Who created the Jones cult -- and why

 

On Nov. 18, 1978, a fact-finding mission led by Congressman Leo Ryan (D-Cal.) investigating charges of drug trafficking and involuntary imprisonment of American citizens by the Peoples Temple of Rev. Jim Jones in Jonestown. Guyana, was gunned down by Peoples Temple members as they attempted to board their airplane at the Port Kaituma airport. Five people. including Rep. Ryan, were killed and a dozen other members of the party injured.

Moments after the ambush, Rev. Jim Jones assembled 800-900 of his zombie followers in the center of the Temple commune and ordered them to commit human sacrifice by swallowing a lethal dose of cyanide mixed with a number of drugs and Kool Aid. The potion administered by Jones and his medical assistant Dr. Schacht was described fully in the New York Daily News of Nov. 22, and is very similar to the "Brompton Mix" used by the Order of St. John of Jerusalem's St. Christopher's Hospice in London.

Parroting the Order of St. John's hospice propaganda, Jones urged his psychotic followers on by extolling the virtues of "dying with dignity." According to a survivor of the death ritual in Jonestown, many of the cultists accepted the potion only at gunpoint and those who refused the spiked Kool Aid were forcibly injected with the poison.

On Nov. 20, an aide to Rep. Ryan who survived the weekend ordeal delivered a statement to the press in San Francisco which has been blacked out of the national media. He confirmed that the Ryan fact-finding group had uncovered "drug-related matters" involving Jones and the Peoples Temple. The following day, two reporters returning from the Jonestown scene reported that massive quantities of a wide variety of drugs were uncovered amidst the human rubble - far more drugs than needed to satisfy the medical needs of all of Guyana for up to a year!

Also uncovered at the Peoples Temple scene was a half-million dollars in cash, large quantities of gold and precious jewels estimated at $3 million, and a trunk containing over 800 U.S. passports. Subsequent reports published in the New York Post indicate that an additional $3 million of U.S. currency may have disappeared at the time of the mass suicides.

Within the Peoples Temple complex, Jones maintained a remarkably sophisticated and high-powered "ham" radio system capable of transmitting to California and the Mid-Atlantic states. Not only were American intelligence agencies aware of this illegal radio system. it had been monitored by the Federal Communications Commission for several years as part of an official investigation. The Peoples Temple also maintained at least three large trawler-yachts, registered in the port of Mobile, Ala.  The trawlers operated in the Caribbean waters between Guyana and the United States and were known by U.S. and Guyanese authorities to bypass normal customs channels, often by anchoring in international waters just outside the 12-mile coastal limit. These trawlers were confirmed to have smuggled illegal weapons into Jonestown.

What was Jones running? According to federal records and on-the-scene observation, Jones was running drugs, illegal automatic and semi-automatic weapons, and other contraband on a sufficiently large scale to warrant his operation of a private fleet of pirate ships and a sophisticated pirate radio network.  (more...)

Who created the Jones cult -- and why