Episode Seven: The Electric Kool aid Acid Tests
Jones Q1057-4: I like that melody right now anyway. Sing it.
Man Q1057-4: (singing) I've been blessed...
Jones Q1057-4: SSSSHHHHH! I have something to tell you. This little bug– You see there where that fly was there? This little bug, I swear to you it was covering just him, it was right on top where that bug was, like that was where he– best place to hide, and he was just exactly on the place where the bug was nose to nose. He’s moved now. He’s up here. And I thought that was such a cute thing.
The Peoples Temple Choir: “Something Got a Hold of me” From the album “He’s Able”.
Something got a hold of me, oh yes it did
I say something got a hold of me
Don’t you know that I went to a meeting last night
But my heart wasn’t right
Can’t forget it
Something got a hold of me
Deanna Mertle/ Jeannie Mills: You know, I suddenly realized this is not a commune. This is not a church. This is just insanity.
Tim Stoen: And I acknowledged my mistake I mean I was a fool to join this organization and to commit so much of my will to it.
Grace Stoen: Once you enter Peoples Temple you don’t leave, or you don’t leave very easily. Cause there are death threats. There’s a lot of pressure from the congregation.
Deanna Mertle/ Jeannie Mills: And they said, “Mom and dad, we love you very much and we just hope that when you do decide to quit the church you move far away so that we aren’t the ones assigned to kill you.”. And this is how thoroughly brainwashed we were. So that’s the commitment that we all made. When we finally decided to leave that okay, we’ll be killed for this. We’ll probably be shot in the middle of the night or bombed or something but it’s better than going back.
Elmer Mertle/Al Mills: Jones never loved anyone as the picture was presented. He only used people. People were pawns.
Deanna Mertle/ Jeannie Mills: We had told every person we could find. We had gone to every agency. We sent document, affidavits. We had called people pleading for help. Finally, we just realized, there is nobody that cares. There is no one that’s going to help us. There is nothing we can do. At that point we accepted the fact that these people were doomed.
Wanda Johnson Kice: And it was so beautiful in the beginning of equal equality for everyone and it sounded so beautiful. Until before we knew it years had past and he had become such a tyrant that we were mesmerized. We could see the light anymore because he was such a good man in the beginning. And he’s turned into a madman that wants to go down in history even if he has to commit mass suicide and murdering our children.
Welcome back to Transmission from Jonestown. You’re listening to episode seven, The Electric Kool Aid Acid Tests.
It can be difficult to reconcile the evidence collected in Jonestown with the popular consensus that the Peoples Temple willingly murdered their children and committed mass suicide. So many discrepancies including the original body count, the mysterious presence of the CIA, the mind-bendingly blunderous treatment of the crime scene, witnesses and physical evidence during the first four days after the massacre are reason enough to scrutinize the events that took place in Jonestown. The diabolical nature of Jim Jones and the suspicious background of many of his followers inspire many conspiracy theories as to the real purpose of Jonestown. Many researchers have theorized that Jonestown was a CIA run medical experiment.
The nihilistic hopelessness one must accept to subscribe to the drink the Kool Aid conclusion to Jonestown’s story is devastatingly bleak and dishonors the memory of the Peoples Temple. Their members that were indeed willful, intelligent, revolutionary, oppressed, victimized, and murdered.
Etta Thompson Q245: And I am a member of Peoples Temple. Jim Jones is our leader. I am a Marxist-Leninist, and I’m not ashamed of it and that’s what the world don’t like, because we are of the Third World people, we’re fighting for the rights of the underdog.
Hue Fortson Q245: We have supported many causes, we supported many people where nobody else would stand up for them we set an example in the work that we did, the humanitarian work that we did – we got people out of jails, we brought people from prisons, we brought people out of hospitals, convalescent homes, from the ghettos, you name it, Peoples Temple has done it.
Gene Chaikin Q245: For years now, many of us here, comrades all, have struggled to try and teach and perfect in our own lives the principles that were laid down by Marx and Lenin for the guidance and the perfection of human society. I expect that all of us are somewhat idealists in the sense that, both by example and by an attempted persuasion, we’ve dedicated our lives to attempting to uplift humanity around us and ourselves in the process in order to reach those ideals.
Sharon Amos Q245: We are not a death-oriented group. This group has existed for over 25 years and tried to involve ourselves in all aspects of life. In every aspects of life, the Marxist-Leninist view of total equality of women and men, no ageism, no sexism in our community here. The means of production have been- has been put in the hands of the people to develop the community and to try to be an example of that kind of community. But even when we try to work through the democratic process to bring some kind of justice and the concern about fascism, we are in a socialist country and we found inconsistencies where we are told to compromise our principles, not to feed people, not to advertise or in some instances give medical care.
Richard Tropp Q245: For those of you listening to this tape, to listen very, very carefully to the words of Jim Jones. Because here tonight, even at the hour of decision for a revolutionary suicide, in the words of Jim Jones, you will find, if you listen, the key to the survival of humanity.
Jones Q644: I love you, and you’ve grown stronger, and when we do build a revolution, it’ll be a right one, because we started without dreams that were pipe dreams. We didn’t have illusions. We didn’t have hallucinations. It was based on reality. I love you. I love you. I love you.
Both redeeming and condemning Peoples Temple, the mass suicide theory dehumanized the people of Jonestown and isolates their legacy to the annals of cult history somewhere between the Manson family and Heaven’s Gate. For nearly one thousand people to willfully disappear into the abyss for a revolutionary movement, a movement that simultaneously ceases to exist is a paradox only understood by those who experienced it. The concept of Jonestown, a microcosm, containing in it the post counterculture lost souls of missionaries, drug addicts, spiritualists, the disenfranchised, and the forgotten, with its promise of equality and freedom in every way was a social experiment. Testing the boundaries of the human mind to the very edge of oblivion. But was it more than just an anthropological anomaly?
