Episode Six Apostolic Socialism

President John F. Kennedy
Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, New York City
April 27, 1961

“Ladies and gentlemen, the very word "secrecy" is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it. Even today, there is little value in opposing the threat of a closed society by imitating its arbitrary restrictions. Even today, there is little value in ensuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it. And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment. And no official of my Administration, whether his rank is high or low, civilian or military, should interpret my words here tonight as an excuse to censor the news, to stifle dissent, to cover up our mistakes or to withhold from the press and the public the facts they deserve to know. For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence--on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations.

Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried, not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed.

No President should fear public scrutiny of his program.

Without debate, without criticism, no Administration and no country can succeed--and no republic can survive. And so it is to the printing press--to the recorder of man's deeds, the keeper of his conscience, the courier of his news--that we look for strength and assistance, confident that with your help man will be what he was born to be: free and independent.”.

Welcome to Transmissions from Jonestown. You’re listening to episode six, Apostolic Socialism.

As the dust settles on Jonestown and the years go by, mountains of evidence grow to insurmountable heights. As researchers and scholars ascend the proverbial peak remains lost in a haze, growing ever higher. 40 years later the tragedy in Jonestown with its high-resolution images of mass carnage and over forty thousand pages of FBI documents, paints a gruesome picture of nonsensical events. Anyone who has researched the subject well can tell you, once you get over the shock of how something like Jonestown can happen and try to understand why, the web of mystery and intrigue woven between the white noise of global politics inevitably becomes a black hole. There are just too many questions. Was Jim Jones working for the CIA? Why did it take 4 days to remove bodies from Jonestown? Why were only a handful of autopsies performed? What was Jim Jones doing in Cuba? Who sent the message over the radio using a secret CIA channel? How many bodies had puncture wounds from forced injections? How did Jim Jones get the monkeys to sell in Indiana as a teenager? Who was supplying the drugs to Jim Jones and the clinic in Jonestown? What are the ties between Jonestown and MK Ultra? Was Richard Dwyer working for the CIA?

Jones Q354: Attention, attention. Excuse the fact please that I’ve been up several nights and days, fighting this horrible conspiracy with our wonderful attorney. It’s staggering to the imagination. I’m very sorry also that I have a laryngitic voice that makes for unpleasant listening. Anyway, the socialist revolution in all countries and under all countries, revolution in the countries and under the countries– of all the countries and under the countries and under the– the various struggles and number of circumstances. no matter what method they use. Anyway, Guyana is standing by fully the struggle for liberation. We cannot be grateful enough to live in a country. It ought to inspire us to great work, to help produce a great nation who gives so much of her limited resources to other nations resisting oppression. Needless to say, my lack of sleep for now going on the fourth day, I know you’re not accustomed to hearing my voice in this fashion. It’s just one of those days. And as all of you know, I sure don’t drink, and I oppose drugs with every sinew and fiber in my bones.

To continue on our quest to understand what happened in Jonestown I invite you to follow me down the rabbit hole. I would like to thank our anonymous contributors whom without their unique and often colorful voices and opinions this episode would not be possible. Not everything you hear can be verified as fact, but I encourage you to research these theories for yourself and make up your own mind. Many of these theories do not in any way reflect my own feelings about the Peoples Temple or what happened November 18, 1978, but all are worth mentioning.

Cobbled together from intelligence agencies left over from ww2, the CIA was created to fight communism using the military in covert operations and to collect intelligence on hostile foreign governments. As Berlin was split in half and the USSR developed the bomb, the rise of communism emboldened the CIA to spread its surveillance to every continent and plant agents in every government. For nearly 40 years, America focused its military might on the cold war. Through assassinations and espionage, the CIA did its share to ensure American superiority over Russia. Corrupted by its xenophobic inception the agency ruined countries with impunity, and waged secret wars unchecked.

