From the moment the story of Jonestown

Jonestown

Jonestown was the informal name for the Peoples Temple Agricultural Project, an intentional community in northwestern Guyana formed by the Peoples Temple led by Jim Jones. It became internationally notorious when, on November 18, 1978, 918 people died in the settlement as well as in a nearby...

 broke, conspiracy theories began to surface which could allegedly reveal the truth of what happened there and explain the events leading up to the massacre. Almost all of the them involve the American CIA.

The theories

The most predominant suggestion is that the settlement Jim Jones

Jim Jones

James Warren "Jim" Jones was the founder and leader of the Peoples Temple, which is best known for the November 18, 1978 mass suicide of 909 Temple members in Jonestown, Guyana along with the killings of five other people at a nearby airstrip.Jones was born in Indiana and started the Temple in...

 created in the jungle of northern Guyana

Guyana

Guyana , officially the Co-operative Republic of Guyana, previously the colony of British Guiana, is a sovereign state on the northern coast of South America that is culturally part of the Anglophone Caribbean. Guyana was a former colony of the Dutch and of the British...

, close to New Amsterdam, was either supported or infiltrated by the CIA to study the effects of truth serums and other drugs on cultural indoctrination as an offshoot of the MKULTRA program. It was thought at the time that these methods had already been developed by governments like the USSR and the PRC, and used to secure cooperation from captured political prisoners.

The CIA's ultimate goal was no less than to overthrow the government of Guyana, which was an English-speaking yet small, relatively poor country, carefully chosen to match the demographics of the Peoples Church. It was thought a nation run by Jones under CIA influence could be no worse than that of Forbes Burnham

Forbes Burnham

Linden Forbes Sampson Burnham was the leader of Guyana from 1964 until his death, first as Premier from 1964 to 1966, then as the Prime Minister from 1966 to 1980 and finally as President from 1980 to 1985....

, and that such a state would provide an example of a communist nation the United States could engage with politically. The CIA kept Jonestown supplied with drugs, money, and weapons in the hopes they would eventually be able to convert the locals.

As the subjects in Jonestown became more and more resistant to outside control, and it became obvious that the conversion to a socialist dictatorship could not be undone, it became necessary for the CIA to end the experiment and eliminate the test subjects rather than risk losing them to the Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

.

The CIA used their assets in the region to eliminate Representative

United States House of Representatives

The United States House of Representatives is one of the two Houses of the United States Congress, the bicameral legislature which also includes the Senate.The composition and powers of the House are established in Article One of the Constitution...

 Leo Ryan

Leo Ryan

Leo Joseph Ryan, Jr. was an American politician of the Democratic Party. He served as a U.S. Representative from California's 11th congressional district from 1973 until he was murdered in Guyana by members of the Peoples Temple shortly before the Jonestown Massacre in 1978.After the Watts Riots...

 when the opportunity presented itself, mainly to send a message to supporters of the Hughes-Ryan Act

Hughes-Ryan Act

The Hughes-Ryan Act is a 1974 United States federal law that amended the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961. The Act was named for its co-authors, Senator Harold E. Hughes and Representative Leo Ryan...

. The CIA used the ensuing massacre and its aftermath to distract attention from Ryan's involvement in attempts to reform and constrain the agency and to distance themselves from the events and their participants. It was also useful to discredit Guyana's socialist regime specifically and socialism

Socialism

Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...

 and communism

Communism

Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...

 in general.

The CIA was using the Peoples Temple

Peoples Temple

Peoples Temple was a religious organization founded in 1955 by Jim Jones that, by the mid-1970s, included over a dozen locations in California including its headquarters in San Francisco...

 and its unlicensed nursing home as a front to create false adoptions and other schemes intended to defraud U.S. government assistance programs

Welfare

Welfare refers to a broad discourse which may hold certain implications regarding the provision of a minimal level of wellbeing and social support for all citizens without the stigma of charity. This is termed "social solidarity"...

. This money, which continued to flow even after the establishment of Jonestown, was then laundered through the church, and the congregation's private bank accounts which had all been signed over to the church. The money was used to fund political advertisements, busing voters to the polls, and secretly paying vagrants and other people who wouldn't normally vote to support their candidates.

Discrepancies in the body count and cause of death

Headlines in the New York Post

New York Post

The New York Post is the 13th-oldest newspaper published in the United States and is generally acknowledged as the oldest to have been published continuously as a daily, although – as is the case with most other papers – its publication has been periodically interrupted by labor actions...

, the New York Times, and the San Francisco Examiner originally cited reports from the Guyanese army that 408 people had killed themselves while more than 500 others managed to flee into the surrounding jungle.