Anonymous contributor J: At three in the morning just hours after the mass suicide in Jonestown the United States government received a radio transmission telling them that a mass suicide had taken place in Jonestown after the Congressman was killed. The United States government had an attaché in Caracas, soldiers in Panama, and even more in Cuba, they could have been in Guyana within hours and possibly saved lives in Jonestown. But they stalled for four days making excuses and delaying their entry until the bodies in Jonestown were so rotted no autopsy or toxicology could possibly be done. The on the spot autopsies performed by Dr. Mootoo were no more than vivisections on remains that hadn’t even been properly identified.
Dr. Mootoo documented that out of over one hundred bodies he had examined eighty-three had injections wounds on their back that could not have been self-inflicted. The entire outer ring of bodies in Jonestown had puncture marks and the US soldiers sent to clean up Jonestown reported seeing syringes sticking out of people’s necks. You may notice in the pictures of Jonestown you can’t see any faces. All the bodies are lying face down, dragged into position. The only body turned upright is Jim Jones and that was only done for the sake of the news cameras. You can’t clearly see many children out of the almost 400 that died there. The government said bodies were stacked on top of each other, but this wasn’t visible in any of the crime scene photographs. In some pictures you can clearly see bodies with bloody injuries that look like gunshot wounds. In other photos taken a day or two later you will see the same angle of the same bodies, but they are now covered by sheets. Also visible in several photographs are crossbow arrows littering the ground and sticking out of the vat as though some kind of battle took place between Peoples Temple security and possibly Peoples Temple members unwilling to die. Or government forces that interrupted the death ritual. Someone in charge of the crime scene in Jonestown didn’t want us to see the state of the bodies or to clearly make out the identity of victims in Jonestown. By delaying their investigation for four days the US government allowed the identity of the victims in Jonestown to purposefully obscured by decay and the GDF compromised the evidence by looting and tampering with the scene.
Some of the survivors went back to Jonestown and put tags on the toes of bodies to identify them. The army just threw the tags away and filed away almost half of the bodies in Jonestown as unidentified. These were children given to Peoples Temple by the California social services and patients from mental hospitals and rest homes. Fingers were removed from many of the bodies in a claimed attempt to make identifications but in effect stripped the dead of their last identifying feature. Clearly there was something about the victims in Jonestown the Guyanese or United States government didn’t want the public to see.
This episode of Transmissions from Jonestown focuses on connections between Jonestown and the MKUltra project. Once again, I would like to thank the anonymous contributors whom without their voices and opinions this episode would not be possible. The theories and opinions expressed in this episode do not necessarily reflect my own thoughts or feelings about Jonestown. As always, I encourage you to research the Peoples Temple and decide for yourself.
Anonymous contributor G: My uncle George was working as a narcotics agent in the late 50s in San Francisco. He told stories about a cathouse on telegraph hill. The brothel was run by the CIA. They had installed two-way mirrors in every room. The girls would lure men back to the hotel and dose them with LSD, while men in black watched from the other side of the mirror and took notes.
In 1947 Operation Paperclip recruited hundreds of German scientists to the United States. Forgiving many of their war crimes, the ex-Nazi scientist were allowed to continue their research to ensure continued American supremacy in the war against communism. Amongst the rocket scientists that helped get us to the moon there were many chemical and behavioral scientists that had conducted human experiments in concentration camps. These men had served the Third Reich by dosing soldiers with methamphetamines, perfecting vicious interrogation and torture techniques, and brainwashing Deutschland for Goebbels and the ministry of propaganda.
Allen Dulles, as the first head of the CIA, created a secret project that would later become known as MKUltra suited to the particular skill set of the Nazi scientists. The goal of MKUltra was to alter the mind of an individual by using chemicals, electroshock therapy, hypnotism, torture, sensory deprivation and an array of bizarre and inhumane treatments. The purpose of the project originally, was to create a truth serum for interrogating Russian spies, but as the project evolved and hundreds of experiments in behavioral modification recorded the effects of drugs and hypnotism on an unsuspecting population, the purpose of MKUltra became far more sinister. The CIA wanted to know how to not just extract information from a person, but how to program the human mind. Experiments were conducted in over 80 prisons, universities and mental institutions. The inhumane methodologies used required everyone to adhere to the highest level of secrecy. They experimented with LSD, ESP, Psychic driving and yes, some men even starred at goats. As time went on the research became less metaphysical and more chemical.
Timothy Leary: I belong to an ancient trade union of spiritual teachers, scholars of consciousness exploring without the pressures of time and space the endless realm within. If I had my way, I would teach you how to sleep consciously. How to use symbols consciously. How to enhance and intensify your senses. How to contact the ancient wisdom of yourself. Such a program is not an idle fantasy. In the summer of 1962 and 63 with a group of forty Harvard graduate students I participated in such a training program in a small fishing village in Mexico. We’d rented a hotel there which was a mile away from town. The main business of this center was the taking of LSD. We wandered from Mexico down through the Caribbean, the French Islands, the British Islands looking for one square mile of ground on this planet where we could live quietly, expand our own consciousness, contribute handsomely to the country in which we live. But such a place was not to be found, free from political or religious interruption. But no such place seems to exist. For the first time in human history there seems to be no land of exile or immigration where groups of people sharing unpopular spiritual beliefs and practices can remove to live in peace. Turn on, tune in, drop out.
Frank Olsen was a bacteriologist and a biological warfare scientist famous for his research in aerosolized anthrax. After a decade working on the United States blow weapons program, he was recruited by the CIA to work with the technical services division in creating an arsenal of incapacitating and lethal materials. These materials would be used to poison crops and as biological weapons. In 1953 Frank Olsen fell several stories out of the window of his New York hotel room. His family claimed he had spent the week before his death paranoid and confused and blamed the CIA for his mental breakdown. In 1975 the Rockefeller commission started an investigation into MKUltra activities and uncovered proof that Frank Olsen had been dosed with LSD at a work party the week before his death. After the bad acid trip his behavior was erratic, and some were concerned that a man with such high security clearance may have lost his ability to keep his mouth shut. The FBI claimed that depression caused Frank to throw himself out of the window. When Olsen’s family announced their plans to file a wrongful death suit against the government, president Ford and then head of the CIA William Colby apologized to the family to the tune of $750,000.
