Secret and Suppressed: Banned Ideas and Hidden History (23 page)

Guyanese troops, and police who arrived with American Embassy official Richard Dwyer, also failed to defend Congressman Leo Ryan and others who came to Guyana with him when they were shot down in cold blood at the Port Kaituma airstrip, even though the troops were nearby with machine guns at the ready.
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Although Temple member Larry Layton has been charged with the murders of Congressman Ryan, Temple defector Patricia Parks and press reporters Greg Robinson, Don Harris and Bob Brown, he was not in a position to shoot them.
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Blocked from boarding Ryan’s twin engine Otter, he had entered another plane nearby. Once inside, he pulled out a gun and wounded two Temple followers before being disarmed.
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The others were clearly killed by armed men who descended from a tractor-trailer at the scene, after opening fire. Witnesses described them as “zombies,” walking mechanically, without emotion, and “looking through you, not at you,” as they murdered.
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Only certain people were killed, and the selection was clearly planned. Certain wounded people, like Ryan’s aide Jackie Speiers, were not harmed further, but the killers made sure that Ryan and the newsmen were dead. In some cases they shot people, already wounded, directly in the head.
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These gunmen were never finally identified and may have been under Layton’s command. They may not have been among the Jonestown dead.
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At the Jonestown site, survivors described a special group of Jones’ followers who were allowed to carry weapons and money, and to come and go from the camp. These people were all white, mostly males.
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They ate better and worked less than the others, and they served as an armed guard to enforce discipline, control labor and restrict movement.
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Among them were Jones’ top lieutenants, including George Philip Blakey. Blakey and others regularly visited Georgetown, Guyana and made trips in their sea-going boat, the Cudjoe. He was privileged to be aboard the boat when the murders occurred.
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This special armed guard survived the massacre. Many were trained and programmed killers, like the “zombies” who attacked Ryan. Some were used as mercenaries in Africa, and elsewhere.
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The dead were 90% women, and 80% Blacks.
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It is unlikely that men armed with guns and modern crossbows would give up control and willingly be injected with poisons. It is much more likely that they forced nearly 400 people to die by injection, and then assisted in the murder of 500 more who attempted to escape. One survivor clearly heard people cheering 45 minutes after the massacre. Despite government claims, they are not accounted for, nor is their location known.
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Back in California, People’s Temple members openly admitted that they feared they were targeted by a “hit squad,” and the Temple was surrounded for some time by local police forces.
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During that period, two members of the elite guard from Jonestown returned and were allowed into the Temple by police.
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The survivors who rode to Port Kaituma with Leo Ryan complained when Larry Layton boarded the truck, “He’s not one of us.”
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Rumors also persisted that a “death list” of U.S. officials existed, and some survivors verified in testimony to the San Francisco grand jury.
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A congressional aide was quoted in the AP wires on May 19, 1979, “There are 120 white, brainwashed assassins out from Jonestown awaiting the trigger word to pick up their hit.”
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Other survivors included Mark Lane and Charles Garry, lawyers for People’s Temple, who managed to escape the massacre somehow.
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In addition to the 16 who officially returned with the Ryan party, others managed to reach Georgetown and come back home.
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However, there have been continuing suspicious murders of those people here. Jeannie and Al Mills, who intended to write a book about Jones, were murdered at home, bound and shot.
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Some evidence indicates a connection between the Jonestown operation and the murders of Mayor Moscone and Harvey Milk by police agent Dan White.
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Another Jonestown survivor was shot near his home in Detroit by unidentified killers.
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Yet another was involved in a mass murder of school children in Los Angeles.
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Anyone who survived such massive slaughter must be somewhat suspect. The fact that the press never even spoke to nearly 200 survivors raises serious doubts.

In order to understand the strange events surrounding Jonestown, we must begin with a history of the people involved. The official story of a religious fanatic and his idealist followers doesn’t make sense in light of the evidence of murders, armed killers and autopsy cover-ups. If it happened the way we were told, there should be no reason to try to hide the facts from the public, and full investigation into the deaths at Jonestown, and the murder of Leo Ryan would have been welcomed. What did happen is something else again.