Anonymous contributor G: Follow the money…after the reconstruction of western Europe Allen Dulles, the first head of the Central Intelligence Agency, whom I must mention worked on wall street, drafted a plan that allowed the agency to conduct secret political wars while making millions of dollars under the nose of congress. Dulles made sure that the CIA didn’t need federal money to fund foreign militias, they controlled drug trafficking in East Asia, and later in South America. They grew the drugs, sold the drugs, and that money went on to fund political up rises and terrorism. From Vietnam to Afghanistan it’s all about the opium, who is allowed to grow it and who is allowed to sell it. Under the Central Intelligence Agency Act of 1949, the Director of Central Intelligence is the only federal government employee who can spend "un-vouchered" government money. That’s right. An organization that can spend over forty billion dollars a year doesn’t have to keep receipts. Unconstrained by a congressional budget, not even the president knew what these guys were about.

Yet a pattern emerges. Every time a small country like Cuba decides to fight for its independence or to nationalize its resources the CIA gets involved. They always say it’s the red scare. They are fighting communists to protect America from a nuclear winter. While everyone is playing duck and cover safe in their suburban homes the CIA is playing chess with Iran and beginning their MKUltra mind control programs. Wherever American business interests are threatened by the nationalization of foreign industry or the redistribution of wealth in poor countries the CIA is there to put a stop to it. Usually by installing a right-wing dictator into power by whatever means necessary. Tyrants who rule by fear have a high success rate in maintaining martial law, destroying labor unions, and wiping out special interest groups. More importantly they are marvelously corrupt. Eager for whatever power or pay off comes their way.

Unfortunately, dictators have never been easy to control long term. In the 1970s you really start to see the CIA’s glass houses begin to crack. Papa doc in Haiti butchering people in the streets with machetes, the starvation of the Congo, Laos and Cambodia bombed into oblivion, they just couldn’t hide their mistakes anymore. People knew the CIA was running things. After Vietnam it was clear to the American people that the fight against communism at the cost of our morality would no longer be tolerated. People started to put together the pieces and realize that the CIA was working for big business, for the Rockefellers and the pharmaceutical companies.

An attempt to reign in CIA spending by congress and the antiwar movement threatened the autonomy of the agency. When the CIA was investigated after the Watergate scandal, domestic covert activities such as MKUltra, illegal surveillance of civil rights groups, and human rights violations prompted the house and senate to begin regulating and monitoring the agency more closely. In 1974 an amendment to the foreign assistance act was introduced that would require the CIA to disclose in advance plans for overseas covert operations to congress. The legislation would limit the amount of covert ops happening without the president’s knowledge, as well as curtail rogue spending happening in the name of national security. This amendment was called the Hughes Ryan Act named for its coauthors Harold E Hughes and Leo Ryan. Shortly after Leo Ryan was killed in Port Kaituma the Hughes Ryan Amendment was severely watered down giving the CIA back its autonomy.

Anonymous contributor M: A decade before Leo Ryan went to Jonestown, he fought against the establishment. Ryan stood for prison reform and even went undercover after the watts riots to help black people gain equal rights and blew the whistle on corrupt urban developments. The CIA killed congressman Ryan on the tarmac in Port Kaituma. If you watch the footage of the assassination you can see that the sharpshooters in the truck are dressed in fatigues. They attack in a military formation and execute their targets one by one. Even on the so-called death tape Jim Jones states twice that he didn’t order the assassination of the congressman.

Jones Q042: One of the people on that plane is going to shoot the pilot. I know that. I didn’t plan it, but I know its going to happen. Are you going to separate yourself from whoever shot the congressman? I don’t know who shot him.

Anonymous contributor M: The government killed him because he worked for transparency in the Central Intelligence Agency, just like John F Kennedy. The Hughes Ryan Amendment literally ripped funding out from under the CIA. It was like Kennedy’s screw up in the bay of pigs all over again. Mark Lane, the attorney for the Peoples Temple, was in Jonestown when it all went down, he literally wrote the book on the CIA’s involvement in the assassination of JFK. They probably planned to kill him on the tarmac too, but there wasn’t enough room in the truck leaving Jonestown for Port Kaituma. He said that green berets where stationed in Mathews ridge, after he and Charles Geary escaped Jonestown and were hiding in the jungle, Mark Lane said he heard several rounds of machine gunfire and people cheering….