In 1994 Eric Olsen had his father’s body exhumed to be reburied with his mother. A second autopsy was performed, and it was concluded that Frank Olsen died of blunt force trauma to the chest and head that could not have been caused by the fall. Frank Olsen may have been murdered.
Ike Feldman, former CIA agent: The source that I had was in the New York city police department, with the bureau of narcotic agents, and it was CIA agents themselves. They all say the same, that he was pushed out the window. That he didn’t jump. People who wanted him out of the way said he talked to much and he was telling people about things that he’d done.
Another well-known MKUltra experiment was called Project Monarch, known in pop culture as the Manchurian candidate, involved brainwashing a subject and replacing their personality with a duel identity. The dominant personality led a normal life totally unaware of the hidden identity. Through the use of hypnosis, the subject was programmed with a trigger phrase that when said would activate the hidden personality causing them to kill a perceived target and afterwards remember nothing during or leading up to the murder. The target for the subjects were usually world leaders like Fidel Castro, but maybe they threw an American president or civil rights leader in from time to time. Many people believe Lee Harvey Oswald, James Earl Ray, or even the Peoples Temple’s Larry Layton were victims of this Project Monarch. By 1973 the CIA was up to its necks in conspiracy inquiries into foreign and domestic assassinations of world leaders and the illegal surveillance of Americans involved in the antiwar and civil rights movements. Director of the CIA Richard Helms ordered all documents relating to MKUltra to be destroyed. Fortunately for us in 1977 twenty two thousand financial documents were discovered proving that the American government had tested drugs and mind control techniques at home and abroad on unwilling participants spanning nearly 30 years and costing millions tax dollars.
President Bill Clinton: Thousands of government sponsored experiments did take place at hospitals, universities and military bases around our nation. Some were unethical not only by todays standards but by the standards of the time in which they were conducted. They failed both the test of our national values and the test of humanity. Informed consent means your doctor tells you the risk of the treatment you are about to undergo. In too many cases informed consent was withheld for these experiments were kept secret and they were shrouded not for a compelling reason of national security but for the simple fear of embarrassment and that was wrong.
Fred Jordan Q415: And now we have a minister and his wife here from back East, and uh, we’re so happy to have them receive two children from our orphanage today. And uh, I want them to come right now, Mr. and Mrs. Jones. God bless you. Mrs. Jones, God bless you, Mr.– Reverend Jones, and I understand that uh, you’re a registered nurse.
Marceline Jones Q415: Yes, I am.
Fred Jordan Q415: Is that right?
Marceline Jones Q415: That’s right.
Fred Jordan Q415: Well, Lorraine Jost our director is a– a registered nurse, and I know that’s going to be a big help with those children.
Marceline Jones Q415: Yes, it has been already.
Fred Jordan Q415: Don’t you kind of spend part of your time ministering to the sick?
Marceline Jones Q415: Yes, our church has a nursing home, a home for the aged, and I work as administrator–
Fred Jordan Q415: and Mr.– uh, uh, I want to call you Long, but it’s Jones. I don’t know why I want to call you Reverend Long, but I wonder if you could give us just a little of your background, how you got into uh, the–the ministry, and something about your church, we’re interested in, and uh, your work back there. Surely your hands are full! This lady directs a home for the aged, and her husband has a church, and he operates it without salary, he receives no salary. Is that right?
Jim Jones Q415: Correct.
Fred Jordan Q415: And you make, you have your other income from other sources? And so, how did you get into all of this, and now you want two babies?
Jim Jones Q415: Just a desire to help people primarily is the reason. We’ve had a great interest in breaking down barriers between all races and nations and creeds.
Fred Jordan Q415: You know why we want to adopt children? We want them to have a normal home, that’s one thing.
Jim Jones Q415: Okay…
Fred Jordan Q415: Especially with Christian parents. We’ll put those two little babies in your arms in just a few minutes.
Anonymous contributor G: As a teenager Jim Jones worked as an orderly at the Reid memorial hospital. He delighted in using complicated medical terms that made him seem educated and always kept his whites there whitest. One day while preparing the body of a pregnant woman for the undertaker, he met his bride to be. Marceline who was attending the nursing school at the time watched Jones tend to the body of this dead woman with such tenderness she felt endeared to him. Jim Jones would spend the rest of his life surrounded by and attended to by young nurses. Jones began selling monkeys door to door to fund his first church. Where the hell does a teenager in Indiana get South American monkeys?
In April of 1954 the Indianapolis Star printed an article regarding a shipment of monkeys from South America that had been refused upon receipt because all of the monkeys were sick or dead. The cargos recipient was Jim Jones. As a teenager Jones already had contacts in South America through Bloomington Universities animal testing programs. Possibly the first casualty by association to Jones was his beloved pet chimp who mysteriously died of strychnine poisoning.
By 1956 Jones purchased his first church, a former Jewish synagogue in Indianapolis. The property was sold to Jones for next to nothing by Rabbi Maurice Davis, an activist who later worked for LBJ as the director of the American Family Foundation, an anti-cult organization that we shall discuss several times throughout this broadcast. Rabbi Maurice Davis was also an associate of Dr. Hardat Sukhdeo, the Guyanese deprogrammer that spent ten days meeting with Jonestown survivors after the massacre.
Anonymous contributor J: In 1972 Rabbi Maurice Davis started a group called citizens engaged in reuniting families. They counseled children who joined cults or unorthodox religious movement and attempted to reunited families. Jim Jones was basically given his first temple by Rabbi Maurice Davis. Jones wasn’t Jewish and his preaching methods were definitely unorthodox. Why would a world renowned anticult activist help create the most notorious cult America has ever seen?
