If anyone has any clues or theories, feel free to submit your own definition of .

           Those wishing to learn more about the secret of Herai can check out the Fortean Times On-Line. [go to ‘article index’; issue 110, “I think I’m turning Japanese”.]

Kool Aid, Hot Tape

Until an otherwise unknown Ugandan sect  beat the bill by at least 11 more back in March,  “Peoples Temple” had the highest casualty count of any self-destructing congregation in recent times.  913 people lined up for grape spiked with cyanide on November 18, 1978 in the sweltering jungle of Guyana.

913 dead.  That’s a scary number by any standard, and not surprisingly, the number of unanswered questions about the incident are proportional to the number of body bags.  They are important questions that were rarely asked and never really answered.  What happened to $26 million of Peoples Temple funds?  Who were the “mercenaries” who attacked Jonestown a year before the mass suicide?  Just what the phuq happened down there, anyway?!?

There are no easy answers, unless you swallow the Brain Police’s placebo explanations.  Many of these explanations are deliberate misinformation or red herrings.  Making matters worse, the only man who could truly answer these was himself the biggest question of this whole bundle of confusion.  And he’s not talking.

            “Dad,” as his followers called him, is one of the more ambitious “messiah” types to try for the brass ring in recent years.  The son of a Klansman, he founded the first integrated church in Indiana in 1956, and economically lower class blacks made up the majority of his congregation.  But about half way through his ministry he shifted his emphasis from Pentecostal Christianity to politics, and began espousing a doctrine that was largely Marxist.  Indeed, he claimed to be the reincarnation of both Jesus and Lenin.  Jones’s empire was as much political as religious.  He courted prominent politicians, and decisively swayed several San Francisco elections with busloads of Peoples Temple voters in what the jaded would call vote fraud.   Still, he was an important political player back in that day, and his flock was 20,000 strong.  

But by the mid ’70s, difficulties with disgruntled defectors and angry apostates began to spook Jones, making him so edgy that he pulled a Col. Kurtz.  Man bought an abandoned plantation in Guyana, and made plans to move his ministry there.  A little over a thousand followed Jones down to South America.  Weird things started to happen and even weirder rumors began to make their way north, and people back home took note.  Congressman Leo Ryan flew down to investigate with some “concerned relatives” and press.  The visit did not go well.  Ryan left Jonestown, but never made it to the plane home: a hit team from ’Town drove up and opened fire on everyone.  Ryan became the first Congressman to die in the line of duty.

            Back at the camp, Jones knows this is too much for his group.  He will have to answer to people for what just happened; there will be consequences.  Shit, they’ll make him explain things!  As a preemptive move, he orders a “revolutionary suicide” among the People.  Tubs of laced grape cocktail are brought out, and Jones encourages its consumption.  

When the Guyanese army shows up two days later, everyone there is dead, often in neat little rows.  Jones was among them.

The World’s verdict was as swift as it was unanimous: “crazy cult led by lone nut commits suicide.”

Pretty convenient explanation; ties up all lose ends with a “nut” knot.   Simplest form of spin control, too: Anything about Jonestown not make sense?  Just blame Jim: he was nuts and he’s dead anyway. 

Of course, that’s just what They want you to think.

The painting of Jones as a bona fide false prophet (as opposed to just some hustler hiding behind Jesus) is crucial to buying the Brain Police line.  It makes the placebo palatable: if a guy’s nuts enough to think he’s Jesus, he’s nuts enough to kill himself, and anyone who followed such a nut must be loony too.  

But if that’s true, then Jonestown from a Branch Floridian perspective is a goldmine of anthropological information, offering a study of sect with an on-site messiah that is in an ‘end-times’ scenario.  The crossover to Koresh and the Davidian crew should be obvious. 

Obvious, but False.  Remember, that is just the Brain Police portrait of him.  Let’s look at Dad a minute , and you’ll see what I mean.

