{"id":94910,"date":"2020-02-11T11:35:02","date_gmt":"2020-02-11T19:35:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=94910"},"modified":"2026-04-25T10:52:53","modified_gmt":"2026-04-25T17:52:53","slug":"the-state-department-and-peoples-temple","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=94910","title":{"rendered":"The State Department and Peoples Temple"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
U.S. Embassy, Georgetown, Guyana<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

While numerous federal agencies took an interest in Peoples Temple following the deaths in Jonestown, the State Department \u2013 and most particularly, the U.S. Embassy in Georgetown, Guyana \u2013 had the greatest contact with the organization between 1974 and November 1978, the period of Jonestown\u2019s existence. <\/p>\n

Much of that contact stemmed from the fact that the Embassy had responsibilities for the “whereabouts and welfare” of individual residents of Jonestown, not only as it responded to queries from relatives in the U.S., but also at it provided consular services for the people themselves, almost all of whom arrived in Guyana as American citizens and remained so until their deaths.<\/p>\n

The agency\u2019s involvement generated more than 6000 pages of documents. In 1981, responding to a request under the Freedom of Information Act from Rebecca Moore and Fielding McGehee, who eventually became the managers of this website, State released about 5700 pages. The majority of the documents consisted of cables between Georgetown and Washington, dating from 1974 until 1981, with most of them from November and December of 1978 and early 1979. In addition to that initial 1981 release, the State Department later released 350 pages under FOIA of agency records on the child custody battle over John Victor Stoen.<\/p>\n

It should be noted that many of the texts for the cables included in the pages below were provided by the Wikileaks site. This is especially true for cables for which there is no corresponding pdf or which were heavily redacted. For more discussion of Wikileaks\u2019 collapse, click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The State Department Cables<\/strong><\/p>\n

1974-1977<\/a>
\nJanuary \u2013 November 1978<\/a>
\nThe Leo Ryan Trip<\/a>
\nNovember 18, 1978<\/a>
\nThe First Week \u2013 November 19-November 25, 1978<\/a>
\nThe Second Week \u2013 November 26-December 2, 1978<\/a>
\nDecember 1978<\/a>
\nJanuary \u2013 December 1979<\/a>
\n1980-1981<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There were thousands of other pages beyond the cables in the State Department’s possession as well. Several hundred of them have been transcribed, including: <\/p>\n

The Stoens, the U.S. Embassy, the State Department, and Congress<\/strong><\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Prior to the deaths, the Embassy had scores of interactions with Peoples Temple. Most of them came in the form of periodic visits to Jonestown by consular officers, who, among other responsibilities, conducted \u201cWhereabouts and Welfare\u201d checks on Jonestown residents on behalf of their relatives back in the US. \u00a0The Embassy was also deeply involved in balancing the efforts of Timothy and Grace Stoen to regain custody over John Victor Stoen, with its responsibility to remain a neutral party in all disputes concerning American citizens living in Guyana. Following November 18, the State Department and its embassy was overwhelmed with its work to repatriate the bodies from Jonestown, to field hundreds of queries from families, the press, and Congress, and to maintain America\u2019s relationship with the country of Guyana itself.<\/p>\n

Many of the cables \u2013 especially those in the 1981 release \u2013 contained information which was deleted under an exemption in the Freedom of Information Act. The most commonly-used exemptions by State are:<\/p>\n

b(1) = information the release of which would jeopardize national security
\nb(6) = information the release of which would violate an individual\u2019s privacy<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In 2014, the State Department released thousands of agency files as part of a general declassification review, including hundreds of cables related to Peoples Temple. They didn\u2019t become widely available to the public, however, until 2015 and 2016, when Wikileaks put them online. While the resulting record was neither official nor complete \u2013 there are scores of cables that the State Department continues to withhold and that Wikileaks didn\u2019t access \u2013 the texts that Wikileaks posted are accurate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While numerous federal agencies took an interest in Peoples Temple following the deaths in Jonestown, the State Department \u2013 and most particularly, the U.S. Embassy in Georgetown, Guyana \u2013 had the greatest contact with the organization between 1974 and November 1978, the period of Jonestown\u2019s existence. Much of that contact stemmed from the fact that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":13764,"menu_order":1,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-94910","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/94910","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=94910"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/94910\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":137525,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/94910\/revisions\/137525"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/13764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=94910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}