The Controversies Surrounding The CIA and The Jamestown Crisis

In a world of lies and deception, the persecution of value and immaculacy has driven world populous into madness. Tainted by threat, rumour and conspiracy, the news delivered to the masses over monitored media has caused civilians to question everything. For answers, some may turn to realism, some to nihilism, but most to religion. The elusive link between human social constructs of established government, public decorum, acquisition of knowledge, and desire for community, have allowed and encouraged sociopaths with God-complexes promising change and inclusion to rise to power, and shamelessly brainwash all who follow them. "Jonestown" was the name given to the South American settlement founded in Guyana by the Peoples Temple, a radical American religious organization under the leadership of a manipulating and psychotic Reverend, Jim Jones. On November 18, 1978, a total of 918 members of the church were found dead, dragged against dirt, and thrown in piles at their settlement outside Georgetown, Guyana's capital city. The event, deemed a revolutionary suicide, could not be farther from such: The Jonestown tragedy was not a suicide, but a mass murder by orchestrated by the C.I.A as part of its agenda on human experimentation and mind-control, aided by the Peoples Temple’s very own Jim Jones, so very capable of convincing all those subject to him to do anything he pleased.

More than mere probable cause can convict the C.I.A for the Jonestown butchery. Since the early years of its inception, the C.I.A has not done much more than over complicate, befoul, and jeopardize domestic investigation, whilst using its federal power to conduct macabre human experiments throughout the decades. Such barborocity is observed after the The San Francisco Chronicle published a report on December 17, 1979, claiming that the CIA conducted an “open-air biological warfare experiment” in 1955 near in various parts of Florida. Immediately after the aerial release of the bacteria, thousands of cases of whooping cough broke out in areas subject to the exposure, specifically in and around Tampa, Florida. These cases, triple the amount ever reported in Florida at that time, resulted in whooping cough deaths rising from 1 to 12 over the course of a year. A direct effect of careless experimentation, the issue was “mysteriously” closeted, allowing the C.I.A to continue its immoral trials on the public innocent.

Another notorious allegation vocalized against the C.I.A dealt with the 1953 death of Frank Olson. Olso, a scientist for the special operations division of the American army's biological laboratory at Fort Detrick in Maryland, worked closely with The CIA to research chemical weaponry. In 1953, Olson visited major chemical research centers in europe, making trips to centers in the United kingdom, Paris, Norway, and West Germany. In a legal claim filed by his family, a statement explained that Olson "witnessed extreme interrogations in which the CIA committed murder using biological agents that [he] had developed".Though no further information was given about the deaths, olsen informed his wife Alice, disclosing to her his desire to leave his employers. On November 19th 1953 Olson was lured by colleges to a “meeting” Deep Creek Lake, Maryland, where he was offered a drink laced with LSD, after disclosing the torture he witnessed overseas. Thanksgiving weekend, still in a drug-induced duress, he travelled to New York for a psychiatric evaluation immediately requested by his employers. The morning of November 28th, 1953 Frank Olson crashed through the window of the 13th-floor room he rented at the Statler Hotel. Olson was an immediate threat to the C.I.A, and his extermination could only silence claims agents wanted hidden indefinitely.

Of the most twisted, mendacious, and outwardly frightening motions of the C.I.A was without question the creation of the MKULTRA program. MKULTRA the confidential project, was the subject of a plethora of documented reports, films, and novels mirroring the outlandishness of a science fiction myth. Devised in 1953, MKULTRA hyperfocused on interrogation technique, advocating for the drugging of those held in police custody in addition to mandated mind-control. The C.I.A aspired to use drugs in federal questioning, and conducted various experiments hoping to yield the result of total submission by a drugged individual. Allen Dulles, the organization director desiring for "human guinea pigs to try...extraordinary technique,s" sanctioned the official MKULTRA project under Dr. Sidney Gottlieb of the Technical Services Division. MKULTRA, receiving over $25 million in support, directly solicited hundred experiments on unknowing, unwilling human subjects. Operation Midnight Climax, sub-project of Project MKULTRA, helped develop and organize a series of CIA-run safe houses in San Francisco, Marin, and New York City in which prostitutes paid by the organization lured clients into a specific safehouses where they were captured by awaiting agents, doped with LSD and other hallucinogens, and monitored behind glass. Only the beginning of a series of sadistic operations, the C.I.A, yet again, managed to destroy most reports of the MKULTRA disasters, whilst forgetting the few that proved their existence.