It’s never been proven, to me at least, if Jones himself actually believed what he was telling his followers.  His reliance on staged (read: fake) miracles and sham faith healings make me think he didn’t, though towards the end he might have bought his own brand.  Maybe that was the problem: Jones stopped being a con artist and became a convert to his own doctrine.  saint seems to buy this as plausible, and points out “His followers certainly thought he was legit.  Besides, con artists don’t martyr themselves, so if Jones were totally bogus he would have disappeared into the jungle with not taken his own life.”

saint makes a good point, so understanding how Jim Jones died is a good clue to unraveling what happened.  Jim Jones chose not to partake of the killer Kool Aid, but instead died from a gunshot wound to the head.  I looked and I looked, even Asked Evil Matt, but I cannot find out for certain if he shot himself or someone else did.  The prime problem is that the gun was found over 60 feet from his body.  If he shot himself, it strongly supports the “lone nut” camp; if someone else killed him, we must immediately wonder why?  You’d think if Jones killed himself it’d be known anti-Jones propaganda.  Likewise, if the whole thing was framed to look like a group suicide, why would “they” be so sloppy about details: just shoot Jones & put the gun in his hand—that’s a no-brainer.  The very absence of such important information makes me wonder—and starts my spidey senses tingling.

The mystery of Jones’s death could potentially be solved—or complicated—by analyzing the end of the infamous tape.  Jones recorded over seven hundred of his sermons and even several White Night on an old TEAC tape deck stashed under his “throne,” and this archive includes his final performance.  I have a copy of it; or 38:43 of it on a burned cd bootleg.  The suicide sermon is essentially a bonus track on a reissue of a gospel album (now playing!) that the People’s Temple Choir originally recorded while still in California.  On my copy, 36:55 into it Jones asks, “Where’s the vat with the Green C on it?  The vat with the Green C in.  Bring it so the adults can begin.”  (Up until then they had mostly been doing children and psyching themselves up for their own turn.) Jones says his and there are 36 seconds of silence before the track ends.  No final gunshot is heard.  I do not know if the tape ran out, Jones turned it off (which he did several times throughout the event) or if that is an edit by the compiler of my cd.  However, I also doubt that 600 adults could drink Kool Aid that quickly.  Less than 200 people were left at midnight, when the last survivor snuck out.  This tape is obviously just the beginning.  I suspect I have the first side of a 90 minute tape.  We’d need to hear the rest to know how it ended.

Although my copy does not solve the mystery of Jones death, it seems an otherwise faithful track of the final Jonestown taping session (when compared to the generally accepted transcript) and it does indeed contain some spidey sense evidence.

That final tape, by the way, is downright creepy.  People come up to the mic and give testimonials before getting in line for the drink.  In the background you can hear babies crying, people coughing and gagging, maybe even a gunshot or four...  But more on the tape in a minute.

Marxism is the alleged lynchpin with which Jones associates the need for the mass “revolutionary” suicide.  He proclaims on the tape that this mass act is his ultimate embodiment of collective responsibility and sticking together in communal unity.  This is not the old “Jesus told me to do it” defense, but something original.   Jones came from a Holy Roller background, but he seemed more focused on Marx than Moses.  If you buy into the ‘Jones as con artist’ scenario, the “Marxist” attitudes were a play for sympathy on the followers’ generally poor economic situation that conveniently tithed vast assets under the guise of ‘communal property.’  If you’re in the ‘Jones as legit minister’ camp, the communist attitudes were a return to primitive Christianity’s communal living style referred to in and even the Dead Sea Scrolls.  

But whatever his motives, this politiconomic extension of his ministry was very public and outspoken about its socialist stance.  It is inconceivable that the FBI would not have taken notice.  Worse, J. Edger himself had a personal mania/vendetta against African American organizations, and would surely have seen Peoples Temple as confirmation of his worst fears.  Jones may have been white, but the mass of followers were mostly black.  Hoover was convinced M. L. King was a communist messiah for blacks that needed dealing with, and here was the same theme only a few years later.  Add to that Jones’s plan of relocating his commune to the Soviet Union in those Cold War days, and the CIA would have been interested in him, too. 