Anonymous contributor R: Mark Lane was in the army intelligence from 1945-1947, helping to De-nazify Germany after the war. He was heavily involved in the intelligence community as was Richard Dwyer. The message that was sent over the radio on a secret CIA channel the night everybody drank the Kool Aid could have easily been sent by Mark Lane rather than Richard Dwyer. Mark Lane joined the CIA from its meager beginnings and was deeply under cover working as a civil rights lawyer, sabotaging counterculture movements from the inside.

At the same time Mark Lane was the attorney for Jim Jones he was also representing James Earl Ray, the guy who supposedly shot Martin Luther King. Grace Walden Stephens witnessed the assassination of Martin Luther King, but the FBI didn’t want her testimony at the trial. She had seen the man who’d shot Martin Luther King and claimed it was not James Earl Ray. The FBI put her in an insane asylum, and she was lost in the system for years.

Mark Lane pulled some strings and got her out. He wanted her to testify at an appeals hearing on James Earl Ray ‘s behalf. Terri Buford, a member of Peoples Temple staff was living with Mark Lane at the time and helped hide Grace Stephens until the hearing. After the mass suicides in Jonestown Grace Stephens disappeared and her testimony was never used in James Earl Ray’s defense. In the aftermath of Jonestown, notes written by Jones and others were found. They talked about moving Grace Stephens to Jonestown using a passport that belonged to a Peoples Temple member that had mysteriously died two years earlier. Nobody knows if Grace Stephens ever got to Jonestown, but if she did, she certainly didn’t survive. Coincidentally journalist Don Harris was the only network newsman in Memphis covering the story and interviewing key witnesses when Martin Luther King was assassinated. He was in Leo Ryan’s party and was shot and killed during the assault on Port Kaituma.

Jones Q353: Like I said all these years, they’ve got the wrong man. When they went back to see Mrs. Walden, who’d was kept in mental hospitals conveniently all that time. Just the other day, in an unprecedented news conference, religious leaders of Memphis, joined by black civil rights leaders from throughout the country, demanded the immediate release of Grace Walden, and a trial for James Earl Ray. when Grace Walden was finally cleared, and it was said she was mentally competent — now she’s finally been called mentally competent — and her last interview this week was — before the interview began, she was given psychiatric drugs again, trying to keep her confused. Yet, through the drugs and the manipulated interview came her simple and clear message, “Like I’ve said all these years, they’ve got the wrong man. James Earl Ray was not the man who came out that bathroom ten years ago.” That’s how much of a conspiracy you’ve got in USA.

Jim Jones had originally wanted to create his promised land in Grenada. Jones met with the prime minister Sir Eric Gary and invested two hundred thousand dollars of Peoples Temple money into Grenada banks. seventy six thousand of which was still in the bank after the mass suicide. Despite this, Jones had to settle on a 25-year lease in Guyana signed by Paula Adams and arranged for by George Phillip Blakey in 1974. The agreement with Guyana’s prime minister Burnham was that Jonestown would be a productive agricultural community and help stabilize the region. The land Jonestown was built on is part of a border dispute that has existed between Guyana and Venezuela for over 100 years. The Orinoco valley is rich in gold, uranium and bauxite, an El Dorado for large mining companies. There’s also speculations on large oil deposits being investigated in the late 70s in the disputed territory. It was decided, that a settlement of American citizens would create a sort of trip wire so that if any attempt was made by Venezuela to seize the valley, the American government would be forced to intervene in order to save 1000 American lives.

Racial tension in Guyana traces all the way back to the original Dutch colonies. The Dutch put the Amerindians of Guyana to work in the tobacco fields severely decimating the indigenous population with diseases introduced by the European settlers. Eventually they transported thousands of African slaves to Guyana to work the sugar plantations. As the population of Guyana grew, violent slave up rises sprang up causing white flight. Over half of the European settlers left. Eventually the British moved in, slavery was abolished by the 1840s and the newly freed slaves moved away from the plantations and began small villages and farms. The British imported thousands of indentured servants from India to work the sugar plantations filling the void left by the emancipation. The economic struggles in Guyana, though clearly the fault of the imperialist foreign governments, often created racial tension between the East Indian and Afro Guyanese population. Under British rule the constitution favored white planters making it even tougher for Afro Guyanese farmers. After world war one, life in Guyana was beginning to change as the first labor union was formed. By the end of world war two Guyana was fighting for its independence.