The American military arrived several days later and the body count quickly rose; first it was 700, then 780, to a final tally given seven days after the Guyanese report of 909 dead, 4 followers dead at the Temple offices in the capital of Georgetown, and 5 members of Ryan's delegation, including the Congressman himself, murdered at the Port Kaituma airstrip. Only 167 Jonestown inhabitants were reported to have survived.

In explaining the discrepancies, one U.S. official said the Guyanese "couldn’t count" while another said that the 400 corpses initially found had just been stacked in such a way that they hid more than 500 more. The dead littered the compound, with piles of bodies decomposing atop one another near the pavilion, and corpses in other buildings or far-flung positions were not readily apparent.

While the total number of settlers living in Jonestown at the time of the massacre has never been properly verified, based on the population estimates there could be anywhere between 20 and 120 followers not accounted for. Conspiracy theorists and at least one Congressional aide claimed these people formed the so-called "Red Brigade", which was armed guards (or perhaps brainwashed assassins) who carried out the attack at the airport as well as providing more typical duties maintaining security along the roads and around the compound.

According to the New York Times, the first trained medical official on the scene was the Guyanese coroner

Coroner

A coroner is a government official who* Investigates human deaths* Determines cause of death* Issues death certificates* Maintains death records* Responds to deaths in mass disasters* Identifies unknown dead* Other functions depending on local laws...

 Dr. Leslie C. Mootoo. He and his assistants examined over 100 of the bodies during a 32-hour period and found that the adults had all been injected with cyanide

Cyanide

A cyanide is a chemical compound that contains the cyano group, -C≡N, which consists of a carbon atom triple-bonded to a nitrogen atom. Cyanides most commonly refer to salts of the anion CN−. Most cyanides are highly toxic....

 in places which they could not have reached without assistance, such as between the shoulder blades, and that many of them had also been shot. (Charles Huff, one of the first American soldiers on the scene, also reported having seen "many gunshot victims', as well as other victims who had been shot with a crossbow

Crossbow

A crossbow is a weapon consisting of a bow mounted on a stock that shoots projectiles, often called bolts or quarrels. The medieval crossbow was called by many names, most of which derived from the word ballista, a torsion engine resembling a crossbow in appearance.Historically, crossbows played a...

, all of whom appeared to have been attempting to flee.) Mootoo also felt that the children were incapable of consenting to suicide. Based on his preliminary findings, Mootoo speculated that the majority of those who died in Jonestown may have been murder

Murder

Murder is the unlawful killing, with malice aforethought, of another human being, and generally this state of mind distinguishes murder from other forms of unlawful homicide...

ed.

Despite Guyana law requiring an autopsy

Autopsy

An autopsy—also known as a post-mortem examination, necropsy , autopsia cadaverum, or obduction—is a highly specialized surgical procedure that consists of a thorough examination of a corpse to determine the cause and manner of death and to evaluate any disease or injury that may be present...

 for any unnatural death, the Americans insisted that the cause of death was readily apparent and additional inquiry was not necessary. Relatives and officials back in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 complained about being kept from the remains, and according to the New York Times, Dr. Sturmer, then President of the National Association of Medical Examiners, sent an open letter

Open letter

An open letter is a letter that is intended to be read by a wide audience, or a letter intended for an individual, but that is nonetheless widely distributed intentionally....

 to the U.S. Army complaining about the handling of remains and the illegal cremations of most of the Jonestown victims. For a number of reasons, some legal and some merely logistical, the bodies were not flown out of the remote jungle location of Jonestown for up to a week before being flown to New Jersey

New Jersey

New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...

, which allowed significant decomposition to occur. Ultimately seven autopsies were conducted but the medical examiners were not informed of Dr. Mootoo’s preliminary findings and the corpses were far too decayed for injection sites or other wounds to remain identifiable during the procedures.

Richard Dwyer and the State Department's involvement

Despite the growing allegations of misconduct against the Peoples Temple in the U.S., the move to Jonestown was given the full support of the American Embassy in Guyana. Some claim their cooperation was facilitated by Larry Layton's brother-in-law, as well as people including Walter Mondale

Walter Mondale

Walter Frederick "Fritz" Mondale is an American Democratic Party politician, who served as the 42nd Vice President of the United States , under President Jimmy Carter, and as a United States Senator for Minnesota...

, Rosalynn Carter

Rosalynn Carter

Eleanor Rosalynn Carter is the wife of the former President of the United States Jimmy Carter and in that capacity served as the First Lady of the United States from 1977 to 1981. As First Lady and after, she has been a leading advocate for numerous causes, perhaps most prominently for mental...