Many researchers have dug into Jones’s past to find a lot of circumstantial evidence linking Jones with the Bad Boys at Langley.  Most of it is just that: circumstantial, and is only as convincing as you want it to be.  Alternately, many others have made good claims of the Agency having a hostile posture against Jim.  Various permutations of “they framed him” themes exist, many of them championed by former members and survivors.  Even if the “Jones = CIA” and “Jones vs. CIA” extremes cancel each other out leaving us with one lone nut, there is still one CIA-inspired anomaly that no one—the conspiracy theorists or detractors—have ever been able to explain.

And it’s a goddamn Fortean Phenomena, too.

CIA presence in Socialist Guyana at the time is a given.  One of the main CIA men in Guyana was Richard Dwyer.  Although Dwyer spent the rest of his life saying “no comment” to questions of him being a Company man, he is listed in the ’68 edition of the infamous “Who’s Who in the CIA,” and is generally accepted by everyone to have been a spook of some import in the South American scheme of things.  Dwyer was assigned to the U.S. embassy in Georgetown, and went with Congressman Ryan’s party when they visited Jonestown.  He was also with the Congressman when Jones’s hit squad ambled up to the Port Kaituma airport runway and opened fire.

Dwyer was wounded in the ensuing turkey-shoot, though not fatally.  Of those not killed, half the survivors managed to get away in one of the planes, the other half hid in the jungle, which was Dwyer’s line of alibi.  Dwyer’s whereabouts between the shooting and his “rescue” the next day (in the nearby jungle, methodically washing his hands,) have always been a bit vague, and he himself was inconsistent and ambiguous about this matter.

17:11 into the “White Night” tape, Jones stops the audio when talks with an extremely unwilling member get out of control.  It is not known how long it was off, but upon resumption of dialogue with the dissenting disciple, there is a sudden commotion as a loud man in the back suddenly breaks in, “Everybody hold it!  Sit down!”  Something unseen has just occurred, causing quite a disturbance in the crowd.  It goes on for almost half a minute.  Jones desperately struggles to regain order and calm the congregation, but suddenly stops after a man just out of the mic’s range yells something inaudible to him.

Jones: “...Who is it?”

Voices: (inaudible)

Jones: “Get Dwyer out of here before something happens to him!”

Unidentified male: (inaudible)

Jones: “Dwyer.”

Unidentified male:

Jones: “I’m not talking about  Ujara, I said Dwyer....”

I have found no indication of any Jonestown residence named Dwyer.  I’m inclined to go Highlander here and say “there can be only one!” and that it’s our same CIA man.  What was Dwyer doing back at Jonestown, and why—in the midst of a mass suicide—was Jones himself looking out for his safety?

Jones stops the tape a few moments later, and “Dwyer” is not brought up when it resumes.  Again it is not known how long the tape was off or what happened during this time, but when he resumes, Jones has just learned of the Congressman’s murder.  We even hear him ask for the airport casualty count.  In any case, it is clear that the hit squad has returned from the airfield with an accounting of their deeds, and Jones’s tone towards the Representative shifts decidedly to the past tense.

If the team just got back, how could Dwyer have already gotten there ahead of them?  They had a tractor trailer, he was ostensibly on foot and wounded.  7 miles, too.  Unless he hitched a ride with “someone,” or was captured by the hit squad and brought in a prisoner.  If the tape-off time gaps are long enough, conceivably Dwyer should have been getting shot at the airfield at the very same time Jones was talking about him at camp.  No one knows, but you must admit that it’s a mystery that a CIA agent could be in two places at the same time.  Maybe Dwyer had one of those “2Places@once” bracelets I heard the CIA developed out at Area 51...  

