Secret and Suppressed: Banned Ideas and Hidden History (25 page)

On the scene at Jonestown, Guyanese troops discovered a large cache of drugs; enough to drug the entire population of Georgetown, Guyana (well over 200,000) for more than a year.
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According to survivors, these were being used regularly “to control” a population of only 1,100 people.
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One footlocker contained 11,000 doses of thorazine, a dangerous tranquilizer. Drugs used in the testing for MK-ULTRA were found in abundance, including sodium pentathol (a truth serum), chloral hydrate (a hypnotic), Demerol, thallium (confuses thinking), and many others.
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Schacht had supplies of halioparel and largatil, two other major tranquilizers as well.
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The actual description of life at Jonestown is that of a tightly run concentration camp, complete with medical and psychiatric experimentation. The stresses and isolation of the victims is typical of sophisticated brainwashing techniques. The drugs and special tortures add an additional experimental aspect to the horror.
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This more clearly explains the medical tags on the bodies and why they had to be removed It also suggests an additional motive for frustrating any chemical autopsies, since these drugs would have been found in the system of the dead.

The story of Jonestown is that of a gruesome experiment, not a religious Utopian society. On the eve of the massacre, Forbes Burnham was reportedly converted to “born again” Christianity by members of the Full Gospel Christian Businessman’s Association, including Lionel Luckhoo, a Temple lawyer in Guyana.
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This same group, based in California, also reportedly converted Guatemalan dictator Rios Montt prior to his massacres there, and they were in touch with Jim Jones in Ukiah.
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They conducted White House prayer breakfasts for Mr. Reagan.
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With Ryan on his way to Jonestown, the seal of secrecy was broken. In a desperate attempt to test their conditioning methods, the Jonestown elite apparently tried to implement a real suicide drill.
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Clearly, it led to a revolt, and the majority of people fled, unaware that there were people waiting to catch them.

Author Don Freed, an associate of Mark Lane, said that Martin Luther King, “if he could see Jonestown, would recognize it as the next step in his agenda, and he would say, one, two, three, many more Jonestowns.”
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Strangely enough, almost every map of Guyana in the major press located Jonestown at a different place following the killings. One map even shows a second site in the area called “Johnstown.”
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Perhaps there were multiple camps and Leo Ryan was only shown the one they hoped he would see. In any case, the Jonestown model survives, and similar camps, and their sinister designs, show up in many places.

Inside Guyana itself, approximately 25 miles to the south of Matthew’s Bridge, is a community called Hilltown, named after religious leader Rabbi Hill. Hill has used the names Abraham Israel and Rabbi Emmanuel Washington. Hilltown, set up about the same time as Jonestown, followed the departure of David Hill, who was known in Cleveland, a fugitive of the U.S. courts. Hill rules with an “iron fist” over some 8,000 Black people from Guyana and America who believe they are the Lost Tribe of Israel and the real Hebrews of Biblical prophecy.
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Used as strong-arm troops, and “internal mercenaries” to insure Burnham’s election, as were Jonestown members, the Hilltown people were allowed to clear the Jonestown site of shoes and unused weapons, both in short supply in Guyana.
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Hill says his followers would gladly kill themselves at his command but he would survive, since, unlike Jones, he is “in control.”
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Similar camps were reported at the time in the Philippines. Perhaps the best known example is the fascist torture camp in Chile known as Colonia Dignidad. Also a religious cult built around a single individual, this one came from Germany to Chile in 1961. In both cases the camp was their “Agricultural Experiment.” Sealed and protected by the dreaded Chilean DINA police, Colonia Dignidad serves as a torture chamber for political dissidents. To the Jonestown monstrosities, they have added dogs specially trained to attack human genitals.
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The operations there have included the heavy hand of decapitation specialist Michael Townley Welch, an American CIA agent, as well as reported visits by Nazi war criminals Dr. Josef Mengele and Martin Bormann. Currently, another such campsite exists at Pisagua, Chile.
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Temple member Jeannie Mills, now dead, reported having seen actual films of a Chilean torture camp while at Jonestown. The only source possible at the time was the Chilean fascists themselves.
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In the current period, Jonestown is being “repopulated” with 100,000 Laotian Hmong people. Many of them grew opium for CIA money in Southeast Asia. Over 1,000 reside there already under a scheme designed by Billy Graham’s nephew Ernest, and members of the Federation of Evangelical Ministries Association in Wheaton, Illinois (World Vision, World Medical Relief, Samaritan’s Purse, and Carl McIntyre’s International Council of Christian Churches).
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Similar plans devised by the Peace Corps included moving inner-city Blacks from America to Jamaica and other Third World countries. And World Relief attempted to move the population of the Island of Dominica to Jonestown.
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It is only a matter of time before another Jonestown will be exposed, perhaps leading again to massive slaughter.

