Episode 15: The Nuclear Family
Q962 Jones: I did it by transmission! The radio station! You don’t know who the radio station is! You ought to! I am the radio station!
Duck and Cover: We all know the atomic bomb is very dangerous, since it may be used against us, we must get ready for it, just as we are ready for many other dangers that are around us all the time. We must be ready for a new danger: the atomic bomb. There is a bright flash, brighter than the sun, brighter than anything you’ve ever seen. If you are not ready, did not know what to do, it could hurt you in different ways. It is such a big explosion. It can smash in buildings, and knock sign boards over, and break windows all over town. You may be in your schoolyard playing when the signal comes. [Air raid siren] That signal means to stop whatever you’re doing and get to the nearest safe place fast! Always remember, the flash of an atomic bomb can come at any time, no matter where you may be.
Q401 Jones: Now, we don’t like to think of it becoming a desert wasteland, prophetic as I've seen it. As I’ve seen the cities melt before my eyes. I remember the first time I saw it, the city of Indianapolis, Indiana in a prophetic vision. It’s not, it’s not the American people or the American country, its landscape that we’re opposed to. It’s the system, the false system that does not represent the people. We represent the people, so we can sing it [Sings “America, The Beautiful.”]
Welcome back to Transmissions from Jonestown, this is Episode 15: The Nuclear Family
You are awakened by a terrifying sound coming from somewhere inside the house, you feel paralyzed, unable to breathe, eyes unable to blink staring into the darkness. You try to imagine what made the sound. Your mind fills in the details you can’t see, shaping and twisting the sound until it begins to take shape. All the terrifying possibilities run through your mind culminating into the faces of monsters, ghosts, serial killers and even clowns from outer space. Fear is a rational response but irrational fear, fear in the absence of immediate danger, fear of the unknown opens the floodgates of our imagination unleashing upon ourselves the monsters and demons we let live in our subconscious.
Fear is our most powerful emotion, designed by nature to keep us alive. Frightening memories are the most clear and vivid, imprinting our psyche with signs and warnings. A reminder of our mortality and the dangers that exist all around us. As we evolved, we built a world of safety and protection and learned how to overcome our fears. The comforts and technology of the modern age have created a fear deficit. We were originally designed to chemically react to our environment, human beings now create ways to stimulate our adrenaline reflexes and experience terror. These synthetic catalysts increase our heart rate and fill our mouths with the taste of copper as we climb to the top of a roller coaster or peer out from beneath the covers, eyes tracing the shadows of imaginary bogeymen. For a moment we feel a thrill and giggle like mad as the roller coaster drops and we return to a place of safety.
But what happens to our brains when fear lingers longer than nature intended? How do our brains warn us of danger if we are frightened all the time?
Q987 Jones: “Oh say can you see by the dawn’s early light,” (Normal tone) all of you be standing on your feet like fools. Brainwashed, I’m talking about, brainwashed. And you can look on your TV, if you’ve been looking, but some people, they’re looking at everything but what the truth ought to be. It’ll show tears, great lines of graveyards where our babies – brown and black babies – are dying. [You] say. what’s that got to do with us? (Voice climbs) Because the same corporations that rule this country, the same megalomaniacs, the same elitists, the same ruling class – Ford, Dupont, Chrysler, General Motors – There is no end! I listen to 60 million Americans about to lose their homes. I listen to 15 million people that are starving to death. I didn’t hear it from some newspaper, I heard it from the heads of the government of the United States today. I listen to them talk about planned takeovers. I listen to them to talk about it like it was just an ordinary Sunday school picnic. Task force warns nation to get ready for riots and to get ready for martial law and to get ready for concentration camps. Get ready for identification marks to be put on your body and identification number, even if necessary tattooed on you. Say, aw, America wouldn’t do that. Don’t talk to me about what America would not do. [Mockingly sings] “My country ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty.” No, “my country ’tis of thee, terrible land of inequity,” that’s what it is. Don’t talk to me about a land of the free and the home of the brave, until everybody’s free.
In September 1961, from behind the pulpit Jim Jones announced that he had an apocalyptic vision. At 3:09 AM, on the 16th of an unknown month, the United States would be engulfed by nuclear war, and Indianapolis would be the next Hiroshima.
Duck and Cover: Sometimes the bomb might explode without any warning. That means duck and cover fast wherever you are. There’s no time to look around or wait. When there is a flash, duck and cover and do it fast.
Let's take a walk with former [Peoples Temple] associate pastor David Wise…
David Wise: During the years that the Peoples Temple was formed in Redwood Valley, in Ukiah. It was sort of a wind down of the hippie days, but it was still the hippie days. In the air was all these kind of leftist notions, such as we were in the Cold War. They were playing it up so big in the press. People were thinking about ultimate death everywhere called mutual assured destruction. Mutual assured destruction means we’re safe because if anybody fires any nuclear weapon we’ll all die. So thus, no one will do it. But these days, thanks to people like Jim Jones, and Al-Qaeda, and all kinds of things like that, people sometimes act like they’re looking forward to it. So, did Jim Jones start a movement or did he just pick up the idea in the middle of the movement that it would really give him some ground if he was claiming he knew the time and the hour when nuclear destruction was going to befall North America. And it was something like August 16 at 3:09 AM. Well anyway, since today is August 10, we’ll hope that this August he’s not right.
Jim Jones’ obsession with nuclear war coincided with what might be described as a midlife crisis. From the winter of 1960, until just after JFK’s assassination in 1963, Jim Jones traveled the world leaving his Church in Indiana behind, and giving up his position as the Director of the Human Rights Commission. By all accounts, Peoples Temple was making a difference in the state of Indiana. The Peoples Temple was racially integrating churches and businesses and successfully housing and feeding people. Jim Jones was gaining political influence and Black communities praised his achievements. I asked former members, what might have prompted Jim Jones to leave his church and Indiana? This is what Rebecca Moore shared with us:
Rebecca Moore: Jones was a very reactive person, he responded to external stimuli as a kind of initiating thing. So when he read, I think it was in Esquire magazine of 1962, you know the 9 places that are going to survive a nuclear attack, Brazil, Belo Horizonte, Brazil was one of those places. And, I think he sincerely believed that that was a real possibility, that, you know, nuclear war was a real possibility, and was imminent. Plus, I think, you know, there’s certainly conspiracy theories that say well he was in Brazil working for the CIA, but that doesn’t really explain why he uprooted his family, left a pretty growing and thriving church to go to Brazil, so I tend to suspect that it was more the reaction to the Esquire story about nuclear war. And then that same story had said Northern California, near Ukiah, was also a place that would survive a nuclear war, and so that’s the next place that they moved after they returned to Indianapolis.