Cheddi Jagan, as part of the People’s Progressive Party won the election in Guyana in 1957. He was a Marxist/socialist, working closely with labor unions and fighting against colonialism. His leftist leanings made the British nervous. Jagan was educated in the US and married an American woman. He wanted to nationalize Guyana’s resources for its people and build much needed infrastructure throughout the country to improve the quality of life in Guyana. He spoke out against the Rockefellers for destroying bourgeoning governments that attempted to nationalize their resources and crawl out from under the oppressive boot of colonial rule. The Rockefellers were deeply invested in Guyana’s mining industry. Now on the brink of independents from Britain, Jagan went to President John F Kennedy to ask for support of Guyana’s independence and financial aid from world banks to help build highways and power stations. Kennedy’s reaction to Cheddi Jagan shaped the rest of the cold war.

Anonymous contributor M: Kennedy didn’t like that Jagan was trading with Cuba and feared that he would hand the country over to Russia, so he ordered the Central Intelligence Agency to intervene. In Guyana a rash of fake news on suspicious new radio stations reported that Cuban ships were fast approaching. Lies and propaganda were printed in the newspaper and the capital of Guyana, Georgetown, went up in flames. A campaign against Cheddi Jagan and the PPP had begun. From 1961-64 The head of CIA operations in Guyana was Agent Frank Wisner, a veteran of the previous covert operations that overthrew Guatemalan President Jacobi Arbenz and Mohammed Mossadegh of Iran. The CIA used the opposition party in Guyana, the Peoples National Congress led by Afro Guyanese leader Forbes Burnham, to disrupt the economy and participate in race riots. Cheddi Jagan was Indo Guyanese. It’s interesting to mention here that sometime in the early 60s Jim Jones was in Georgetown Guyana making anticommunist speeches against the Jagan government shortly before he went to Brazil on what is widely considered to be his CIA funded odyssey into South America. Later Forbes Burnham would negotiate leasing the land for Jonestown with the Peoples Temple, as Jonestown was built not on public land, but Forbes Burnham’s family estate.

The head of the PNC, Forbes Burnham had at one time fought alongside Cheddi Jagan in Guyana’s struggle for independence. After working his way up through the ranks of the PPP, Burnham formed his own right-wing political party the PNC, a primarily afro Guyanese organization that focused on the rights of black farmers and trade with foreign governments. He was also the head of the labor union, making it easy for him to cause labor strikes and disrupt commerce in order to smear the PPP government. The PNC was CIA funded and encouraged to disrupt life in Guyana with violence and chaos.

Forbes Burnham is a controversial figure in Guyana, educated in London he began his career working for the equal rights of afro Guyanese in colonial Guyana. But from 61-64 Burnham used every dirty trick in the book to create racial tensions between the Indian and African populations of Guyana. His militias took to the streets destroying thousands of homes and flooding the press with propaganda. He was a CIA puppet. The national security council approved over two million dollars for covert operations in Guyana from 62-68. This money went directly to the PNC and The United Force, a small CIA run political party supporting Portuguese business interests in Guyana. In 1964 the PNC successfully rigged the election using Burnham’s intimidation tactics and British absentee ballots. Forbes Burnham came to power. Essentially now in debt to the United States government, all ties with Cuba or other communist nations were severed. The CIA had Burnham in their pocket. During the next several elections the PNC depended on foreign aid coming from the United States to lock down the elections and fund its silent war against dissenters. One of Burnham’s favorite ways to rig an election was by using overseas absentee ballots. He faked thousands of overseas votes, as was proven in the 80s, and proxied thousands more. A tactic also used by the Peoples Temple in San Francisco. Election fraud is something the Peoples Temple was good at, as was the PNC.