Jim Jones grew up in Lynn, in southern Indiana. His father was an active member of the local Ku Klux Klan that infest that area.
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His friends found him a little strange, and he was interested in preaching the Bible and religious rituals.
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Perhaps more important was his boyhood friendship with Dan Mitrione, confirmed by local residents.
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In the early 50s, Jones set out to be a religious minister, and was ordained at one point by a Christian denomination in Indianapolis.
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It was during this period that he met and married his lifelong mate, Marceline.
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He also had a small business selling monkeys, purchased from the research department at Indiana State University at Bloomington.
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A Bible-thumper and faith healer, Jones put on revivalist tent shows in the area, and worked close to Richmond, Indiana. Mitrione, his friend, worked as chief of police there, and kept him from being arrested or run out of town.
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According to those close to him, he used wet chicken livers as evidence of “cancers” he was removing by “divine powers.”
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His landlady called him “a gangster who used a Bible instead of a gun.”
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His church followers included Charles Beikman, a Green Beret who was to stay with him to the end.
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Beikman was later charged with the murders of several Temple members in Georgetown, following the massacre.
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Dan Mitrione, Jones’ friend, moved on to the CIA-financed International Police Academy, where police were trained in counter-insurgency and torture techniques from around the world.
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Jones, a poor, itinerant preacher, suddenly had money in 1961 for a trip to “minister” in Brazil, and he took his family with him.
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By this time, he had “adopted” Beikman, and eight children, both Black and White.
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His neighbors in Brazil distrusted him. He told them he worked with U.S. Navy Intelligence. His transportation and groceries were being provided by the U.S. Embassy, as was the large house he lived in.
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His son, Stephan, commented that he made regular trips to Belo Horizonte, site of the CIA headquarters in Brazil.
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An American police advisor, working closely with the CIA at that point, Dan Mitrione was there as well.
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Mitrione had risen in the ranks quickly, and was busy training foreign police in torture and assassination methods. He was later kidnapped by Tupermaro guerrillas in Uruguay, interrogated and murdered.
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Costa Gavras made a film about his death titled
State of Siege.
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Jones returned to the United States in 1963, with $10,000 in his pocket.
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Recent articles indicate that Catholic clergy are complaining about CIA funding of other denominations for “ministry” in Brazil; perhaps Jones was an early example.
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With his new wealth, Jones was able to travel to California and establish the first People’s Temple in Ukiah, California, in 1965. Guarded by dogs, electric fences and guard towers, he set up Happy Havens Rest Home.
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Despite a lack of trained personnel, or proper licensing, Jones drew in many people at the camp. He had elderly, prisoners, people from psychiatric institutions, and 150 foster children, often transferred to care at Happy Havens by court orders.
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He was contacted there by Christian missionaries from World Vision, an international evangelical order that had done espionage for the CIA in Southeast Asia.
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He met “influential” members of the community and was befriended by Walter Heady, the head of the local chapter of the John Birch Society.
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He used the members of this “church” to organize local voting drives for Richard Nixon’s election, and worked closely with the Republican Party.
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He was even appointed chairman of the county grand jury.
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“The Messiah from Ukiah,” as he was known then, met and recruited Timothy Stoen, a Stanford graduate and member of the city DA’s office, and his wife Grace.
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During this time, the Layton family, Terri Buford and George Phillip Blakey, and other important members joined the Temple.
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The camp “doctor,” Larry Schacht, claims Jones got him off drugs and into medical school during this period.
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These were not just street urchins. Buford’s father was a Commander for the fleet at the Philadelphia Navy Base for years.
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The Laytons were a well-heeled, aristocratic family. Dr. Layton donated at least a quarter-million dollars to Jones. His wife, son and daughter were all members of the Temple.
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George Blakey, who married Debbie Layton, was from a wealthy British family. He donated $60,000 to pay the lease on the 27,000-acre Guyana site in 1974.
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Lisa Philips Layton had come to the U.S. from a rich Hamburg banking family in Germany.
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Most of the top lieutenants around Jones were from wealthy, educated backgrounds, many with connections to the military or intelligence agencies. These were the people who would set up the bank accounts, complex legal actions, and financial records that put people under the Temple’s control.
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Stoen was able to set up important contacts for Jones as Assistant DA in San Francisco.
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Jones changed his image to that of a liberal.
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He had spent time studying the preaching methods of Father Divine in Philadelphia, and attempted to use them in a manipulative way on the streets of San Francisco. Father Divine ran a religious and charitable operation among Philadelphia’s poor Black community.
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Jones was able to use his followers in an election once again, this time for Mayor Moscone. Moscone responded in 1976, putting Jones in charge of the city Housing Commission.
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In addition, many of his key followers got jobs with the city Welfare Department and much of the recruitment to the Temple in San Francisco came from the ranks of these unemployed and dispossessed people.
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Jones was introduced to many influential liberal and radical people there, and entertained or greeted people ranging from Rosalynn Carter to Angela Davis.
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The period when Jones began the Temple there marked the end of an important political decade. Nixon’s election had ushered in a domestic intelligence dead set against the movements for peace, civil rights and social justice. Names like COINTELPRO, CHAOS, and Operation garden plot, or the Houston Plan made the news following in the wake of Watergate revelations.
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Senator Ervin called the White House plans against dissent “fascistic.”
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These operations involved the highest levels of military and civilian intelligence and all levels of police agencies in a full-scale attempt to discredit, disrupt and destroy the movements that sprang up in the 1960s. There are indications that these plans, or the mood they created, led to the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, as unacceptable “Black Messiahs.”
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