While Jim Jones and his family were in Brazil, they corresponded with Patty, she had become Jim Jones’ head secretary in Ohio. Her son Mike also remembers why Jim Jones left Indiana.
Mike Wood: There is a humongous debate about what happened, and of course it’s the source of many, many conspiracy theories. I don’t know if he was in trouble with city government. I’ve heard allegations that he had sexually harassed, and I can believe this, one or two of the women who worked in the office. He could have been asked to leave because of that. I’ve heard that, I don’t have any proof of any of this stuff. He had all these senior citizens’ homes and he was always trying to, might have been trying to avoid an investigation there. And, maybe he had enough money at the time and he just wanted to do some traveling and take the family with him. I had heard from someone that the reason Jim had had to give up his position there in Indianapolis was because he had made one too many passes at some of the female staff members and he got out of, one of the reasons he got out of town was because he was afraid this was would be a big newspaper, he feared the newspaper articles. I don’t know if there was any truth to that or not, but that’s what I heard. It wouldn’t surprise me.
Jim Jones first traveled to Cuba less than a year after Fidel Castro had seized power and just months before the Bay of Pigs. In 1979, a year after the tragedy when biographers began trying to piece together the most confusing chunk of Jim Jones’ timeline, a man named Carlos Foster, a Baptist Pentecostal minister, claimed to have met Jim Jones in Havana in the winter of 1960. Carlos claimed that Jim Jones offered him $50,000 a year if he would emigrate to the United States and help relocate other Cuban families to work on farms in rural Indiana.
Mike Wood: I wouldn’t believe that for a minute because, consider Jim’s own trajectory: He went from a tiny small town, to a bigger town. This was a guy that wanted to move up in life; he married the mayor’s daughter. This was a guy that had his eye on big things. He liked the crowds, he liked preaching. I don’t see him setting up a farm at that point. Nobody ever, ever mentioned anything like that, nothing, no. He never mentioned anything like that, he was pretty much a standard issue evangelical preacher with a more liberal message. That was Jim Jones. And a faith healing capability. I mean, all of those are rooted within the Christian church somewhat. That’s who he was, he never, ever, ever, ever, talked about living on a farm anyplace. And the Church was too small to have made that effective, anyway. That’s just laughable.
Legend has it that Jim Jones had his picture taken with Fidel Castro, but the photograph has never been viewed by anyone I’ve spoken to.
Mike Wood: You know, I’ve heard about that picture. I don’t know, I’m just going to say, I don’t know if I saw it, or if I heard it about so much that I kind of envisioned it. Is there, by the way, is there such a picture? [Narrator: I don’t know, i’ve yet to see it] Yeah, well there probably isn’t.
Jim Jones then traveled to British Guyana just as the country began its transitional period of separation from the British Empire. During this time until 1966, the powers that be, mainly industrialists and foreign interests, fought over the rights to resources in Guyana. The United States and Britain wanted to keep the bauxite and sugar flowing into their capitalist economy while the Soviet Union offered to help Guyana develop its infrastructure in exchange for communist alignment. According to investigative journalist Jim Hougan, it was reported in newspapers that Jim Jones was putting on tent revivals in Guyana and warning the local population to beware false prophets and greedy preachers who were using the pulpit to spread communism. Journalist and author of Raven, Tim Rieterman, also wrote that Jim Jones seemed to want to go on record in Guyana as an anticommunist. Just one of the many contradictions we find during this mysterious era of Jones' life.
Q1059-4 Jones: And I’ve had it, you understand, I’m not interested in all this shit. Somebody back there, they’re sick, they’re trying to tell me how to preach. I’ll tell them to go to hell, that’s what I tell `em. I’m gonna tell a few more of you to go to hell to if you don’t get straight, because, listen, I’ve come to give you my life. I’ve come to save you. This country is rocking and reeling, right tonight. All your radios are blaring while you’re sitting in here, they’re blaring with the news that this government is going through crises that its never gone through in all of its history. And we need Father. I have prepared this land as best I can. This house: the House of Jones. I’ve prepared our food supply and our cave. I’ve prepared clothing and supplies of medical nature. We’ve got generators when the electricity fails. But, if you have to leave this land temporarily, all the things we’ve got up there for the emergency on that 16th at 3:09 won’t do us any good until we get out, to save our ass. We’re going to have to get out and then be able to come back after the system falls.
Jim Jones also traveled to California, and Hawaii during this time. There is evidence to suggest that he may have received mental healthcare in California. Jim Jones himself disputes this as slander spread by enemies of the Temple. In Hawaii he explored the idea of moving his church and family to the splendor of the tropics but eventually made his way back to Indiana. In January 1962, Jim Jones read an article in Esquire magazine titled “The 9 Best Places to Hide: a Survivalist’s Guide to the Nine Best Places to be During a Nuclear War.” Belo Horizonte, Brazil was on the list.
Q244 Jones: It’s horrifying that people will die in such a gross and painful manner, it’s horrifying for us to think of USA being nothing but a desert wasteland of deep caverns and radiation sickness for years so that people will not be able to even walk on the soil of US anywhere, but if you look at all of the equation, the number of people equipped with nuclear arms, you wonder if it will not be the matter of fact.
Jim Jones resigned his position as director of the Human Rights Commission and left Indianapolis for Brazil leaving the Church in the hands of Russell Winberg, an associate pastor Jones had met at the Laurel Street Tabernacle. According to former Temple members who corresponded with Jim Jones during his stay in Brazil, the purpose of the trip was to potentially move the Church where they would be safe from nuclear fallout. Jones was also attracted to higher poverty levels in Brazil: more poverty presented more opportunity for social outreach.