Prime minister Burnham ruled the country like a dictator. United States and British business interests were protected regardless of the environmental or economic consequences for Guyana. It became a narco-state with strong ties to crime deep within the American prison system. The US embassy in Guyana was run by the CIA, every employee was working intelligence keeping tabs on the Burnham government. The corruption and violence caused a mass exodus of wealthy Guyanese leaving the country in the hands of Burnham’s death squads and an army of mercenaries, the Guyana Defense Force. For decades Burnham increased racial tension and bled the country dry of its resources. Guyana borrowed so much from world banks during his reign it essentially became a rental state.

Jones Q290: Guyana is open, absolutely the only nation left that’s open to real colonization, because they have fewer inhabitants than they do fertile ground. It’s a perfect place to settle, and it’s so vital that we show our love for others in the struggle that we always have this place. Anyone gets in difficulty in the struggle, there’s no extradition. They can’t be sent back, so that we have this haven for them. So, let us all show our love, our gratitude, our appreciation by work. Thank you very much.

Anonymous contributor R: It isn’t clear exactly how long the CIA was financing Forbes Burnham and the PNC. Once he had aligned the Guyanese government in his favor and controlled the military, he started showing his communist colors again. He traded with Cuba on the sly, even imported Cubans to arm and train the Guyana Defense Force. He severed all ties with the United Kingdom once and for all and turned Guyana into a smuggler’s paradise complete with money launderers and guerrilla fighters. Burnham hired assassins from the house of Israel to kill his political adversaries. Guyana became a totalitarian state.

Guyanese announcer: Come on comrades! Come on, come on! So that the leader can see those faces, those happy faces. Those PNC faces.

Reporter: Last week Mr. Burnham went to the polls again. Since 1968 Forbes Burnham has become a considerable statesman amongst leader of the third world who recently conferred in Guyana. He talks the language black power.

Guyanese announcer: Let me hear you give a cheer for the comrade leader as he comes out. Louder than that comrade louder!

Reporter: Though helped to power by Americas CIA, Mr. Burnham has recently taken a sharp left turn to establish links with Russia, Cuba and China and nationalize some foreign owned industry. But unfortunately for the prime minister this international success has not removed his problem of winning votes in Guyana.

Forbes Burnham: It is not for me to tell you in which direction a bright future lies. It would be on my part an imposition on your intelligence to tell you which of the political parties can offer you the future which you want and the future which you deserve.

Was Jim Jones aware of the corruption in the Guyanese government or that it was essentially a puppet state run by a dictator working for the CIA? If so, why would a faith healer, a con man, a socialist revolutionary, move his commune into the lion’s den? Closer than ever to the very government forces he rallied against and feared.

Jones Q749: It is important to keep the support to this type of Fabian democratic cooperative government. If there is this alleged internal or external subversion done by such agencies as the CIA, if it is true, we do not know, but that is the common apprehension here, and it’s in the press so much. Let it be stopped. This government is following a course of non-alignment, democratic cooperative stance, and support of free enterprise is permitted. Indeed, they’re nationalizing. That’s the wave of the future. Of course, they’re doing that. But if there is this continued apprehension, you’re only going to force people by necessity to al– with alignment to those who are more radically inspired and to the left, who would be in more– in contact with those forces of totalitarian nature. This country– I read, and I contact many, and there is absolutely no truth. They are non-aligned. They are treat– Americans here – United States citizens – beautifully. They believe in a cooperative form of democratic government. They are nonaligned, and no way, in any way, do they have troops, Vietnamese – stupid, ridiculous charges – or Cuban based here to subvert other nations surrounding them. It’s absolutely false!

Many controversial religious sects sought refuge and isolation under Burnham’s government in Guyana, the church of Kali, the Seventh Day Adventists, and even Obeah, a kind of Voodoo church. Burnham’s newly independent government opened its doors to disenfranchised churches and misunderstood left-wing militants, in return some of these groups aided in rigging elections and even assassinated members of the opposition parties.