Amidst all the projects,lies, and experiments, the C.I.A and other American governmental officials made time for Rev. Jim Jones, appreciated Jim Jones, and, eventually, employed Jim Jones. Skeptics deny Jones’ association with American politics, often debating that his hated higher ranking officials, and could not stand to associate himself with them. This could not be further from the truth. Jones frequently enjoyed public support and contact with the highest level politicians in the United States. Jones met with Vice Presidential Candidate Walter Mondale on his campaign plane, dined with him and his wife, and regularly frequented Belo Horizonte, Brazil, a known CIA headquarters. Jones himself claimed affiliation with the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence, though no one validated his claims seriously. The U.S. embassy even confessed to providing Jones with transportation, groceries, and a large home during his time in california.Jones was even put in charge of San Francisco’s Housing Commission, and awarded jobs in the Welfare Department to his most loyal followers. Charismatic, cunning, and seemingly genuine, Jones was a man of the community, and successfully duped the masses into supporting him and his later murderous agenda.

Jim Jones, continuously forming stronger ties to those in power, knew exactly who to manipulate in order to carry out the coverup. An easy target presented itself as Dan Mitrione, an already childhood friend of Jim Jones. Mitrone, Chief of the Richmond PD, made sure that jones exploitation of church members, of sexual, financial and emotional manner, was never exposed to the public. Conveniently, Mitrione was later was recruited into the CIA, May of 1960, exclusively undergoing training in torture technique. In the year following, a file on Jones was opened amidst C.I.A filings. Mitone and Jones frequently met up while vacationing in Brazil, strategically outside headquarters. After years of teaching classes on kidnapping missions and captive torture, mitrone himself was captured by Guerillas in Uruguay, questioned and murdered, later found dead in an abandoned vehicle. immediately after the Mitrone murder, the file on jones was nowhere to be found. The evidence, too specific to be circumstantial, pins jones as a potential apprentice of Mitrone and his murderous mission, inspiring ideas for mass torture and murder that jones could impose on brainwashed followers.

In order to facilitate the murders of 900 innocents, jones had to detour the visitation of a soon-to-be-murdered american congressman, leo ryan, to Guyana after receiving claims of human rights abuses by jonestown settlers. Richard Dwyer was a known CIA agent was assigned to escort leo ryan to the settlement. Richard Dwyer was one of the closest confidants of Jim Jones. Having visited Jonestown before, he was more than willing to accompany ryan. Dwyer was confident in being able to dupe Leo Ryan into believing the conditions at Jonestown were liveable, constantly assuring him that the reports of human rights abuses sourced from the settlement came from homesick or otherwise bored young adults. Dwyer was photographed escorting congressman Leo Ryan cooly onto the plane meant to transport american journalists, reporters and settlers who were escaping Jonestown back to America, moments before the infamous airport massacre that killed ryan broke out. Dwyer mysteriously separates away from the group seconds before the inquisition, fleeing from the scene and avoiding any injury. It soon became apparent that Dwyer had prior knowledge of the attack, for his relationship to jones was one of an inseparable nature. A tape found on the Jonestown compound post genocide recorded the voice of Jones telling his guards, "Get Dwyer out of here before something happens to him." Soon after, a radio transmission of C.I.A frequency reported the massacre, reflecting similarity to the voice of Richard Dwyer.