Jones Q962: Does your churches have any love? Does your preacher talk about the Skygod? Will he give you a ride? Will he give you any buses? Has he given you any of those homes? Has he given you help? Does he go into the court and the jails and set you free? Does his Sky Jesus do you any good? No! I’m the only one that’ll help you. I’m the only one that cares about you! I’m the only one that loves you!
Jim Jones spent the next few years rebranding the temple message from mere holy rolling to integrationist evangelism earning a small government role as the Indianapolis Human Rights Commissioner in 1961. He now had several adopted children, a successful if not profitable church and a little bit of power. But Jones mysteriously left this all behind to travel to Hawaii, Cuba and South America in what is by far the most suspiciously vague part of his timeline.
Anonymous contributor M: Just after Fidel Castro seized power in Cuba, Jim Jones decided to help black Cubans resettle in Indiana and farm patches of land he owned. Even before he was thirty years old, he was trying to establish a communal system of living that ran like an old slave plantation. Jim Jones traveled to Cuba in 1960. Very little is known about this chapter of his life. Cuba was a newly formed socialist state. The United States was sending CIA agents into to Cuba to recruit mercenaries for the bay of pig’s invasion. Their aim was to overthrow or kill Fidel Castro, so a CIA backed dictator could take back control of the country. Jones may have been spying on Cuba for the CIA using his evangelism as a cover.
In 1979 in the wake of post Jonestown massacre press frenzy a man named Carlos Foster came forward claiming that he had met Jim Jones at the Havana Hilton in the winter of 1960. There Jones explained his plan to help 40 Cuban families resettle in America and promised Carlos 50,000$ a year if he could also help him establish subsistent settlements throughout South America. Jones went to the slums and met with several Cuban families. He even claims to have met with Fidel Castro before his return to Indiana. Jones never did immigrate Cubans to join the church, but he may have collected important intelligence for the CIA on his trip.
Elderly man Q596: Daddy, I come in to tell you I don’t want to go to Cuba.
Jones Q596: (Laughter) Okay, Pop.
Elderly man Q596: If the United States don’t give our check, the Cuba people aren’t going to work for us, we going to die anyhow.
Jones Q596: (Laughter)
Elderly man Q596: We come in here for security —
Jones Q596: You say you don’t make any sense? I think you make a lot of sense.
Elderly man Q596: I’m come in here, not to give you no trouble. I don’t want —
Jones Q596: Let me tell you, you don’t ever. And don’t worry about the (unintelligible), you’re never going to go hungry. We all die first. Okay?
Anonymous contributor R: Jones had a habit of exposing himself in public restrooms where homosexuals were known to congregate. He was even busted in the bathroom of a movie theater attempting to solicit sex from a cop. Tim Stoen actually convinced the judge that Jones played with his junk at the urinal because he had kidney stones. Later Tim Stoen, abusing his power as Assistant District Attorney suppressed the case so the press never got wind of it. Jim Jones was a closet homosexual unless he was amongst the privacy of his inner circle, many of which were his lovers and thus sympathized with his eccentricities. In 1959 Jones got caught with his pants down again and fled to Hawaii where he rested in a sanitarium until the situation blew over.
Jones Q942: There’re still strong pressure against homosexuality. Almost all the jokes are about the men making it with men. You’re a fuckin’ faggot. Oh, yeah? Well, you take it in the ass. Yeah, well, you suck cock and you know it. Hundreds of men thrown together by the system, sometimes for years and years at a stretch, and the worst insult they can throw at someone is that he might want to make love with another man.
Worse, look at the homosexuality the brothers do allow. The sickest, goddamn kind. Where one man brutalizes and exploits another, one man plays the role of the man, the other, usually younger, smaller, less hairy, more boyish looking, plays the role of the kid. The kid is the slave. The stereotype the man, afraid he will be considered a fag if he acts like he really likes the kid, comes on, yeah, I fuck him in the ass, he sucks me off, he does all kinds of shit for me, and I let him hang around.
The man would never admit to having any feelings for the kid. He would never admit to giving anything sexually. Just taking. In order to justify himself, he plays the role of the woman in Amerika, the kid does, taking the man for all he’s worth, getting food and drugs and presents from the man, and threatening to leave for another man, if this man doesn’t provide enough goodies. And under all this sick play-acting, often the two men like each other deeply, down deep, but are so frightened by the system the prisoners have set up that they have to prevent– pretend they are using each other. Why do prisoners approve, when one man boasts of abusing and exploiting another man, but get totally threatened when two men just say, they really dig each other.
Throughout the history of Peoples Temple Jim Jones often received psychological treatment at sanitariums. Throughout the 60s and 70s he was treated at the Langley-Porter Neuropsychiatric Institute in San Francisco. His medical files are still sealed, but a witness stated that in 1967 Jones was treated for manic depression and was a documented sociopath. Doctor Margaret Singer, world renowned clinical psychologist, anti-cult activist and brainwashing expert received funding through the Langley Institute. She was also a member of the American Family Foundation along with Rabbi Maurice Davis who sold Jim Jones his first church in Indiana. The defense department funded a program at Langley that experimented with behavioral modification using electromagnetic fields and long-distance hypnosis. The Military wanted to use extremely low frequency radiation for the purposes of mind control. Theoretically the human brain cannot tell the different between extremely low frequency radiation and its own brain waves. The frequency could be used to kill or shut off the brains of thousands of people within a small radius.
Anonymous contributor J: Recently a Canadian mining company discovered approximately six million pounds of uranium near the Roraima basin in Guyana. It is possible that Mount Roraima itself broadcasts low frequency radiation. This might explain why Guyana has the highest suicide rate on the planet.
Ironically after the survivors of Jonestown had been treated by Dr. Hardat Sukhdeo and returned to the bay area, they were all treated at the insistent of Mayor George Moscone at the Langley-Porter Neuropsychiatric Institute. What happened in Jonestown may not have started at Langley but it certainly ended there. The very institution responsible for the mental health of Jim Jones now treated the survivors of his mental breakdown.