Our story so far has hinted at connections to U.S. intelligence, such as the long-term friendship of Jones and CIA associate Dan Mitrione, but the ties are much more direct when a full picture of the operation is revealed. To start with, the history of Forbes Burnham’s rise to power in Guyana is fraught with the clear implication of a CIA coup d’état to oust troublesome independent leader Cheddi Jagan.
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In addition, the press and other evidence indicated the presence of a CIA agent on the scene at the time of the massacre. This man, Richard Dwyer, was working as Deputy Chief of Mission for the U.S. Embassy in Guyana.
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Identified in Who’s Who in the CIA, he has been involved since 1959, and was last stationed in Martinique.
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Present at the camp site and the airport strip, his accounts were used by the State Department to confirm the death of Leo Ryan. At the massacre, Jones said, “Get Dwyer out of here” just before the killings began.
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Other Embassy personnel, who knew the situation at Jonestown well, were also connected to intelligence work. U.S. Ambassador John Burke, who served in the CIA with Dwyer in Thailand, was an Embassy official described by Philip Agee as working for the CIA since 1963. A Reagan appointee to the CIA, he is still employed by the Agency, usually on State Department assignments.
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Burke tried to stop Ryan’s investigation.
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Also at the Embassy was Chief consular officer Richard McCoy, described as “close to Jones,” who worked for military intelligence and was “on loan” from the Defense Department at the time of the massacre.
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According to a standard source, “The U.S. Embassy in Georgetown housed the Georgetown CIA station. It now appears that the majority and perhaps all of the embassy officials were CIA officers operating under State Department covers…”
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Dan Webber, who was sent to the site of the massacre the day after, was also named as CIA.
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Not only did the State Department conceal all reports of violations at Jonestown from Congressman Leo Ryan, but the Embassy regularly provided Jones with copies of all congressional inquiries under the Freedom of Information Act.
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Ryan had challenged the Agency’s overseas operations before, as a member of the House Committee responsible for oversight on intelligence. He was an author of the controversial Hughes-Ryan Amendment that would have required CIA disclosure in advance to the congressional committees of all planned covert operations. The Amendment was defeated shortly after his death.
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American intelligence agencies have a sordid history of cooperative relations with Nazi war criminals and international terrorism.
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In light of this, consider the curious ties of the family members of the top lieutenants to Jim Jones. The Layton family is one example. Dr. Lawrence Layton was Chief of Chemical and Ecological Warfare Research at Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah, for many years, and later worked as Director of Missile and Satellite Development at the Navy Propellant Division, Indian Head, Maryland.
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His wife, Lisa, had come from a rich German family. Her father Hugo, had represented I.G. Farben as a stockbroker.
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Her stories about hiding her Jewish past from her children for most of her life, and her parents escape from a train heading for a Nazi concentration camp seem shallow, as do Dr. Layton’s Quaker religious beliefs. The same family sent money to Jonestown regularly.
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Their daughter, Debbie, met and married George Philip Blakey in an exclusive private school in England. Blakey’s parents have extensive stock holdings in Solvay drugs, a division of the Nazi cartel I.G. Farben.
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He also contributed financially.
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Terri Buford’s father, Admiral Charles T. Buford, worked with Navy Intelligence.
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In addition, Blakey was reportedly running mercenaries from Jonestown to CIA-backed UNITA forces in Angola.
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Maria Katsaris’ father was a minister with the Greek Orthodox Church, a common conduit of CIA funding, and Maria claimed she had proof he was CIA. She was shot in the head, and her death was ruled a suicide, but at one point Charles Beikman was charged with killing her.
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On their return to the United States, the “official” survivors were represented by attorney Joseph Blatchford, who had been named prior to that time in a scandal involving CIA infiltration of the Peace Corps.
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Almost everywhere you look at Jonestown, U.S. intelligence and fascism rear their ugly heads.

The connection of intelligence agencies to cults is nothing new. A simple but revealing example is the Unification Church, tied to both the Korean CIA (i.e., American CIA in Korea), and the international fascist network know as the World Anti-Communist League. The Moonies hosted WACL’s first international conference.
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What distinguished Jonestown was both the level of control and the open sinister involvement. It was imperative that they cover their tracks.
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Maria Katsaris sent Michael Prokes, Tim Carter, and another guard out at the last minute with $500,000 cash in a suitcase, and instructions for a drop point. Her note inside suggests the funds were destined for the Soviet Union.
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Prokes later shot himself at a San Francisco press conference, where he claimed to be an FBI informant.
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Others reported meetings with KGB agents and plans to move to Russia.
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This disinformation was part of a “red smear” to be used if they had to abandon the operation. The Soviet Union had no interest in the money and even less in Jonestown. The cash was recovered by the Guyanese government.
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