The most horrific part of the Peoples Temple charade would not even be the murders themselves, but the cover up. On November 18th, before the information of Ryan’s death was delivered to Jones (the event that prompted Jones to poison his people) an order for upwards of 500 body bags was placed by a federal agency, the Joint Chiefs of Staff. An onsite investigator, Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty explained, “We [him and other law enforcement] would provide the agency with the things they were requesting, without any questions. That’s the way the business works.” He publically disclosed that the Joint Chiefs of Staff provided the body bags and scheduled an airlift on a timetable of prior occurrence to settlers being shot or poisoned. “The JCS wouldn’t have moved at all on their own,” he commented. “They didn’t give a damn about Jonestown.” The odd, prediction like, timing of the airlift and bag delivery makes a premeditated attack not only evident, but definite.

The manner of death, time and time again argued whether suicide or homicide, can be easily debunked by the evidence presented by the head Guyanese physician of the time, Dr, Leslie Mootoo. Well trained in Europe and publically respected, Dr. Mootoo concluded with efficiency that at least 700 of the Jonestown deaths had been murder, not suicide. Mootoo concluded that around 200 of the bodies, accounting for all the children, could not possibly consent to something as grave and complex as suicide, thus proving a subsequent amount of murder. Survivors also spoke of syringes filled with poison being injected into protesting children’s mouths, backed by the discovery of such syringes lying amongst the heaps of bodies around the compound. Of the remaining adults he examined, Dr. Mootoo reported that 83 of the 100 bodies had needle-punctures in between the shoulders— an area impossible for one to inject themself–suggested that victims were held down and injected against their volition. Other examinations of bodies were reported without any trace of cyanide and/or other poison, but with cranial gunshot wounds or crossbow injuries.

Of the victims, the case of Leo Ryan remains the most preeminent. A teacher, administrator and South San Francisco city councilman, Ryan was a crusader for the people, and desired no more than to end corruption among the higher ranks. Ryan was first introduced to the Peoples Temple calamity after a friend of his found his father murdered after discussing leaving the Temple with his wife. After listening to the abuses filed by members of the temple at a meeting for concerned family members of settlers, Ryan became impacable, bent on exposing Jim Jones and his church of evil. On November 1, 1978,. Congressman Ryan traveled to Jonestown with 17 Bay Area relatives of Peoples Temple members, several newspaper reporters and an NBC TV team.On November 14, according to the Foreign Affairs Committee report, Ryan left Washington and arrived in Georgetown, the capital of Guyana. . For three days, Ryan continued trying to schedule a meeting with jones, after visiting the embassy closest to the Peoples temple. On November 17, Ryan's aide Jackie Speier, the United States embassy Deputy Chief of Mission Richard Dwyer, an Guyanese officer, nine journalists, and four Concerned Relatives representatives boarded a small plane at an airfield at Port Kaituma, a strip few miles outside of Jonestown. After arrival at the compound, The group was almost reassured of the settlers safety until anonymous notes were passed to NBC crew asking to be taken out of Jonestown the next morning. The entire group left Jonestown the following evening and arrived at the Kaituma airstrip outside the compound by 4:45 p.m. As the smaller of two planes sent for the group slowly taxied around the tarmac, Jonestown settler, Larry Layton, opened fire on those inside the plane. Firing from other temple members who escorted the group back to the airport began outside the plane, killing Congressman Ryan, three journalists and a Temple member. It was later revealed Leo Ryan was working on the Hughes Ryan Act, an amendment that would limit the power of the C.I.A In public and confidential investigation.

The inhumanity and villany of those involved with the C.I.A and other intelligence agencies are made obvious during failed tribulations such as that observed at Jonestown the evening more than 200 children died by the hands of their own mothers. The government’s ability to catechize and alter the direction of the natural thought process should strike fear amongst the public, and prompt a removal of crooked intelligence officials from office. By remembering the events that unfolded at the Peoples Temple’s settlement that dreary day in 1978, cultish behavior can be fought and eradicated, without help from structured, state-mandated authority with no pure intentions in mind.