One of Burnham’s strongest allies in his struggle to maintain power was the House of Israel and their leader Rabbi Edward Emmanuel Washington aka David Hill. David Hill grew up in the United States singing in a traveling minstrel show. As a young adult he was involved in the civil rights movement, supposedly driving a bus through the front window of a diner in order to integrate their lunch counter. After a short stint in prison, Hill went to the south to help register African American voters. There he attacked white supremacists with an ax and found himself imprisoned again. While in prison David Hill claims to have had a spiritual awakening when he was introduced to Judaism. After prison he spent some time in the state mental hospital and then headed to Chicago where he started his church, the House of Israel. Though not officially ordained, he called himself Rabbi Hill, preaching that all Africans were the original chosen people of god, and the writings of Karl Marx. In Chicago, Hill set up several temples and became involved in the Black Panther movement through his associations with Huey P Newton and Eldridge cleaver. By 1974 Rabbi Hill had temples in Chicago, Detroit and Cleveland. He started a campaign in Cleveland against the fast food chain restaurant McDonalds, claiming that they refused to sell franchises to black people. Rabbi Hill petitioned his followers and leaders from the civil rights community to donate money for the purpose of buying out nine McDonalds franchises.

Anonymous contributor J: Rabbi Hill swindled thousands of dollars out of the black communities he supposedly supported. After raising the money to purchase the McDonalds franchises he was brought up on nine counts of extortion, Hill bailed himself out and disappeared for a couple years to Algiers in Africa. In 1971 he was sentenced to 45 years in prison but by then he was hiding in Guyana under a name taken from a fake passport Edward E. Washington. Forbes Burnham refused to extradite him back to the United States, so Rabbi Hill was indebted to him.

The parallels between Rabbi Hill and Jim Jones civil rights-oriented beginnings, and their ability to con their followers out of house and home is uncanny. Yet there’s more. In 1972 Rabbi Hill leased several thousand acres of land in Guyana directly from Forbes Burnham where he built an agricultural settlement, a socialist promise land where his followers could be free from racism and religious oppression, not fifty miles away from Jonestown. Rabbi Hill boasted a fellowship of 8000 followers throughout Guyana. Unlike Jonestown, the Hilltown settlement successfully produced food and was heavily armed. Rabbi Hill did not rely on importing disenfranchised Americans to build his fellowship, rather he converted Afro Guyanese farmers and recruited young men from Georgetown.

As Jim Jones had proclaimed himself a living god, Rabbi Hill claimed to be the messiah Elijah, come to earth to free his people and give them the miraculous power to rule the world. He spread the word of socialism and Black supremacy throughout Guyana alienating the Indian and indigenous population. To this day in Guyana the children sing nursery rhymes about the Rabbi and his strange followers. Hill ruled over his people with an iron fist compulsively enforcing communal law, economically controlling his flock, and requiring acts of social dissidents and violence as a show of loyalty.

Anonymous contributor Y: Forbes Burnham used the house of Israel like the Pinkertons. They violently broke up PPP rallies and caused massive labor strikes that unseated Cheddi Jagan. They stockpiled weapons and held sway over the Guyana defense force. Rabbi Hill was an excellent conman with ties to militias in Africa, his settlement was better armed than the Guyanese army.

Anonymous contributor J: Rabbi Hill worked for the CIA; the House of Israel was a convenient way for the United States to launder money legally into the PNC government. Hill bought government bonds with no expectation of ever getting a dime back. Hilltown trained guerrilla fighters later sent to support the American invasion of Grenada and trained assassins for hit squads. The CIA was using Guyana as a testing ground for extreme black supremacist organizations and their effects on dictatorships.

Jones Q933: Who did you think you were going to get out of here? Well, they’ve all be alerted. No boat would dare pick you up, it’d a been a violation of the law. All the canoes. Anybody got any questions to ask these assholes that’ve taken all of our workforce today, spread out, got the Guyana Defense Force alerted, the Coast Guard alerted, the Border Patrol alerted, the prime minister’s secret police alerted. Anybody have any— A minister of agriculture alerted. And the deputy prime minister alerted. And the commissioner of police alerted. And the Kaituma police alerted. And the Matthews Ridge police alerted. And the GNS alerted. If you picked up by and jailed, speaking against this country, speaking against black, speaking against socialism, going to Venezuela, did you bother to tell him about the cat o’nine tails? Why didn’t you tell him about the cat o’nine tails? To speak subversion against this country, to leave parent and home, to violate law and be out after curfew, you’d be eligible for their— 39 stripes, with a cat o’nine tails. I don’t really know what’s come off with you idiots, that you couldn’t have more sense than this. Just how did you expect to get out of this country, you say? You want — on the river? This is goddamn proof, that Mao knew what he was talking, that’s there’s only one way to change people. It’s out of the barrel of a gun.

