He pointed out that Jonestown was
€quipped with a modern hospital over-
Seen by a Dr. Lawrence Schact who ac-
cumulated a vast stockpile of hal-
lucinogenic drugs including 11,000 doses
of Thorazine, Valium, Demorol,
Qaalude, morphine, sodium pentothol
(truth serum) and chloral hydrate (a
knockout drug which in overdose is
Called a “mickey finn’).

Defectors from the ‘‘People’s Tem-
ple” and later from Jonestown charged
that those who challenged Jones’ in-
creasingly psychotic rule were forcibly
administere@ massive doses of these
drugs. Jones himself was known to be a
heavy user of amphetamines and bar-
biturates.

“When you look at the pattern of Jim
Jones activities and realize that it adds
Up to his being a government agent all
along you can see how this massacre
Could take place,’ he said.

Among the suspicious elements of

Jones background are substantiated
Teports that he went to Cuba in 1960 to
recruit Black Cubans to return to In-
diana to join his ‘People’s ‘Temple.”’
According to one of those recruited on
this expedition, now living in New York
City, Jones had proclaimed that Black
People could never adjust to living
under Cuban socialism. In 1962, Jones
Went to Brazil, taking up residence in

elo Horizonte where residents re-
Ported he lived in great luxury with

groceries and other supplies delivered:

once a week in a car marked with the

‘S. consular emblem. On his way back
from Brazil, Jones made a side trip to
Guyana.

Holsinger said another suspicious
fact is Jones’ pose as a champion of race
quality with much rhetorical denunci-
ation of racism. “If Jones was such an
anti-racist, why was his inner circle of
Closest advisers and confidantes all
white?” Holsinger demanded.

Why did Jones have in his personal
library Hitler’s Mein Kampf anda large

The paper cups and syringes held the cyanide-laced

ES

number of other pro-Hitler books as well
as books about the cultist mass mur-
derer Charles Manson?

Why was Jones able to ingratiate
himself on a first name basis with a
large number of high ranking
officials—Democratic Party politicians
ranging from First Lady Rosalyn Car-
ter to members of the John Birch Soci-
ety in California?

Holsinger told me he is certain that
Jones was not supposed to die in the
massacre. In fact, he died from a bullet
wound, not from poisoning, and Hol-
singer believes he may have been mur-
dered. He cites the $10.5 million Jones
had placed in various banks in Switzer-
land and elsewhere, a motorboat
moored in the river as a getaway craft
and proclamations by Jones, himself,
that while others should die, he should
live to perpetuate the ‘“‘Temple.”’
Holsinger cites the role of Larry

dN

RS

koolaid used to kill the people of Jones-

. The syringes were used to force the poisonous liquid down the throats of children and
s.

Bodies.of the inhabitants of Jonestown remain strewn in a field surrounding the community’s cultural center three days after the massacre.

Layton, his sister Deborah Layton
Blakey and their father Dr. Lawrence
Layton as especially central to Jones-
town. Larry Layton was one of Jones’
closest aides, a commander of the sec-
urity forces who led the attack on Rep.
Ryan and several reporters at the
airstrip. Layton survived and was tried
and acquitted of murder.Layton’s
father served as chief of chemical war-
fare for the U.S. Army and is now a top
researcher for the U.S. Department of
Agriculture in the San Francisco Bay
Area.

His daughter, Deborah, also a top
member of the ‘‘Temple”’ who later de-
fected, is the wife of Phillip Blakey, a
wealthy British subject, who wrote out a
$600,000 cashiers check on Barclay’s
Bank of Canada for the original lease of
the land for the Jonestown settle-
ment.The Chicago Defender revealed
Fecently that Blakey also served as a
recruiter of counterrevolutionary mer-
cenaries in Angola.

Holsinger’s suspicion is aroused as
well by the almost Watergate level of
U.S. government stonewalling on
Jonestown both before the massacre
and since.

The State Department refused to
take measures to rescue the people of
Jonestown for months despite repeated,
fearful appeals by relatives that their
children were being brainwashed, phys-
ically abused, sexually molested, and
held against their will. Legal affadavits,
including one by Deborah Blakey warn-
ing that Jones was conducting ‘‘rehear-
sals” of suicide, were rebuffed by the
State Department which issued reports
whitewashing the Jonestown operation.
Why was the State Department so de-
termined to ‘‘protect’’ Jones and his set-
tlement? ;

Holsinger pointed out that Ryan was
co-author of the so-called Hughes-Ryan
Act deeply hated by the CIA because it
requires them to give “prior notifica-
tion” of any covert operation. In the

months and weeks before his mission to
Guyana, Rep. Ryan struggled to obtain
State Department information on
Jonestown. He was told that the ‘‘pri-
vacy act’’ precluded access to the in-
formation. Meanwhile, the State De-
partment.was.providing. Jones swith a
steady flow of intelligence ion every
move Rep. Ryanand the ‘“‘concerned re-
latives’”’ were making to rescue their
families. The excuse for tipping Jones
off? The Freedom of Information Act.
This cynical manipulation of law leads
Holsinger tocharge that the CIA and the
State Department may well have ‘“‘set-
up” Rep. Ryan for execution.

“They withheld from Leo all infor-
mation about the stockpile of 170 rifles
and automatic weapons Jones had ac-
cumulated. Afterwards, they claimed
they had ‘misplaced’ this document that
might have forewarned Leo he was
walking into a trap.”

After the last of the 911 bodies had
been airlifted from Guyana and the in-
evitable Congressional investigation
had begun, the State Department finally
admitted it had a file of 900 documents
on Jonestown. Those documents, still
unrevealed, may hold the secret of
Jonestown. In his book, White Night,
Nugent wrote of Guyana: “‘It is a sensi-
tive listening post for the United States
...-an influential center of Caribbean poli-
tics, an ideal place for collecting intelli-
gence on....nearly 30 countries in this vol-
atile region.”’ [tis also, as he recounts, a
center for decades of CIA “destabiliza-
tion.”

Nugent added,‘‘The CIA funnelled
$1,000,000 into Guyana during the 1960s—to
pay for strikes, riots, and general unrest”
to destabilize the progressive govern-
ment of Prime Minster Cheddi Jagan and
to open the way for the election of their
handpicked candidate Forbes Burnham.

As Holsinger said in concluding his
testimony on Jonestown, “‘I think this was
an intelligence operation from beginning
to end and it ended in disaster.”

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—AUG. 14, 1981—Page 5

3