At this point I would like to remind the listener that if you have not listened to the first season of Transmissions from Jonestown, now might be a good time to do so. There are many conspiracy theories and odd facts about Jim Jones' time in Brazil that will not be covered in this episode.
Q1024 Jones: So we're in Brazil. Bless their little pea-pickin’ hearts. [Crowd: laughter] It’s good, let them get that kind of rumor. As long as they’re lookin’ in Brazil, they’re not lookin’ in the right place.
Spoiler alert, we don’t really know what Jones was up to in Brazil.
What we do know is that the slums of Belo Horizonte were unlike anything Jones had seen in the United States. Throngs of hungry, homeless orphans would crowd outside of his home while Marceline served them rice and soup from their veranda. The Peoples Temple in Indianapolis, in the absence of the prophet with his healing powers and radical sermons was losing members and donations were dwindling. Jim Jones' long time confidant and Associate Pastor Jack Beam traveled with Jim Jones in Brazil. Jack Beam's son, Jack Arnold did not go to Brazil, but his family did. This is what he can remember:
Jack Arnold Beam: Well, my folks were with him in Brazil. That's when I went, was on my own when I was 17, because I wouldn’t go. At that time in my life, I wanted to pursue my musical career and all of that. I mean, I was hooked on music by then, and I didn’t want to leave that to go to Brazil, because they went there under the guise that they were doing missionary work.
Jack Beam, Jr., or Jack Arnold, left home at the age of 17 to pursue a successful music career that he still enjoys to this day. His parents, Jack, Sr. and Rheaviana, and his sisters Eleanor and Joyce accompanied their parents to Brazil with Jones and his family.
Jack Arnold Beam: I can give you pieces of what I know. My sister (Joyce), who was younger than me, was down there with them. The thing of it is, is they said they were gonna do missionary work. Now, here's the thing, my sister was telling me, now this has been several years, when she had come back, OK so it’s been a while. But she was telling me that there would be people, you know, guys, dressed in suits, or military guys dressed in military outfits and all that, would come and pick him up everyday and he would go somewhere and he’d be gone most of the day and then he would come back, you know, at night. That’s kind of what was going on. So, I’m looking at OK if the premise is missionary work, I understand surviving in that area, if that were true, but if missionary work was the whole guise that you went down there on, he wasn’t doing any missionary work, he wasn't doing anything other than hanging out with these guys, you know what I mean, on pretty much on a daily basis. But see when all of that happened, I never had an idea that the reason they were going to Brazil was under the guise of missionary work, not that the world was going to be destroyed. However, it's my opinion, and I don’t have any proof about it, but I had a feeling that this guy, Jones was doing something for the CIA also, I don’t know that for a fact, but the dictatorships and all the shit that was going on at that time, that was my feeling about it.
Historians, researchers, and conspiracy theorists have struggled to make sense of Jim Jones' movements and activities in Brazil. Some say that Jim Jones joined a secret government mind control project and went to Brazil to be trained in brainwashing and torture techniques. Others claim that while Jim Jones was in Brazil, he became a radical socialist and developed his apostolic socialist methods of turning American church goers into communist revolutionaries. Even amongst former members and experts, mystery surrounds this period of Jim Jones' life.
David Wise: You know, from the time he went down to Brazil and was studying, the healing techniques down there are very big, and so, you know, and he was studying any ways to perfect a healing demonstration. You know, and he was experimenting with people down there. He said if you look out the window right now there’s gonna be a guy, with like, uh, red swimming trunks and he’s going to go over and pet the dog. And they said, “My God, that’s what happened!” Well trust me, that’s not that hard to set that up. Because that's what they were doing in Brazil – and these other areas and where they were like fake pulling the cancer out of you.
Denise: If anything, I’ve questioned what he did when he was in Brazil, and how he made his living while he was in Brazil. And him coming back different when he came back from Brazil and his message to the people and everything was different and shortly thereafter rooting everybody up and going to California and proceeding through with that whole different message of socialism and everything. That was the predominant message after he left Indianapolis. The betterment of mankind is your duty and your service to God, he became more about “I am God, and this is what I want,” and he became more and more like that, you know, and I’ve often wondered was Peoples Temple an experiment? I don’t know. I mean I, I’ve often, after having read some of those theories, I’ve often wondered that myself. Could it have been? Because it was a bizarre time, I’ll tell you that. It started it one way, and ended up another.
Thomas Beikman: I remember when he came back from there. I don’t know any better than anybody else, because like I said, I was pretty young. But over the years, I kinda thought he was learning how to control people there, see. He got into that witchcraft and all that junk. It wasn’t out in the open, but…. The man gave you the heebie jeebies, to put it mildly.
Fielding McGehee: The thing that he brought back from Brazil to Indianapolis was the incredible sense of what true poverty is and how all institutions have failed the poor, and that included the church, and that included his Church. And that was the thing that really sort of put him on the path of, the church needs to be, to act for God because God isn’t doing it, and then the Church is God, and then I am God. That’s the path, that’s the lesson that he brought back from Brazil. He might have been, he might have even gone down as a contract employee of the government. Those are, those...It’s pure speculation, who knows? But his behavior afterwards, and throughout the rest of his life from the time he returned is not one of a government agent.
Hue Fortson, Sr.: OH, the Brazil?! Oh, you’ll love this one. He had almost the entire congregation there in L.A. weeping. He said they were there, and he and his wife Marcline, and they went past an orphanage that had 500 children, starving children. And somewhere in this same little town there was a princess that saw him and saw how handsome he was and she tried her best to woo him because she wanted him. And when Marceline found out that he had, that she had interest in her husband in a sexual kind of way, she gave him permission to go on and lay with her, and supposedly she paid him $5,000 to feed these hungry orphans in this orphanage. And the way he relayed that story was like it was really heavy on him to do this, to sacrifice himself. And, I mean people were crying. The way he put that story, I mean, the man should have received an Oscar for the way he knew how to manipulate people and just break `em down.