Jones (the lost tape): If by any chance you would make a mistake, to try to come in and take any one of us we will not let you. You will die. You will have to take anybody over all of our dead bodies. Wherever in the hell it brought us. It brought us on principal. It brought us on courage, and it brought us to the right place. And if we hold on, we’ll make it. (Singing) I never heard a man speak like this man before. I never heard a man speak like this man before. All the days of my life, ever since I’ve been born, I’ve never heard a man speak like this man before.
At this point in his timeline Jim Jones now has two passports and a visa to visit the Soviet Union. Rather than go to Russia which I am sure for Jim Jones was a lifelong dream, he went to South America, where he made anticommunist speeches in Guyana and supposedly worked for Eureka laundries in Bello Horizonte Brazil. This also marks a point in Jim Jones life when he started hearing voices warning him of an impending nuclear apocalypse. He struggled with his faith, or lack of it in Brazil studying Macumba and African Voodoo. The direction his life was going, and the mission of his church were on his mind. Jim Jones professed to be an atheist to his wife Marceline. A fact that deeply disturbed her given his profession. But through evangelism he was spreading his true passion: socialism.
Jones Q1023: Principle is a recipe. The recipe today is total racial, social, and economic equality. The way to that recipe is love, but you have to define love. Some people think love means sex. That’s the farthest thing from love. There’s nothing farther from love than sex. Sex is animalism, sex is sensuality, sex is narcissism. I’m not knocking it, but there’s no love in it. So, this love has to be defined today, and how do we define love? Some call it socialism. That’s been badly abused by Nazi Germany. They called them Nazi– National Socialists. Well, they’re anything but socialists. So, the word socialism’s been badly abused. The word Communism’s been badly abused, but on the day of Pentecost, they had all things in common. Perhaps we should call it Common-ism or Communalism. You have to share; you have to think of your brother or your sister above yourself. You give your life and then you find it. Jesus said deny yourself Buddha said Nirvana, complete self-death. But Jesus taught the same thing, Buddha taught the same thing, Krishna taught the same thing. All the great world religions taught the same. Lose your life in service to others.
Jones had been spying on his congregation for almost a decade using every trick he could to aggrandize himself in their eyes as a mystical healer and profit. Though he knew he was merely a conman, the lies and trickery had caused real social reform and integrationist in his church. The means were always justified by the end. If he had to lie, cheat or steal to feed the children or save an African American from persecution he was definitely up for it. If Jones could rationalize the dishonesty woven into his faith healings and testimonials, then isn’t it possible that Jones thought working with a government entity to effect radical change in American might have been worth a few thousand lives?
Anonymous contributor S: Neighbors in Bello Horizonte thought Jim Jones and his family were working for the CIA. At the time the Central Intelligence Agency were all over Brazil preparing to overthrow the leftist democratically elected government and replace it with the Junta. Jones would leave every day in an American consulate car and return every night. Jim Jones would talk about his friend Dan Mitrione, they had known each other in Richmond Indiana. Jones preached civil rights on the street corner while Dan Mitrione was a cop. Now here they both were living in Bello Horizonte; this was not a coincidence. While the CIA trained guerrilla death squads for the Junta, Dan Mitrione was perfecting his interrogation techniques and developing a complex system of torture for counter insurgency routines. Jim Jones with his faith healings, mass conversions and his taste for sadism was a willing apprentice to Mitrione who taught Jones all there is to know about torture and intimidation. After Jones received his training, he settled in Rio and lived large until just after the assassination of President Kennedy. Maybe Lee Harvey Oswald gave him cold feet about working for the agency, or maybe his orders were finally in. Jim Jones file with the CIA was immediately purged after the murder of Dan Mitrione in Uruguay.
Jim Jones returned to Indiana. Miraculously he now had over one hundred thousand dollars to move his congregation to Ukiah, California. The Peoples Temple opened a rest home, halfway houses and foster homes. They took in hundreds of foster kids, cared for the elderly and disabled and even rehabilitated parolees.
Anonymous contributor Q: The Happy Havens rest home was set up by the Peoples Temple. It had an electric fence and a guard tower. The place was a prison, a concentration camp. Trained attack dogs kept people out and armed guards kept people in. The place was filled with foster kids and elderly who had no family left. Jones was getting nearly a thousand dollars a month per child and 700$ per senior citizen. These people were basically undocumented and alone in the world. Jones was cashing checks for people no one kept track of.
Jones Q357: Now I was taking an offering, not for a man, but the cause of God. I won’t handle a penny of it. But would you get your offerings in quickly? Everyone should have an envelope today. You wish to remain in the lamb’s book, you better respond to what you’ve seen today. There will be one day when everybody’ll have to follow and get out of here. You won’t be following a pied piper; you’ll be following the voice of one crying in the wilderness.
As the Peoples Temple grew Jones bank accounts overflowed with thousands of monthly social security checks and mandatory offerings. Marceline Jones worked as a nurse inspecting convalescent homes for the state of California. She and several other Peoples Temple members also worked at the Mendocino state hospital. The state hospital had once housed some of the most dangerous criminals in California. It was famous for sterilizing thousands of patients in the1920s and conducting strange experiments throughout its history. By the time the Peoples Temple was running the place it had 1800 patients and was half torn down. Ronald Reagan wanted to deinstitutionalize America and privatize mental healthcare. The Peoples Temple migrated patients from the institution into temple rest homes and facilities until its eventual closure in 1972.