But putting aside time anomalies, we still must confront the absurdity that Dwyer, having just been shot by Jones’s forces, would run back to Jonestown for refuge.  On the face of it, that makes no sense, but neither does the result: Jones personally looks out for him “before something happens to him.”  

Although there is at least one passable (if not plausible) explanation, let’s consider a creepier alternative: maybe for Dwyer, Jonestown was the safest place to be at that moment.  

Just who killed the Congressional crew has never quite been established, either.  From context on the audio tape, Jones suggests they are known persons within the Temple acting all loose cannon vigilante a lá Ujara, and that they are doing so against his consent.  Read: He did not order it.  This could be self-serving and equivocal play acting, or maybe his vigilynch squad got to the airway and found that someone else had beaten them to it.

Of the four dead at the airport, one was NBC cameraman Bob Brown, who filmed the incident rather than run away—until he got a shotgun to his chest.   To my knowledge, no one has ever taken the obvious step of enlarging the film and asking Jonestown survivors, “do you know any of these people?”  

In fact, the complete, unedited film is surprisingly hard to find.  According to one early synopsis, the 8-man hit squad pulled up in a tractor trailer, a vehicle not found or known to Jonestown.  They seemed to be wearing identical military fatigues, not the random “casual clothes” sported by everyone back at camp.  Their attack formation looked a lot like what is known in basic army training as a ‘squad diamond,’ and they were obviously well armed and coordinated.  Does this sound like a rag tag vigilante team from an agricultural commune?  

THIS JUST IN — I have since acquired a copy of that videotape, and the above paragraph analysis is patently false.  Click here for commentary.

A year before the fatal White Night, Jonestown was assaulted by a small group of unknown soldiers.  Jones himself narrowly missed a headshot in the opening assault.  The initial invasion failed, so the “mercenaries” sat around sniping the town a couple of days, then vanished.  Some have suggested the airport shooters were the same goon platoon that took on the Temple the year before, or at least the same employer with a new crew.  Not sure I buy that, but the siege shows that there were outside factions at odds with Jones.

Obviously, the main faction at odds with Jones was the Brain Police.

When Jones learns that “someone” has murdered the congressman, the boogie man he fears reprisal from is quite specifically the Brain Police.  Jones refers to them by their ancient name, “they.”  As in the universal cry of every paranoid, “They are out to get me!”  Yeah, y’all know who I’m talking about...  Jones predicts that it would only be a matter of hours before “they” parachuted in and slaughtered them all in retaliation.  Jones even goes so far as to once say who “they” are:   the

“GDF” is generally accepted to mean “Guyanese Defense Force.”

In Brain Police parlance, GDF can mean Guardian Dogma Flock, Gross Distortion of Facts, and even Grape Drink Fanatics.

GDF also means Gumby Dairy Fiends.  Gumby’s Pizza went public in 1985, but maybe Jonestown was a warm up run?  No cheese was ever recovered from Jonestown.  Most importantly, if you do enlarge the airport film, the “uniforms” they are wearing are actually Gumby’s Pizza shirts and flour-covered aprons!  Gumby’s Delivery Faggots!

So was Jones a Brain Police puppet, or perhaps even a rogue BP operation?   There’s little denial that he was using Brain Police tricks. 

Aside from a huge stockpile of cyanide, Jonestown also had a vast stash of and on hand, as well as a no-chump chunk of   One estimate places the quantity of these as a year’s supply for about 200,000 people.  Yes, you read correctly: two hundred thousand.  Aside from being blatantly Brain Police, all of this also brings to mind the CIA’s MK-ULTRA program.  MK-ULTRA “officially” ended in 1973, a year before Jones began his exodus beyond U.S. borders to set up shop in the middle of nowhere, away from prying eyes.  Given the CIA’s known interest in mind control, I cannot believe they weren’t at least covertly monitoring and studying Jonestown.  Hell, they’d be curious.  Given the tantalizing taste of a Jones/Dwyer corroboration, maybe they did more than just watch.  To me it seems more credible and in character to see a power-hungry political player like Jones trying to work a Langley relationship with the intention of him using them or at least keeping them at bay.