David Wise: You know part of the reason that Jim went to Brazil was to study healing scam techniques. His desire to have power. His desire seemed so blatantly overcompensated. Wearing glasses for Elijah Muhammad mysticism wasn’t the only reason that he wore the glasses. He was able to create this man behind the curtain in the Wizard of Oz. He got to be much more authoritative.
Many years later Jim Jones would recount his time in Brazil in a half-hearted attempt to create an outline for his biography. In a document called the “untitled reminisces of Jim Jones,” he wrote that when he arrived, Brazil appeared to be on a course of social democracy, but as time went by the rise of the far right junta was apparent and it became clear that the CIA was installing a dictatorship. Jones claimed that while in Belo Horizonte he did humanitarian work with orphans and spent most of his time trying to get food and supplies for them. Jones claimed that when he made a bad investment, and funds from the United States were unexpectedly cut off, he became desperate and resorted to selling his body to the ambassador's wife. He wrote:
There is nothing to compare with the kind of revulsion you feel when you’re lying next to someone you loathe. And I loathed her, and everything she stood for – the arrogance of wealth, the racism, the cruelty. I puked afterwards; it was that bad. But I got the money and I bought the food and took it to these children. Only I made that bitch go with me so she could see the other side of life. And when these half-starved Black and brown children reached out to touch her dress to thank her, she snatched her skirt away lest they contaminate her lily white self… I could’ve choked her.
Q743 Jones: But how in the hell else could I do it, ’cause folks would not concern themselves about pennies. You wouldn’t be here today, if I hadn’t done this. Sure as hell if I hadn’t given my body. Sure as a hell if I hadn’t fucked all these sonsabitches. If I hadn’ta kept them quiet, and hadn’t sometimes got money for you, $5000 on one occasion, to save babies, from some old bitch. Such a nightmare in my life, all I can see is nothing but her white tresses on her dress. That’s hell, and some of you won’t even work, when some of us have gone through that kind of hell? (Cries out) Why in the hell is it? Why in the hell is it you give us trouble? Why why why why why why? I didn’t want (stumbles over words) live, much less fuck some old white bitch. Just understand it. Why should I be good, and you not be? Two out of three babies going to bed hungry, but I say that, and that’s just numbers to a lot of you, you don’t think about a hungry baby. By God, you better think about it sometime. It ain’t fun, it ain’t fun when you got no m – no food in the cupboard, and you got babies crying. I became – (Voice rises) My communism was confirmed on the mountains in – in Rio de Janeiro, just outside of (unintelligible name), I became a confirmed goddamn communist and a hater of all things religious, when I was on that mountain top and those poor religious people, caught up in the opiate of religion, the Disease of the Devil. There was nothing but – to – just a rage of ah, tuberculosis. No medicines, nothing. And I’ll never forget one thing, uh, that final blow, and I’ll keep that life in me as long as I live, that fuckin’ priest was with me, I wanted to throw him off the mountain top. Damn near did. Damn near did. I did something, he’s looking for me, I can tell you that, if he – if there’s a world left, he’s looking for me, if he’s still alive (sniffs). But I didn’t throw him off, but I come damn near close to it. Next best thing I could do was boot him in the ass and cause him to slide about one hundred and fifty feet down the side of that fuckin’ mountain. I don’t know what condition he was in. I heard he was alive, though, and wondering who in the hell I was. (Sniffs) But he didn’t know me, ’cause I looked like every other brazalero to him. (Quiet) But I walk in, and that sonofabitchin’ priest was standing over this little boy, his momma dead – dad was gone and his momma was laying on a board – (Voice rises) not a box, on a board! There was one scrawny ass chicken in that hut.. Four little children layin’ around, him, the little boy standin’ and the priest said, I want to give him the blessing, ’cause he’s gonna have to be the head of this house. Him and his fancy robes. I said, why don’t you sell those goddamn robes? He said, who – who are you? Then I spoke Portuguese better than I did, and he wanted to know who I was, and asked the community. The community wouldn’t give him any help. That’s why I’m tellin’ you, you can organize. The community would not give him any help to find out who I was, and a lot of them knew, because I’d taken food up and down that mountain. And nobody would tell that fuckin’ priest who I was. And I was saying damn bad stuff, coulda got me in trouble, because at that time, the military was well in control of that district. (Quiet) And he said, well, I’m giving him a blessing, so he can lead this family of four scrawny children that looked like death warmed over. And his little eyes sunken in his eyes, and that scrawny-ass chicken that looked like it was dead with feathers on it. And he’s giving the blessing and waving that fuckin’ perfume over that body. And he chased me down the goddamn hill, kept runnin’ after me, find out who I was. I said, leave me alone, sonofabitch. ‘Cause I had family to rear, I always had family to rear, I had children I’d already adopted and I had an orphanage to take care of. I thought, fucker, you ke – you keep pursuing me, if – I knew, if he went down a little further, there was some bourgeois that’d help, and I thought if he goes that way, it’s a too too much, so I led him over to the center part – and he followed me, kept going over there, trying to preach to me. He got his ass up in my face. I thought well, there a side over there, if I hit him that way, man, he’s dead. But if I just get him this way, to slide him, you know, just kind of boost him, he’ll get a – he’ll get a few bumps on the way down. But I didn’t count on him going as far as he did. If 150 is too far, he didn’t go that far, but honey, he went a good 75 feet. Jesus Christ. I just pressed him in his damn robes, and he slid his ass down there, and he wasn’t calling Jesus either, when he was going down there. He was screaming like a banshee. Lousy people. And I became a confirmed communist at that point. (Cries out) Not right, it’s not right, it’s not right. Fuck the priest, and fuck their religion, and fuck all these people that don’t feel guilt about a world like that.
Jim Jones wrote that he felt the people of Brazil were setting the stage for a right wing take over with their apathetic attitudes towards the poor. Jones went to the US Embassy and spied, watching Brazilian military leaders come and go in a bustle of activity. The junta was gathering like a dark cloud over Brazil and a takeover was imminent. Jones determined that Brazil was preparing to use fascist techniques and torture to keep the people in line after the coup. These techniques and methods of coercion would have to be imported from a foreign country, one familiar with right wing take overs and brainwashing insurgents with torture: The United States.