Anonymous contributor J: According to the records from the department of research at the Mendocino state hospital, in 1967 several experiments with LSD were performed on patients to test the effects of the drug on human DNA. The Peoples Temple drugged patients with LSD for long periods of time reporting to the department that LSD did in fact induce chromosomal breakage. In another study 71 alcoholic women were given LSD to test its effects on alcohol addiction, here is quote from the study written by a Peoples Temple member:
Most of the women enjoyed the music though some of them wanted it turned off later in the day. Most lay quietly on the lounge and showed some feelings. Some thought of issues as large as the meaning of life and their place in it, while many considered tearfully their relationship to husband, children or boyfriends. They often lay peacefully from 8 to 1 o'clock with a little leisurely moving about from 1 to 3 or 4 p.m. Only three sessions out of 82 were terminated early because of the subject's reaction. Most indicated 110 physical discomfort or fear of dying and found the experience intensely memorable and real. Almost none felt suspicious of others or unduly influenced by the others present. They felt a high level of trust and affection. 75 percent felt a spiritual bond with others, 72 percent felt a unity of all things and that they were part of this unity, which 60 percent were willing to call God; 80 percent felt they gained a more complete acceptance of others; and 84 percent felt their own understanding was enhanced.
In Jonestown an eyewitness report stated that once a week the people would line up to receive a special cookie. Many have theorized that this was an experiment. Some cookies contained drugs while others merely a placebo. The long line of Peoples Temple members waiting for their cookie reminds me of the medication lines that form outside of a nurse’s station in an asylum. Although Jim Jones often discouraged the use of recreational drugs within his congregation, he was a true experimentalist when it came to his own drug use. Very early in the temple’s history the necessity of B12 injections and vitamins was just a normal part of life for Jim Jones. Peoples Temple workers were mystified by Jim Jones ability to never sleep and his tireless eight-hour sermons. Later in Jonestown it was revealed to most temple leadership that Jones was suffering from a debilitating drug addiction. His B12 were really amphetamines and his vitamins were barbiturates.
By that time the use of the box had become a part of temple life. If a person broke rules in Jonestown repeatedly or attempted to escape they would be put in the box buried underground. They were shot up with thorazine and kept in the box for days. Afterwards they would emerge, minds altered. In what was described as a zombie like state. The Peoples Temple’s acceptance of the necessary disciplinary measures like the box and there dependency on drugs to maintain order in Jonestown demonstrates a clearly experimental view towards drugs.
Jones Q944: I haven’t got a slight problem now. These suckers have gone and given me a shot for my pain. And I still got pain, but they give me such a shot that I’m out on cloud nine. I got my pain and I gotta– on an empty stomach, I got whatever in the fuck you give me. And I feel like I like to vomit about ten feet. So, you tell your neighbor of three miracles. Believe me, you don’t want it– you don’t want drugs. They don’t feel good. Whoo!
Anonymous contributor M: The free clinic in San Francisco’s Height/Ashbury was funded by MKUltra. They did experiments with drug and alcohol addiction on unsuspecting populations of peace-loving hippies. Methamphetamine abusers were sent to the Mendocino state hospital to take part in the methedrine attack therapy trials. The Peoples Temple experimented with shock therapy and drugs on addicts and criminals trying to discover pacification methods. The temple was also trying to design a method of hypnosis using sound and radiation. All of the experiments done by the Peoples Temple at the Mendocino state hospital were funded by the CIA.
After the eventual closure of the Mendocino State Hospital, Jim Jones would make good use of a cornucopia of strange medical devices acquired by the Peoples Temple.
Anonymous contributor Q: A child in Jonestown had stolen some food, so Jim Jones told her, “Now you’re gonna have to visit with the blue-eyed monster, good little communists don’t steal.”. He took the little girl, not five years old, and put her in a dark room bound to a chair. All around her she saw the electric eyes of the blue-eyed monster, it bit her on the back, tearing open the back of her shirt. She screamed, tears streaming down her cheeks as the monster bit her over and over again. Jim Jones scolded her from a corner in the room, giggling as she wept. They had surrounded her with cattle prods in the dark, they were electrocuting her on his command.
Maxine Harpe joined Peoples Temple in 1969. She and her three children moved into a temple sponsored communal living center. She worked in the Mendocino State Hospital as a dental assistant. Within a year of joining Peoples Temple Maxine was found hanging in her garage, officially her death was ruled a suicide.
Anonymous contributor M: The Peoples Temple ruined Maxine Harpe’s life. She fell in love with a welfare worker named Jim Randolph. He was a Peoples Temple loyalist using the public welfare system to send foster kids and elderly to live in temple homes. Jim encouraged Maxine to divorce her husband and move into a temple run commune. She was assigned a welfare caseworker, another temple member named Sharon Amos, Sharon is famous for murdering her three children in Georgetown the night of the mass suicide. Sharon also enjoyed bragging that at one time she had run with the Manson family.
Yet another temple member, Timothy Stoen, counseled Maxine during the divorce. When the divorce was finalized, Maxine signed her settlement over to the temple, it was the equivalent of her life savings. Jim Jones had encouraged Jim Randolph to lead Maxine on so they could get to her assets. Once Maxine signed everything to the temple Jones ordered Jim Randolph to end the affair. Maxine was devastated and immediately felt alienated by the temple members. She lost her job and asked Sharon Amos to help her get on welfare so she could feed her three children. Sharon refused and threatened to report Maxine as an unfit mother and put her 3 children into a Peoples Temple foster home. Maxine felt as though a conspiracy was working against her, even her lawyer Tim Stoen wouldn’t take her calls.
The day before her death Maxine confronted Jim Jones, he responded by saying “Why don’t you just kill yourself, get it over with”. After Maxine left later that night Jones predicted at a Peoples Temple meeting that Maxine Harpe was gonna die. The next night Maxine Harpe was found hanging from the rafters in her garage. There was a note written on an old grocery bag nearby instructing the children to call the Peoples Temple in Redwood Valley and sit tight. Jones, Jim Randolph and several others removed all evidence connecting Maxine to the Peoples Temple from the house. They took her body down and removed her clothes, careful to remove the Peoples Temple prayer cloths she wore, redressed and rehung her. Jim Jones instructed the children to call the police and they left the scene. Jim Jones had to utilize Peoples Temple members in local government to suppress the physical evidence in the case and ensure the press knew little of Maxine’s ties to the temple.
