0earlier<\/em>, and did not even see the attack! And the sole \u201cgovernment eyewitness\u201d (as told to me personally by the Congressional committee) by his own admission, fleeing in the opposite direction a hundred yards away and would have had to see through the body of a plane!<\/p>\n Shocking? Well, how shocking is it that it is so\u00a0provable<\/em>, yet no one but me ever even looked?<\/p>\n So who\u00a0did<\/em>\u00a0commit the killings at the Port Kaituma airstrip? Well, this was a CIA \u201cblack op,\u201d admittedly a screwy one. A \u201clook-alike, kill-two-birds-with-one-stone frame\u201d? Yes! Just blame the CIA for that, not me!<\/p>\n But why the CIA? Not complicated. Declassified documents reveal that they had been fixing elections in Guyana for eleven years prior, to keep it out of Cuba\u2019s sphere. It was still the Cold War. Peoples Temple was poised to re-relocate to the then-USSR, while also befriending Cuba. Congressman Leo Ryan, for his part, passed the Hughes-Ryan<\/em>\u00a0Amendment to the Foreign Relations Act of 1974, forcing the CIA to report black ops to Congress. In a remote jungle locale, killing the Congressman and framing it on the cult leader turned out to be\u00a0doable<\/em>.<\/p>\n Tragically,\u00a0neither<\/em>\u00a0side, Jones nor Ryan, did their opposition research. This was a\u00a0political<\/em>\u00a0assassination and a\u00a0political<\/em>\u00a0frame. No one\u00a0needs<\/em>\u00a0a \u201cconspiracy theory.\u201d The facts here were not at issue, just not publicized at the time. Anyone needing proof can just go to my “In Plain Sight” project.<\/p>\n Almost more shocking,\u00a0the people of Jonestown died not knowing that they were being framed<\/em>. I find that chilling and doubly sad.<\/p>\n I have also been able to isolate\/analyze the \u201cpsychotic trigger\u201d in Jim Jones which made mass suicide even thinkable, in my piece \u201cThe Notorious Incident.\u201d I have thought it important to know (not<\/em>\u00a0justify, no \u2013 but know)\u00a0how\/why<\/em>\u00a0this happened, in its horrendous\u00a0emotional<\/em>\u00a0parameters. Since for all the avalanche of pages on this subject,\u00a0no one<\/em>\u00a0else \u2013 scholars, psychiatrists, ex-members, whomever \u2013 has deciphered this. I have.<\/p>\n OK. I’m sorry if facts do not go over well with the survivor group, or even the public for that matter. Facts will always take precedence over bias, presuppositions, or vitriol. I wanted a clear slate for the dead, who can no longer speak for themselves. And that work I\u2019ve done. All that matters now is to\u00a0rise above<\/em>. \u201cNot Like the Others.\u201d<\/p>\n Meanwhile, I\u2019ve had to navigate a whole other strand in my consciousness: the\u00a0phenomenal<\/em>\u00a0gift from the higher planes of both recording the Jonestown Tragedy in advance, and how it arrived via a linguistically radiant text. As well as finally, a meltingly beautiful musical setting of the poem (which is re-printed in full at \u201cPremonitions,\u201d in the Jonestown.com sub-section), a work now well in progress.<\/p>\n Maybe the ultimate \u201cnothing left to lose.\u201d (Though I am also astoundingly lucky to have a happy marriage long range \u2013 go, Dan!) But \u201cAllegory,\u201c the oratorio, is (like a tragic opera) beautiful, and I am grateful, moved, and proud to proceed. I might even call it \u201cGod [or whatever higher Power had approached\u00a0me<\/em>] getting the last word.\u201d <\/p>\n This world is a troubled place. Unlikely it will be me who sets that all alright. But God willing, I will secure my\u00a0place<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" (Laurie Efrein Kahalas is a regular contributor to the jonestown report. Her previous writings may be found here. She can be reached through dan_laurie44@comcast.net.) I was born gentle into a harsh world, mere days shy of D-Day. Both sets of grandparents had fled pogroms in Eastern Europe, were strictly Orthodox, and spoke only Yiddish. My […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":81229,"menu_order":10,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-82121","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/82121","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=82121"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/82121\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":82743,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/82121\/revisions\/82743"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/81229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=82121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}