Q401 Jones: “America, America, Socialism shed thy grace upon thee. And crown whatever good you have with brotherhood – you need it badly – from sea to shining sea.”
Dan Mitrione was a police chief in Indiana from 1956-1960. In 1960, Mitrione joined the Public Safety program of the International Cooperation Administration. The program provided U.S. aid and training to civilian police in third world countries. Mitrione's first assignment was in Belo Horizonte, where he’s alleged to have trained police in counter insurgent torture techniques. Jim Jones' relationship to Mitrione is critical to understanding where many theories about Jim Jones working for the CIA come from. No one has ever been able to definitively prove there is a connection between Jim Jones and Dan Mitrione other than they both lived in Richmond, Indiana at the same time, and they were both in Belo Horizonte Brazil at the same time. This is what Jim Jones wrote about Dan Mitrione:
There was one guy I knew growing up in Richmond, a cruel, cruel person, even as a kid, a vicious racist – Dan Mitrione. I’ve heard of his nefarious activities in Bella Horozonte [Belo Horizonte], and I thought, “I’ll case this man out.” I wasn’t really inclined to do him in, not me, personally, but I certainly was inclined to inform on his activities to everybody on the Left.
But he wouldn’t see me. I saw his family and they were arrogantly anti- Brazilian; nasty reactions of his children towards Brazilians, Blacks etc. He was supposed to be a traffic advisor. He was known in Bella Horozonte [Belo Horizonte] by everybody to be something other than a mere traffic advisor. There were rumors that he participated in the military even then, doing strange things to dissenters. These military people, police people who had their after hour vigilantes – people disappeared and were killed, tortured. Mitrione’s name would come up frequently. Later he appeared in Uruguay. The Tuperamos [Tupamaros] claimed he was an advisor on torture and I sure could find that conceivable, although I have no proof of it.
Mike Wood: Jim mentioned Dan Mitrione a couple of times, but it was just kind of in passing, like “yeah, I knew this guy….” Jim didn’t make any secrets about it. Dan Mitrione was a police chief when Jim was just a kid. Jim was always the kind of guy who wanted to connect to authority, you know, that was always, that was the kind of person he was, even as a little boy. It’s important to note that Jim was incredibly smart, very, I mean an excellent student and just movie star good looks. He was very charming. When you were talking to Jim you felt like you were talking to your best friend, but he knew that he wasn’t talking to his best friend. He knew that you were the next mean to whatever his end happened to be at that point. I can just see Jim go to the local fireman and they have fireman’s day, or they go to the local bakery and they watch them make the cookies, they go to the local police department and the chief sit down and give them a talk, and that kind of thing. And I think that's what Jim did, you know, he just stayed after the field trip and shook Mitrione’s hand and said, “gee, you know, should I consider a career in law enforcement and blah, blah, blah.” And I’m sure Mitrione was kinda flattered by it, saw that Jim was this intelligent kid, very likeable, you know? I mean, If you’re going to mentor somebody, and who doesn't like to mentor, this would be the perfect kid to mentor. So I’m sure that they did establish a kind of relationship, and I think what happened in Belo Horizonte, and it could be one of the reasons why Jim took the family to Belo Horizonte, is he found out Mitrione was working for the federal government and the State Department or something in Belo Horizonte. And I think that may be one of the reasons why he went there. And you know, he probably reignited or reinvigorated his connection to Mitrione and you know, they probably had a meeting or two together and that was about it. But I know that that connection has been the basis of all these conspiracy theories about MK Ultra, CIA sponsorship of Peoples Temple and all that other horseshit.
For those of you playing along at home, let's take a moment to consider why a connection between Dan Mitrione and Jim Jones would be significant. Dan Mitrione was a known CIA spook trained in the arts of mind control and torture, he was dangerous enough to be kidnapped by leftists and important enough to be memorialized as an American hero by the Right. If Jim Jones was spending time with Dan Mitrione in Brazil, it wasn’t for missionary work. Could Jim Jones have learned brainwashing and torture techniques from Mitrione to be used in Jonestown later? Was Jim Jones recruited by Mitrione into a secret government project? Let's go back to the beginning and take a look at how these two met.
Jim Jones finished high school and worked as a hospital orderly in Richmond, Indiana. During this time Dan Mitrione was a police officer, and eventually police chief in Richmond. Jim Jones began his career preaching on street corners and in Black neighborhoods. It is totally conceivable Jim crossed paths with Mitrione at a time and place where street corner preachers and radical activism were nearly indistinguishable from each other. Even in his youth, Jim Jones' ferocity while preaching and the radical nature of his message drew crowds and he used his charisma to get to know the people in law enforcement and government he might one day need on his side. In his own words, Jim Jones claimed to know Dan Mitrione in Richmond, calling him a cruel racist.
Now we travel to Belo Horizonte, Brazil where Dan Mitrione is teaching torture techniques, Jim Jones claims to have spotted Mitrione and attempts to spy on him but is unable to make contact. Jones, or rather someone close to Jones I should say, doesn’t mention Dan Mitrione again until years later in Jonestown.
Rebecca Moore corresponded with her sisters Annie and Carolyn when they lived in Jonestown. Carolyn and Annie were amongst Jim Jones’ closest confidants. Jim and Carolyn had been involved in a complicated love affair that nearly spanned a decade. In December 1977, Carolyn Moore, wrote Rebecca’s family a letter, in it she describes a conspiracy against the Temple. She wrote:
Because we have close government ties here, we have been able to learn of a number of things which otherwise we would not know. (Of course, all originates from the U.S.) And you well remember Dan Mitrione, who was certainly no myth.
Initially when I read Carolyn’s letter, I felt like I had found a needle in a haystack. One of the highest-ranking members of the Temple, more importantly someone close to Jones, spelled out a conspiracy against the Temple. Even the words as Carolyn wrote them, Dan Mitrione, who was certainly no myth, seemed to validate my gut feeling that there was something to this association. I was excited to speak with Rebecca Moore about Mitrione.