, and George Moscone

George Moscone

George Richard Moscone was an American attorney and Democratic politician. He was the 37th mayor of San Francisco, California, US from January 1976 until his assassination in November 1978. Moscone served in the California State Senate from 1967 until becoming Mayor. In the Senate, he served as...

. Others point out that the Georgetown CIA station was in office space within the U.S. Embassy building itself, and at least three diplomatic officials there were allegedly CIA assets.

Richard Dwyer, whose name was listed in Who's Who in the CIA, a document shown to have contained false information perpetrated by Soviet Bloc, was Deputy Chief of Mission of the U.S. Embassy to Guyana at the time. There exists a strong likelihood that Ryan would not have been at the airstrip during the attack without direct intervention by Dwyer. Ryan had intended to remain at the Jonestown compound to continue interviewing families while those wishing to return to the United States were taken to the airstrip, but as the dump truck was leaving Ryan was attacked by Peoples Temple follower and alleged Red Brigade member Don Sly (also known as Ujara). Ujara wielded only a knife and the attack was quickly ended. Ryan was cut in the attack and decided to board the dump truck headed to the airstrip. Already on the dump truck was Larry Layton, who, despite warnings by the defectors that Layton was a strong supporter of Jim Jones, had been allowed to join the group at the last minute. Layton participated in the attacks on the Ryan delegation, ultimately serving nearly twenty years in prison after being disarmed and failing to kill his targets on the Cessna

Cessna

The Cessna Aircraft Company is an airplane manufacturing corporation headquartered in Wichita, Kansas, USA. Their main products are general aviation aircraft. Although they are the most well known for their small, piston-powered aircraft, they also produce business jets. The company is a subsidiary...

, becoming the only Peoples Temple follower to face criminal charges for these events.

On September 27, 1980, a column by investigative reporter Jack Anderson was published under the title "CIA Involved In Jonestown Massacre." According to Anderson, Dwyer and ones had ties to the CIA, with Dwyer's ties dating to at least 1959; when quizzed directly about this alleged CIA involvement, Dwyer responded "no comment." At one point on the sound-recording made during the mass suicide, Jones' own voice commands, "Take Dwyer on down to the east house" and a short time later, Jones says "Get Dwyer out of here before something happens to him."

However, rather than being in Jonestown, numerous witnesses, including reporters for the Washington Post and San Franscisco Chronicle, saw Dwyer miles away at the Port Kaituma

Port Kaituma

Port Kaituma is a small town within the Barima-Waini administrative region of Guyana, located at .- History :Although an Amerindian settlement has existed along the Kaituma River for some time, it was only after the discovery of manganese at nearby Matthew's Ridge that Port Kaituma was developed...

 airstrip. Dwyer arrived there with some local constables just before the ambush by the Jonestown "Red Brigade" security squad. Dwyer was also shot in the buttocks during the Red Brigade's ambush at that location. Dwyer stayed at the airstrip with the survivors during the night. Although no one can be certain, Jones' slurred speech and the apparent confusion evidenced in his followers on the tape at his reference to Dwyer may indicate that Jones mistook someone else (perhaps Charles Garry) for Dwyer.

Other conspirators

Joseph Blatchford

Joseph Blatchford

Joseph Blatchford was the third Director of the United States Peace Corps succeeding Jack Vaughn. Blatchford was appointed Peace Corps Director in 1969 by President Richard Nixon.-Early life and education:...

 and Dan Webber are two other people associated with Jonestown or its aftermath with alleged links to the CIA.

Jim Jones' alleged childhood friend Dan Mitrione

Dan Mitrione

Daniel A. Mitrione was an Italian-born American police officer, Federal Bureau of Investigation agent and a United States government advisor for the Central Intelligence Agency in Latin America.- Career :...

, whom Jones was reported to have coincidentally ran across in Brazil during his two years spent there looking for appropriate locations for his commune, is also supposed to be a CIA agent who provided Jones with $10,000 to use upon his return to the United States.

"The Jonestown Carnage: A CIA Crime (1978)" published in the USSR

In 1987, The Jonestown Carnage: A CIA Crime (1978) by S.F. Alinin, B.G. Antonov and A.N. Itskov was published in the USSR, relying upon both unfounded allegations and some relatively indisputable facts. The book cites many characteristics of the Peoples Temple which may have made it unpopular with the U.S. Government. For example, citing the numerous tapes and writings of the Temple, the book notes that the Peoples Temple practiced apostolic

Pentecostalism

Pentecostalism is a diverse and complex movement within Christianity that places special emphasis on a direct personal experience of God through the baptism in the Holy Spirit, has an eschatological focus, and is an experiential religion. The term Pentecostal is derived from Pentecost, the Greek...

 socialism

Socialism

Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...