The House of Israel, as history teaches us, did in fact assassinate a Catholic priest and members of the Working People’s Alliance, an opposition group in Guyana. After the deaths in Jonestown, Hilltown briefly came under scrutiny by the American press. Rabbi Hill was interviewed about the parallels between his sect and the Peoples Temple. In his grand palace in Georgetown he would distinguish his organization by pointing out the house of Israel’s military might and the influence he had over the Guyanese government. According to Rabbi Hill, he needed Guyana, and they needed him.

Anonymous contributor M: Jim Jones tried desperately to appease Burnham and make good on his agreement to provide resources. Jonestown failed at growing food or producing any marketable resources. They had few guns and no military training. The population of Jonestown was mostly elderly and young children, so they couldn’t exactly set the world on fire or disrupt political processes as Peoples Temple once had in the US. Jones was certainly aware of Hilltown and the power of Rabbi Hill. Jones makes vague references to Hilltown on the tapes in the Jonestown audio library, he was afraid they would steal the children or try to assassinate him.

Jones Q384: Anyone coming near, wherever my abode is, don’t get in front of my door or pull on my handle or my window. Don’t touch my window. You might find yourself in a lot of trouble that’s meant only for mercenaries or somebody else that wants to come and start some shit with me or the children that I keep down there. You understand what I’m saying?

Anonymous contributor M: He was afraid they would steal the children or try to assassinate him. The FBI considered pushing for the extradition of Rabbi hill in 1978, the concerned relatives with their constant petitions to the Guyanese government drew attention to the PPP’s dependence on the house of Israel. By now Burnham already had doubts about Jonestown. When news that a United States congressman was going to be poking around Guyanese domestic affairs Burnham was furious. The CIA disliked the direction Burnham’s dictatorship was headed in, due to its socialist sympathies Guyana was in jeopardy of losing its financial backing from the United States.

Anonymous contributor G: When congressman Leo Ryan was assassinated, two GDF soldiers watched from the far end of the airstrip. Rather than intervene they dropped their machine guns and ran into the jungle.

Voice Q042: Wesley told me there were two GDF…

Jones Q042: (edit) they saw it happen and ran into the bush and dropped their machine guns. Never in my life

Anonymous contributor G: I believe they ran to Hilltown and reported to Rabbi Hill that crazy white people from Jonestown had just killed a United States Congressman. You can hear on the death tape that Jim Jones wasn’t worried about the American government parachuting in and killing everyone, it was the GDF he was frightened of.

Jones Q042: Please get us some medication. It’s simple, it’s simple. There’s no convulsions with it, it’s just simple. Just please get it before it’s too late. The GDF will be here I tell you get moving, get moving, get moving.

Anonymous contributor G: During the mass suicide, Jones is frantically rushing everyone to hurry up and die so that he and his closest followers could make it to the Russian embassy, collect their 700 thousand dollars and escape onto one of the Peoples Temple boats never to be seen again.

Rabbi hill sent his death squad into Jonestown after the congressman was killed. When they arrived all but 100 of Jones’ followers were dead from cyanide poisoning, the survivors were stacking bodies in rows. The death squad attacked the survivors and under the orders of Forbes Burnham through Rabbi Hill, slaughtered those that were left, including Jim Jones as he sat on his throne. They looted Jonestown as was evident when US forces arrived to clean up the site. The house of Israel had interrupted an act of such depravity no one could be allowed to leave the scene alive, or worse, escape. For two days they manipulated the evidence in Jonestown before reporters arrived. After the remains from Jonestown were removed the House of Israel was allowed to take anything of value from the settlement. After Jonestown, Guyana lost its financial backing from the united states, the house of Israel rioted at the American embassy causing its closure for several days, to this day its experiencing blowback from the mass suicide debacle.