Rebecca Moore: It has been alleged that Jim Jones had a connection to Dan Mitrione who was a police officer, FBI agent, government advisor to the CIA in South America. And he was definitely known to have a reputation for torturing people. He himself was assassinated in Uruguay in 1970. But he was kinda, and I remember his name having grown up in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. He was like, definitely a bad guy. You know, he’s kinda like the opposite of Che Guevarra: you know, he’s the hero of the Left, and Dan Mitrione is the villain of the Left. So, Mitrione started his career in Indianapolis, and I think that’s where the story of the connection between Jim Jones and Mitrione begins. I have not seen any kind of documentary evidence that they met, or had a conversation, or that Mitrione recruited Jones or anything that would persuade me that there’s anything more to the connection other than they both were in Indianapolis at the same time. But maybe there’s something that we haven’t uncovered-- I don’t know.
I kept digging, determined to find a connection. Initially the discovery of Carolyn’s letter drove my research and I was excited, but as the excitement subsided and the clues I’d hoped to find in an FBI vault yielded no information, I re-examined the letter.
Because we have close government ties here, we have been able to learn of a number of things which otherwise we would not know. (Of course, all originate from the U.S.) And you well remember Dan Mitrione, who was certainly no myth.
“And you well remember….” How could Carolyn’s sister Rebecca, or her parents remember Mitrione? They had never been members of the Temple. The letter goes on to say, “Mitrione who was no myth…” Needless to say Dan Mitrione was a myth to me all these years, but what did that mean to Rebecca and her family in 1977?
These questions faded into the back of my mind until one day, I was having a conversation about film with David Wise. Dave was sharing memories with me about Jim Jones favorite films:
David Wise: His very favorite all-time film was Z, and one time it was lost off the bottom of the bus, because he liked to show it to the crowd to politicize the crowd, make them aware of what’s going on. And it was about government, being, a good man that had taken over office in some South American country, being assassinated and it was all about the people that were resisting, some kind of rebels that were resisting, see? And, I think even taking, kidnapping, I forget his name right now, but this famous filmmaker made a couple of films that were pretty famous and pretty successful.
Q1059-4 Jones: You saw Z last week, Z means, he’s alive or freedom’s alive. In Greece, we cannot even use the word Z. The letter Z cannot even be used in Greece. How many saw the film? How many did not see the movie that we had to purchase, because it’s not freely available? Then we must have another time for you to see it. How many did not see it? It’s a movie in very beautiful form, technicolor of the actual events that took place in the overthrow of the Greek democracy, where democracy was birthed, where it was cradled, where we found freedom. And our government did it. And those bastards are now in the high echelons of your government. (Pause) You’re getting ready for a coup d’état.
In 1969, Dan Mitrione was kidnapped by the Tupamaros revolutionaries in Uruguay and murdered. Director Costa-Gavras directed a film about it in 1972 called State of Siege. Costa-Gavras also directed a film called Z about the murder of a leftist leader followed by a government coverup. Z is said to have been Jim Jones' favorite film. He often screened Z adding his personal commentary for people. It is highly likely he was also a fan of State of Siege and knew the story of Dan Mitrione well.
Q184 Jones: You get special bonuses, remember, those that do well...special candies, pastries, so forth and so on. Thank you very much. Children’s program, movies begin at four, the band and entertainment at six. Much love– and the movie then, a beautiful movie State of Siege at about eight.
Carolyn’s letter now made sense to me. The myth of Dan Mitrione, the enemy of the Left, had been made famous by a film, a film that was screened more than once in Jonestown and amongst Jim Jones’ top favorites.
Had Jim Jones been more than simply acquainted with Dan Mitrione, he likely would have bragged about it. On the flip side, if Jim Jones, the leader of a socialist movement, had at one time been affiliated with Mitrione and his far right atrocities, Jones would have likely tried to hide this and would have avoided showing others the film.
But of course, as with all good unsolved mysteries, there is a third, even more bizarre theory we could entertain. Jim Jones enjoyed these films specifically because they reminded him of his time in Brazil, and maybe even reminded of his time with Dan Mitrione.
Jones: We’re living in a COINTELPRO, we’re living in a Parallax View, we’re living in a Z.
Jim Jones claimed he got out of Brazil with his family just in time. When they arrived back in the States, a woman who used to watch their pets wrote Jones and said the military police were looking for him. While in Brazil, Jones claimed he had preached openly about communism and helped resistance fighters. Jones had struggled with his decision to leave Brazil, but after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, he knew the United States was just as vulnerable to a far right takeover and his People needed him. During this time away from Indiana, Jones had experienced a fascist takeover, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the assassination of a United States president.
Castro Cuban Missile Crisis clip in Spanish
JFK: Good evening my fellow citizens, this government, as promised, has maintained the closest surveillance of the Soviet military build-up on the island of Cuba. Within the past week, unmistakable evidence has established the fact that a series of offensive missile sites is not in preparation on that imprisoned island. The purpose of these bases can be none other than to provide a nuclear strike capability against the Western Hemisphere.
Duck and Cover: You know how bad sunburn can feel. The atomic bomb flash could burn you worse than a terrible sunburn. In Betty’s school they are talking about the atomic bomb too. Betty is asking her teacher “how can we tell when the atomic bomb may explode?” And her teacher is explaining that there are two kinds of attack: with warning and without any warning. [Explosion]. But when a war time nuclear explosion occurs, a serious fallout follows. Thousands of tons of atomized earth, and the mushroom cloud containing them sometimes moves as high 100,000 feet. You can’t hear, smell, taste, or see the radiation.
Clip: Man 1: Say, what is that clicking?
Man 2: You must be radioactive.
Man 1: Well, whatdya know about that? I’ve been carrying radioactivity around with me and didn’t even know it-- [heh, uh]
News clip: When a spokesman was asked what have you been doing to prepare the people? His words “Civil Defense” were interrupted with a roar laughter.
Song: “Helter skelter, they're gonna live, live, live in my Fallout Shelter”
Civil Defense film: Some say it was apathy, indifference, others say it was all that talk about standing in the door of your home shelter with a gun and shooting your neighbor down if he tried to get in. That didn’t sit well with our people. But the coming of the National Shelter Survey and the idea of finding community shelter for everyone seemed to put the matter in a brand new light.