Bob Houston worked at the Mendocino state hospital as a musical therapist, at night he worked at the rail yard. Bob was found crushed by a train car days after trying to defect from the Peoples Temple. Even though he was known to be a safe and conscientious worker his death was ruled an accident. Congressman Leo Ryan first heard of Peoples Temple when Bob’s grieving father, a close friend of Ryan’s, relayed the tragic story of the suspicious death of his beloved son.
Anonymous contributor K: John Head was a mental patient at the Mendocino institution. While receiving treatment at the hospital, John received a ten-thousand-dollar insurance settlement. Peoples Temple members who were treating john for his depression encouraged him to turn his cash into silver bullion. Once John was released from the hospital, he joined Peoples Temple and signed over his life savings including the ten thousand dollars in silver. Three weeks later John was begging for it back. He had reconnected with his family and now he wanted to defect and his money back. The following day John fell off the roof of a three-story warehouse. His death was ruled a suicide based on his medical history provided by the Mendocino institution, and the Peoples Temple.
In 1972 Regan defunded California’s institutions and the remaining patients at the Mendocino state hospital were transferred to Peoples Temple run facilities. The hospital was torn down and its records spanning over 75 years became mostly inaccessible and lost to the sands of time. On the plot of land where the state hospital once sat now sits the Temple of One Thousand Buddha’s. Inspired by the tragedy in Jonestown many people who had relatives die in the Mendocino state hospital have tried to track down their remains but sadly no clue as to where the old graves went exists.
Anonymous contributor Q: In 1968, a year before the Manson murders, Susan Atkins was busted with drugs in Mendocino county. She was well known to local law enforcement by her alias Sadie Mae Glutz. As Susan awaited trial the Manson family hung around Ukiah, Charlie even visited her in jail. While the Manson family was in town two women were violently murdered in an antique store. They were beaten with a leather strap and strangled. A year later, after the Tate/Labianca killings the detectives working the double murder case started looking into the Mason family. Apparently, a week before the murders Charlie and some friends were pulled over while tripping on acid. There was a small child in the car. The arresting officer called social services and the child, Charlies child, was put into foster care. The police were investigating whether or not the double murder was perpetrated by the Manson family as revenge killing for putting Charlie’s kid in a foster home…a Peoples Temple run foster home…According to a recently released autobiography of Charles Manson, Charlie had thought about settling the family in Ukiah, he liked the underground cave legends and lack of federal drug enforcement presence, but he decided against it when a strange unnamed preacher from the hills had upstaged him.
Jones Q648: No other name that I know. We’ve been living in the name of Jesus. We’re living in the name. Jesus Christ our God. Living in the name of Jesus Christ, our God. No other name. Yes. All right! All right! All right! All right! All right! All right…
Under the umbrella of MKUltra from 1967 – 74, the CIA ran a program dubbed Operation Chaos. The idea was to infiltrate anti war and civil rights groups to uncover any foreign influence that might cause domestic dissention. Agents were to join radical organizations and report back any communist or anti-social behavior. Operation Chaos spread out amongst college campuses. They infiltrated the Black Panthers, Students for a Democratic Society, the Woman’s Liberation Movement and hundreds of other counterculture groups. The CIA even privately funded trash collection companies to collect evidence against these groups. The beauty of Operation Chaos was that every agent or informant working in the field answered only to their one control, meaning that many infiltrated groups had multiple undercover Chaos agents reporting on each other, digging through each other’s trash and documenting unamerican activity perpetrated by fellow agents.
Anonymous contributor J: I don’t think Jim Jones was a willing participant in mind control experiments. We know that several people on the planning commission had originally joined Peoples Temple to spy and were receiving money from the FBI. Some admitted this to Jones, but I believe many of his lovers were manipulating him and slowly poisoning him. Jim Jones didn’t administer the drugs in Jonestown, the nurses did. In the beginning Jones really did fight for equality and tried to integrate the church. That’s exactly what put him on the FBI’s radar. As more agents worked their way into his bed chamber, he went mad, becoming paranoid and sadistic. His closest aids supplied the drugs and even signed the lease in Guyana. They used his power over his people to trap them in Jonestown. Jones started to realize that the forces trying to destroy his movement didn’t come from outside. They had always been there, feeding him drugs, slowly poisoning his soul. Digging through the FBI documents released after the Freedom of Information Act, there is solid proof that a small group of people in Jonestown, working in the clinic, were trying to poison Jim Jones. Methods on how to poison his milkshakes and secret notes passed amongst the undercover agents so ironically mirror the poisoning plots of Fidel Castro’s mistress.
Jones Q161: For the third time running, someone has tried to poison my food. We have the sediments, and we’re going to study them under the microscope. What kind of beast do we have in our midst? But don’t you worry. If you’re guilty, we’ll find you. If I catch you, the court won’t have any opportunity to deal with you, ‘cause I’m going to hang you on the highest tree I can find. Kitchen crew I want you to watch that food. ‘Cause we’ve got some kooks in our midst. You think you’re smart, don’t you? You think you’re dealing with just an ordinary man. Wait’ll I get through with you. So we’re going to put surveillance on the— on food. I’m sick of this, it’s— it’s enough trouble trying to stay awake, alert, and uh, on the ball to defend my people, to have somebody give me enough to knock out a horse, goddamn you. You can give me enough to knock out an elephant, and I’ll still be there to beat your ass.
Ken Kesey and the merry pranksters embarked on their metaphysical quest to enlighten mankind through the use of LSD in the late 60s. Traveling around America in a psychedelic bus they chronicled the rise of the hippie movement while dosing flower children in what they called the Electric Kool Aid Acid Tests. An acid test involved drinking Kool Aid spiked with LSD to expand one’s consciousness. Ken Kesey’s first acid trip took place as part of a Stanford University study on the effects of LSD. Years later it was revealed that this study was funded by the CIA as part of the MKUltra project. The governments attempt to control the mind and manipulate the masses with LSD had backfired into the counterculture anti war movement.