The CIA was involved somehow: the first word that something bad had happened at Jonestown came from the ’Town itself over a

According to the “official” investigation into Congressman Ryan’s death, Jones had no strings pulling him; he was just a commie lone nut.  Gee, where have we heard that before??? Although a massive amount of relevant documents have been retrieved under the Freedom Of Information Act, several thousand pages continue to this day to be classified because of “national security.”

Jonestown was a snowjob of JFK proportions.  It was not, however, a “Waco beta test,” which was what I thought when I first looked into it.  Jones and Koresh are leagues apart.  But it is ironic indeed that the very Brain Police propaganda designed to answer inquiries is what got me asking so many questions in the first place.

saint’s peshar

Something bad happened in Guyana, and we will probably not find out exactly what it was.  Clearly this is more complicated that the “lone nut-led mass suicide” story that they want us to think. But too few of us are trying to figure out the answers.  And too many are just forgetting.

Cultic Chorus

            Y’know, Jonestown had a half-decent house choir, if this cd is any indication.

This is not without precedent, of course.

• Koresh had a band at Mount Carmel, and publicly released several singles, including the infamously ironic “Mad Man in Waco.”  Their last performance was during the stand-off, when Koresh got sick of the FBI blaring dentist drills, Tibetan chants, and (gasp!) Nancy Sinatra at him; he turned his amp and p.a. up to 11 and drowned out the FBI with an extended jam.

• The Manson Family also had a musical façade to them, with Charles singing/guitar and none other than Beach Boys’ Dennis Wilson on drums.  They even recorded an album to pitch to Terry Melcher.  Grimace Reaper does a schlappafied cover of Garbage Dump off it.

• Masada unquestionably had a band: archaeologists discovered a cache of musical instruments in the amphitheatre.  Indeed, one of the scrolls found in the chapel was a listing of psalm titles (Psalm 23, Psalm 88, etc) interspersed with cryptic terms like “drum circle intro,” “harp solo,” “dueling shofars,” and “selection 29: Jewish Dance Tune” strongly suggesting this scroll is essentially a ‘set list.’

• Among strange, deranged cults that have a house band but haven’t self destructed the Mormon Tabernacle Choir shines out as the most obvious example. 

 

As you can see, it is not uncommon for sects to embrace music and their members to form bands.  For a while I’ve been kicking around the idea of having a house band here at the cyber-compound.  Evil Matt plays a mean guitar, DynaCharcoal has a fantastic voice (and does a kick-ass Grace Slick impression,) and Burning Bush is a one-man drum circle.  I’d actually approached several members and kindred spirits about this project some time ago, with encouraging responses from Shane, GigiVida, and Sparky.

Realizing the need and seeing the precedent for cults having house bands, I’ve gone through with my resolution to form an ‘in-compound cyber-band.’

The Cactus Patch Kids.

FireSkunk (our ) was nice enough to loan us a soundproof reading room in the Athenæum, which we’ve been using for rehearsals. Sounds pretty kick.  Mostly Zappa and B.Ö.C. covers for fun, plus a full set’s worth of originals.

Best part, though, is the idea of some emcee introducing us to an unsuspecting audience: “Please welcome, from BadAss, Arizona, the Cactus Patch Kids!” and just crashing into a balls-out head-banging distorted jam.

Ask Evil Matt

     [as channeled by shade via a bag of Scrabble tiles]

Q:  what does “Ouriki” mean (if anything) in japanese?  treat it tender, btw, it’s the secret word of the day.  ouriki, hehehe

A:  Hmmm,,, don’t know the lingo m’self; I’ll subcontract this one out to T.H.  Hell, he’s probably been to Herai...

Q:  Trust No One ~ we need to think for our selfs right?, but with this should we even trust our self? scary thought.