, preached atheism

Atheism

Atheism is, in a broad sense, the rejection of belief in the existence of deities. In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities...

, and opposed what it termed to be capitalist

Capitalism

Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...

 imperialism

Imperialism

Imperialism, as defined by Dictionary of Human Geography, is "the creation and/or maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural, and territorial relationships, usually between states and often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination." The imperialism of the last 500 years,...

 by the U.S. government. The book also cites the numerous meetings that representatives of the Peoples' Temple had with Soviet embassy officials to negotiate a potential exodus to the Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

. The book also references the October 2, 1978 visit to Jonestown by Soviet Embassy representative Feodor Timofeyev, who praised the commune for being a socialist haven, wagging its collective finger in the face of the U.S. government.

In addition to documented events, the book also includes contentious allegations not revealed in the Jonestown tapes or other available evidence. One such item describes a statement by Timofeyev of a purported meeting on November 18, 1978, with Deborah Touchette, whom Timofeyev claimed passed him a briefcase with cash and Peoples Temple documents inside. Another report in the book concerned a call from Sharon Amos, staying at the Peoples Temple office in Georgetown with her three children on the day of the massacre, where Amos allegedly described a radio message from out of Jonestown about military helicopters and armed men approaching the compound. Amos and her three children died upon Jones' order.

Based upon these and other allegations, the author contends that the cult members were assassinated by CIA agents and mercenaries to prevent further political emigration from the U.S. as well as suppress opposition to the U.S. regime.

External links

• Father Cares: The Last of Jonestown - Airing in 1981, this 90 minute audio documentary was based on hundreds of hours of audio tape acquired under the Freedom of Information Act. Winner of the Dupont Columbia Award, the National Headliner Award and the Prix Italia.
• 'Jonestown Legacy' - Jonestown Legacy is a site run by David Wise, a former Pastor of the Los Angeles Branch of the Peoples Temple. David Wise turned against Jim Jones when Jones began to lose his mind and was hunted down by Jones and found twice. He spent twenty five years hiding out because Jones alleged to have taken a contract out on Wise's life. He is now writing a book with the same title. Note 1/2009: site empty, 'parked'.
• 'Jonestown and Official San Francisco: The Untold Story' - Documents the enormous support Jim Jones received from San Francisco politicians during both the period he built his "Church" in that city and afterwards when questions were raised about his project in Guyana.
• 'Audio recording of mass suicide' - An audio recording of the mass suicides in MP3
  MP3
  MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a patented digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression...
  
   and FLAC
  FLAC
  FLAC is a codec which allows digital audio to be losslessly compressed such that file size is reduced without any information being lost...
  
   formats
• List of who died at Jonestown
• Alternative considerations of Jonestown and Peoples Temple, San Diego State University, documented attempts to gain U.S. government information, personal recollections, and essays.
• The Jonestown, Guyana Tragedy - The contents of US Government archives on the subject obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. The original website has disappeared, so this link is via web.archive.org; unfortunately the scanned pages are missing.
• Transcript of Jim Jones' final speech in which he announces that suicide is now the best solution.
• Crime Library - The Jonestown Massacre
• CNN.com - Jonestown survivors recall fateful day
• The Jonestown Carnage: A CIA Crime (Russian) - A book (in Russian) published in Soviet Union in 1987 containing witnesses of some people at Soviet embassy in Guyana and copies of documents unknown to western world. Soviet ambassador recalls a meeting on 18 November with Deborah Touchette (she passed a briefcase with cash, tape records and documents of People's Temple to him) and a call from Sharon Adams (she told about radio message from Jonestown about military helicopters and armed people approaching Jonestown on 18 November).
• CNN.com - Jonestown survivor: 'Wrong from every point of view'
• CNN.com - Timeline: Road to tragedy in Jonestown
• Jim Jones inspiration for his ideology and cult control techniques (no author)
• Masters and Slaves:  The Tragedy of Jonestown, by Fanita English - Idea Journal article, addresses mind control (compares to Nazi Germany)
• Report to the committee on Foreign Affairs, May 1979
• The Black Hole of Guyana, by John Judge article by researcher John Judge
• The Truth About Jonestown, by Shelia Yohnk
• The Word Spy - drink the Kool-Aid