The economic harm done to Guyana by Burnham’s dictatorship is felt to this day. Forbes Burnham held onto his power until his death in 1985 following throat surgery. He is celebrated in Guyana as a folk hero who stood for Afro Guyanese equality. His legacy lives on fueling the modern political climate in Georgetown. A land so untouched and rich in resources it had inspired Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s the lost world and was believed to hide in its jungles the golden city of El Dorado, is today laid waste by over mining, corruption and violence. What treasure had once been hidden in the northwest territories of Guyana are considered long gone. Burnham was a ruthless dictator; he exploited his people and destroyed the environment. After Burnham’s death the House of Israel was vulnerable to prosecution, Rabbi Hill was imprisoned for several years. Upon release, Hill moved to Newark New Jersey where he remained until his death in 2001. Of the supposedly 8000 followers of the house of Israel little is known as to their whereabouts.

In 1974 Martin Luther King JR’s mother, Alberta King, sat playing the organ for a congregation in the Ebenezer Baptist church. The last few years had been hard for Alberta, losing both of her preacher sons to untimely deaths. She played the lord’s prayer to a crowd of 400 worshipers. In the audience sat a 23-year-old Marcus Wayne Chenault. As the people bowed their heads in prayer Chennault stood raising two pistols in the air and yelled, “I’m taking over here!”. He started shooting towards the pulpit, hitting four people and killing Alberta King. Chenault grinned looking around, asking if he had shot anyone. When asked why he did it, Chenault claimed to be the Hebrew servant Jacob, on a mission to kill black Christians.

Anonymous contributor L: When Chennault was going to Ohio State University, he fell in with a group called the troupe, a militarized black supremacist group run by Rabbi Emmanuel Israel, yet another moniker for Rabbi Hill. The day Chennault killed Martin Luther King’s mother the House of Israel dropped him off at the church and handed him the guns. Chennault claimed that Rabbi Israel had been mentoring him and several others, preparing them to assassinate important African Americans in the church. He was brainwashed by the House of Israel. They wanted to start a race war in America.

Spanish explorers had a saying about Guyana’s north western territory: “He who goes to the Orinoco and doesn’t die, comes back mad.”.

Now, imagine what it must have been like to be one of Jonestown’s first settlers. Having grown up navigating the urban sprawl of southern California, nothing prepared you for the intense isolation of Guyana’s north west territory. In the jungle on the edge of Jonestown’s newly constructed boundary, a terrifying new sound announces the coming of dusk. As the sun retreats behind the dense canopy, the sound of one becomes many, rising to a chorus of screaming tortured souls.

The promised land held many surprises for these American newcomers, Guyanese howler monkeys included.

Guyana is a strange place with a dark history. Despite its wealth of resources and luxury exports like gold and sugar, the people have remained relatively poor and most of the country lives without electricity. Fairy tales of jumbies, Guyana’s version of demons are told to this day. Popular among these myths is the story of the Dutchman tree. Sometime during the 1500’s in Guyana’s early colonial days the Dutch were mining huge amounts of gold from the rivers and mountains. The gold was so plentiful one mountain yielded a legendary single nugget of gold weighing over 42 pounds. After a mine was tapped out it took time to move all of the gold through the dense jungle onto ships bound for Europe, so the Dutch would bury the gold to be moved a little at a time. Legend has it that the slaves used to mine the gold were murdered by their Dutch masters and buried so that their spirits would become jumbies who would then guard the treasure. There are trees in the jungle the Guyanese still call Dutchmen trees that are imbued with the jumbies’ spirit or old Dutch slave masters. They believe that fruit from the tree will poison you, or that the tree itself can kill you.

At one time Jim Jones claimed he was able to raise the dead. Legend has it that he performed miracles and healings for the Indians who lived in the jungle, but they didn’t react as poor folk from Indiana once had. The Indians thought he was a demon capable of dark magic and was unsettling the delicate balance of spirits that live in the jungle.

Jones Q928: Yes? But please reverence, perhaps you need to hear. Sometimes I think you need to hear what I hear. Spirit that is speaking to me, I energize you. I give you energy now, to speak with an audible voice what I’m hearing in my ear. As you spoke in the original- to Paul, a voice came. As you appeared upon the Mount of Transfiguration, I say, Spirit, that’s in that lost world, speak with an audible voice.