According to Mike Wood, when Jim Jones returned to the United States, his message was more radically focused. Jim Jones seemed convinced that he needed to lead his People to a place of safety, away from fascists where they could build a socialist paradise and survive a nuclear winter.
Mike Wood: What I understood was he was in Brazil and he was praying and said give me a sign that says I should go back to America and he said you know, a feather on the ground flew up. That told him should come back to the US, that was right after the Kennedy assassination. You know, obviously there wasn’t such a great reaction from people in Brazil to anybody that was American down there. He comes back to Indiana, he comes to Ohio, and that’s when we saw him. And, you know, from that point on his nuclear prophecy was so well established, and that we knew he had been thinking about it for a while. And obviously, and I’m sure you’ve heard this too, there was some sort of Esquire magazine article about the safest places in the world, blah, blah, blah, and one of which was Redwood Valley, right, or anything north of Santa Rosa; just so you know Santa Rosa is about 60 miles north of San Francisco on Route 101, and then above that is, beyond that by another 60 miles is Ukiah, and about 10 miles north of that is Redwood Valley. So Redwood Valley is really kind of a suburban, bedroom community for Ukiah. I can’t remember not knowing about the prophecy. So, I mean, I’m sure, almost immediately on Jim’s return, perhaps even before that, we knew about the prophecies, I just can’t remember. And the prophecy had kind of an A and B. A was of course that the world will be destroyed except for this, you know, Redwood Valley area, and the second was that a nuclear war would begin at 3:09 am on the 16th of the month. You know the trick about a good psychic prediction is gotta have some good specificity to it, but not enough that you can really be held to it. So, you know, the 16th of the month, on the weekend before the 16th he’d have a big thing “Oh, I’m nervous, oh, I think it’s gonna happen,” so that everyone would get fuckin’ freaked out and then you know, take a big offering. And then of course then the next weekend, he would say I really had to use my gifts to keep this from happening, because I could see that there were some silos that opened and I closed them, and blah, blah, blah. And it was always just horseshit. [laughs] A kind of funny thing here: my mother had decided that, well if we’re going to die we all want to die together. My dad worked the graveyard shift at the Kroger bakery and so, dad worked the graveyard shift, and so funny [laughs] my mother would wake us up, and we would have to drive...that would be my sister and me, we would have to drive to the goddamn bakery up on High Street and sit there until after 3:09 so that if we died we’d all die together. Oh my, Jesus, why didn’t you just let me sleep through it? And so, finally in an effort to influence her or to let her know how ridiculous this was, I said you know Mom, Jim didn’t tell us what time zone he was talking about. By the way, Ohio and Indiana are separated by time zone. She said “well what do you mean?” I said well what I mean is when it’s 3:00 am here it’s 2:00 am in Indiana, and when it’s 3:00 am in Indiana it’s 4:00 am here. She said “Oh, that’s right, I didn’t think of that.” So then we had to sit there for an extra goddamn hour. So, I said “I should have kept my mouth shut!”
In the short amount of time Jim Jones had been away the United States was rapidly changing. The Civil Rights movement was gaining momentum and Indiana was racially integrating. Fellowship at the Temple had dipped so low the now cavernous Temple would need to be downsized. Donations trickled where they used to flow and Jim Jones knew he would have to begin recruiting new members all over again. While still in Brazil, Jim Jones sent Jack Beam and Associate Pastor Ross Case to scout out a place near Eureka, California, also listed in “The Nine Best Places to Hide” article.
Jack Arnold Beam: When they came back, they went to California, and what I understand was, there was only like 5 or 6 places in the world that could withstand a nuclear blast and one of them was Ukiah area because of the mountains and the air flow and all of that kind of stuff. And I think that is why they went there, because he had the entire congregation move from Indianapolis to there.
If Jones was going to rebuild the church he was determined to do it somewhere more diverse than Indiana and safe from fallout. Jack Beam went to Hayward and associate Pastor Ross Case went to Ukiah. Jim Jones would have liked to settle closer to San Francisco or Los Angeles for recruitment purposes, but neither would be safe from the mushroom clouds he saw in his dreams. Ukiah was chosen both for the plentiful soil that would allow the Temple to potentially grow their own food, and the caves that dotted the hills. Jim Jones convinced approximately 90 of his followers to relocate to California.
Mike Wood: Now this was a big deal for us, moving out here, and this was the reason that we all moved. And it was important until we started expanding into other areas of the state, that would be in 1968, 1969. And then the other element of the prophecy, actually there were 3 elements: not only would Redwood Valley be safe, but there was a cave, THE cave, that was going to serve as a home for us in the post-nuclear world. He specifically for, not everybody in Ukiah, so we would be extra safe. So, Jim had claimed to have found a cave. It wasn’t volcanic, it was just a naturally occurring hole in one of these mountains on the western side of 101. And so we all went up there to have a look at it and you know they had ropes and all to take you down into it. I never went down in it, but I kinda sat around the edge. It’s not the kind of thing you would want to fall into, be kinda hard to get out. If you think you’re gonna put 100 people in there, and they’re gonna live for a while, you’re out of your mind. I mean, could put more people in your bathroom and you’d have more conveniences. This, It, this was just absurd. But anyway, so that was what we’re talking... and my role after, I thought, “Man, we gotta get prepared for this.” So I sort of made it my personal mission to do what I could to get people prepared since I was the head of the youth group, I kind of trained us as a paramilitary organization, not to fight a war, but to get people moved from Ukiah to wherever the hell this safe place was supposed to be.The reason we came to California was to escape the fallout and the bombing of the nuclear war that we were, everybody was anticipating back then. Everybody was building bomb shelters and “Duck and Cover” in class, and October of 1962 is still fresh in everybody's memory. Anyway, it did occur to me that if in fact we were here in this area as a way of being safe from any of the consequences of a nuclear war, we would be on our own, we would have to survive in a non-urban environment. Well, how do we do that? And so, I thought, well we need to have, and I was head of the youth group. young people need to be trained as much as possible in survival skills. Every family ought to have a survival kit, like, you know, a suitcase that has, you know, clothing, and shoes, and rations, and things like that in it. So I took it upon myself, with