Anonymous contributor M: In the late 60’s life at Peoples Temple had become far more regimented. Jim Jones never seemed to sleep and insisted everyone put in 16-hour days working on propaganda for the temple. People were exhausted. They donated all their money and property to the temple and had to depend upon Jim Jones for food and clothing. Even the simplest things became luxuries. Families were split apart. Jones didn’t want parent raising their own children or couples to get too intimate. His divide and conquer technique worked well. People were too exhausted to question his authority. Everyone was scrambled between different communal living situations or sleeping in the temple in four-hour shifts. People were hungry and tired, but Jones demanded complete obedience. Any misstep was met by brutal punishments. Children were beaten with a 2/4 dubbed the board of education in front of the congregation. Some until they lost consciousness. Jones made his security guards box old men and women for tiny infractions of temple rules. He threatened that everyone was being watched and warned people that he could read their minds.
After church services Jones would hold planning commission meetings with his elite staff that went on all night. There he would force lovers to undress and confess made up infidelities. He accused most staff members of being sexual deviants and made them sign documents saying they had performed unlawful sexual acts, or that they had abused children. Jim Jones was homosexual and had relationships with many men in the church. Its been documented that Jim Jones was likely the culprit who spread genital warts throughout the planning commission. Although many Peoples Temple members were unaware of Jones drug addiction to Meth and Morphine, or his dubious sexual relationships with staff, the planning commission was aware. The upper echelon of Peoples Temple was mostly white and well educated. They enjoyed far more freedom than the average temple member. They spied for Jones, dug through trash and helped him fake faith healings. Jones stole money from the old, the sick and the poor, and no one tried to stop him. When Jones ordered a temple member to be drugged and taken to Jonestown his staff obliged, and when he told them all to drink Kool Aid and die for him, they handed out Dixie cups.
We know now that multiple informants working for the FBI had infiltrated the planning commission and having even taken part in suicide drills yet none of the abuse, drugging’s, or suicidal overtones were ever addressed by the authorities that could have stopped it.
We may never know the true motives of Jim Jones of the Peoples Temple. What the government knew about Jonestown and to what degree they were involved is a closely guarded secret possibly buried forever, along with the people who lived it. But one thing is for certain. Whether by unlucky coincidence or malevolent conspiracy, the government of the United States empowered Jonestown and crowned Jones with totalitarian power.
In 1979 just months after the tragedy in Jonestown. The Prime Minister of Guyana Forbes Burnham hosted a breakfast for the press at his country residence in Belfield. He wanted to discuss the manipulation of facts by the foreign press in Guyana and how it related to the Jonestown tragedy. An excerpt from a CIA cable regarding the unusual meeting demonstrates just how complacent people in our government actually were and how much the wanted to disassociate themselves from Jim Jones.
Anonymous contributor Q: Burnham faulted the official media for their poor perception in judgment as to what is important for Guyana. To illustrate the point, he complained that Jonestown was given excessive coverage and prominence for too long by the official media when everyone knew that Jonestown was an American problem transported to Guyana and therefor, clearly not a Guyanese problem. He pointed out that Jim Jones came to Guyana with recommendations, not from Guyanese officials but from prominent Americans. No less than Mrs. Carter and Vice President Mondale. Jones came with credentials, not from Mayor Cecil Prasad of Georgetown but from Mayor Moscone of San Francisco. Burnham told his guests that when deputy prime minister Reid met Vice President Mondale in Washington at the Panama treaties singing ceremony in September of 77, the Vice President asked Reid, “How’s Jim doing?”. Thus, indicating a personal interest in the Peoples Temple leader. He also brought the USSR into the picture by referring to the fact that the Peoples Temple bequeathed all its foreign bank accounts not to the PNC or Guyana, but to the communist party of the USSR.
When Jimmy Carter was campaigning for president his wife Rosalynn obligingly charmed the liberals of San Francisco with the help of Peoples Temple. Grateful to Peoples Temple she dined with Jim Jones and kept a limited correspondence. When Jimmy Carter became president, Jim Jones delighted in bragging about his connection to the first lady. He showed everyone a snapshot of the two of them together and played the audio he had recorded of a phone call between himself and Rosalynn Carter.
Jones Q799: (Cuts in) District Attorney here, he was highly impressed with your husband, and your commitment, in more ways than one. We appreciate your Christian, ethical background, and also the, the broad liberality in which you respect other people’s religious perspective. I can’t uh, I can’t say how moved I am, I, I usually don’t lack– being a, a preacher, I don’t lack for words, but I’m deeply touched.
Rosalynn Q799: Well, I–
Jones Q799: Is there any particular that we could do for you?
Rosalynn Q799: No, I don’t have anything in mind, I just wanted to call because Jimmy had gotten his (unintelligible) think about it, so he told me to call you, and just try and get some, so…
Jones Q799: I’d also sent a letter, there’d been some negative press about your son participating in, uh, raising funds for a gay bar, and I wanted you to know that we’re a hundred percent behind you in that, I don’t know how far it has gone. There’s no end to the degree that some people will attempt to malign good people, but I– I don’t know whether you’ve received my letter, but I sent a letter…
Rosalynn Q799: Well–
Jones Q799: of encouragement, not that you need it. We’re going to win.
Rosalynn Q799: Well–
Jones Q799: We’re going to win.
Rosalynn Q799: We appreciate that, we get the mail eventually but it’s stacked up so much, between the time we won the Ohio primary and the, you know, the last primary, and the convention (unintelligible) so much that it takes us a while to get it organized and get it open, but we’re about to do that now–
Jones Q799: Well, you call us– We have many many thousands of members, and I have considerable influence in the Disciples of Christ denomination, in which I am an official. Anything we can do, you call. We’re one hundred percent behind you.
Of all the government entities and mental health professionals intimately involved with Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple, only one tried to find out what was really happening in Jonestown, and they killed him for it.
End Transmission