Jim’s approval, to go on and make sure we all had those. And there was a book we all read called How to Shit in the Woods [Laughs], anyway, it was just kind of a basic survival book. And so, I thought well OK this is a great thing to, this is good, we have a lot of old people who have a hard time getting around, but we’ve got this group of young people, and we’re the people who have to take care of these people, we’re going to have to figure out how to move them to wherever it is we are going to move, we’re going to have to figure out how to have shelter, we’re going to have to figure out how to defend ourselves because if we have these things there is a risk that other people are going be looking to take them away from us. So what does it all mean? What can I do to really help out? And so I thought, well OK, I’m making sure that everybody has got some clothes and stuff like that, and you know we’ve got food, and blah, blah, blah. But, how do we move people? Do we have a plan for moving the people? How do we defend ourselves? Do we have a plan for knowing ourselves how to live in survivalist conditions and how to instruct other people on living in survivalist conditions. And finally, you know, what kind of weapons do we need? Those kinds of things, so those are the questions I had in mind, so I just undertook to do that, and so the way I did it was to institute survival training in the youth group. So we would go out, and have camp outs, and then that would be the general group, and then I had a smaller group that I trusted more and you know I kinda gave them like military training, not in the sense of killing people, but in the sense of how to be organized, how to read maps, how to travel through the woods, how to triangulate, how to look at a map and know where you were on the actual ground, which is not an easy thing to do. We all had specialized equipment: compasses, and binoculars and one thing and another so that we could actually do those things, right and kinda lead the charge. And then an even smaller group I put together to actually kinda figure out what we should do to protect ourselves. We did a survey of all the weapons we had. We went out, I went out, and bought a couple of M1 Garands, and we did a little training [laughs]. OK, here’s the funny story that gets to all of that. So, I thought well what other weapons do we need. I’d always loved archery, so I had a bow and then I went out and bought a crossbow. And, the crossbow got me in some trouble in a couple ways. One, [laughs] and I bought that crossbow. A crossbow is a perfect poachers weapon- it’s silent, it’s deadly, and you know it’s compact. I’m wondering, is it true as I’d heard, if you shoot one straight up you will actually be able to watch it to its zenith, and at its zenith it will actually stop, when you think about it, it’s logical and naturally it’s gonna turn around and come back down, it will stop and it will turn over and then come back down. I thought damn, I wonder if that’s true? We go out one day on kind of a weapons expedition. You know, just kinda practicing, target practicing, stuff like that. I said, “hey guys I want to try this, let’s do it, OK,” and they said “oh yeah, sure.” I take that crossbow and hold it up as straight as I can and I shoot the damn thing and sure enough man, we can follow that damn arrow all the way to its zenith. And it must’ve been 100 yards, 200 yards. And then, we could actually watch it turn, stop, and come back down. And all it once it dawned on me: that it was going to come down at the same velocity at which it left the bow in the first place. And it dawned on me that that would be deadly and here we are standing right under that motherfucker. I said “holy shit! Scramble! That thing’s coming right at us!” So we all took off [laughs]. You know something, that thing came down so hard and buried itself so far under the surface that we could never find it. I mean and it was coming down hard and fast too. It went kaboom! That’s the last time I tried that experiment. You know, it was probably an easy weapon to, well, it would be a very good weapon in the jungle. One of the guys who was in my A-Team, if you will, was also one of the guys on the trailer that came out shooting all those people so, I’m sure, Bob, Bob Kice remembered the lesson. Anyway, I got in so much trouble with Jim for that, ah, he was pissed off. So he confiscated all our weapons. He was really angry with me. He said, you know, “are you nuts? The last thing I want is for people to think we’re some armed militia group out here. And that’s exactly what they're gonna think with you doing all this stuff, so you gotta knock it off.” They had a big public meeting and I was embarrassed, and blah, blah, blah, but it was all worked out. But they did collect all of our weapons, so that was that.
Q958 Jones: Say, why are you protecting things up in Redwood Valley? Well, Redwood Valley is for the great Apocalypse. If we have a nuclear holocaust with an earth tremor that will split off all through the San Andreas Fault, and drop everything west of the San Andreas Fault into the sea, then we’re prepared, because I’ve got a cavern deep, deep in the mountains that can take care of every one of you. No fallout can get to you, no radiation can get to you. You’re warm, it’s constant temperature, 55 to 62 degrees all year long, down there where I’ve got that. And we’ve got food for that. Say, well, how many emergencies can there be? There can be that emergency, it’s definitely gonna take place on one sixteenth at 3:09, our people, those that were in the meeting when it came by revelation, know exactly the day, the month, the minute, the year. I will tell everyone about it two weeks before. But in the meantime, there could be a dictatorship that would sweep in. So we have to be prepared to take our flight to the Valley in the case of great desolation or the Apocalypse or the Armageddon that would spring forth in a nuclear hell, as Peter said, when the elements melt with a fervent heat. We have to be prepared for that, but we also have to be prepared to go to other places in the world if a dictatorship takes over, because I told you – and I never have broke my word – I told you, not one of my children’s gonna end up in a concentration camp. I said they’ll have to kill us all first. Now I mean that. I mean, that’s one place we draw the line. We’ve been slaves once in this country, we’ve been in chains once in this country, they’ve sold us on the slave market once, but baby, they’re not gonna do it again.
Congregation: Cheers and applause
Jones: So they better let us get our planes, ‘cause we’ll be peaceful. So if they want to ma– build a dictatorship, they can build it. That’s their business. But I’d like to have a way that I can get my children out quick. Say, where you going? Now that’s for Father to know and for you to find out.
The Attention Span Recovery Project would like to thank our special guests for this episode: Mike Wood, Thomas Beikman, Rebecca Moore, Fielding McGehee, Jack Arnold Beam, Hue Fortson, Jr., David Wise, and Denise. We would also like to thank the Jonestown Institute, otherwise known as the Alternative Considerations of Jonestown and Peoples Temple. Their Website can be found at jonestown.sdsu.edu. This program would not be possible without listeners like you….Only you can prevent fascism.
END TRANSMISSION