November 18, 1978: Jonestown and the murder of the CIA's arch enemy in Guyana

[Myra Bronstein]

US Congressman Leo Ryan was the CIA's arch enemy. He was murdered right after visiting Jonestown to evaluate the conditions on behalf of his constituents.

Leo Ryan was one of the two sponsors of The Hughes-Ryan Act.

"The Hughes-Ryan Act is a 1974 United States federal law that amended the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961. The Act was named for its co-authors, Senator Harold E. Hughes (D-Iowa) and Representative Leo Ryan (D-CA). The Act required the President of the United States to report all covert operations of the Central Intelligence Agency to one or more Congressional committees within a set time limit.

This amendment addressed the question of CIA and Defense Department covert actions, and prohibited the use of appropriated funds for their conduct unless and until the President issues an official "Finding" that each such operation is important to the national security and submits these Findings to the appropriate Congressional committees – a total of six committees, at the time, growing to eight committees after the House and Senate "select committees" on intelligence were established.

The legislation was meant to ensure that the intelligence oversight committees within Congress were told of CIA actions within a reasonable time limit.[1] Senator Hughes, in introducing the legislation in 1973, also saw it as a means of limiting major covert operations by military, intelligence, and national security agents conducted without the full knowledge of the president."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hughes%E2%80%93Ryan_Act

I think Jonestown was an MKultra type experiment with mind control and drugs (lots and lots of drugs). And sure came in handy when the powers that be wanted to eliminate pesky ol' Leo Ryan. Now he's just a footnote to the larger Jonestown mythology.

[Dawn Meredith]

I did not know about the Hughes-Ryan Act. I remember watching this on tv and the way it was all played... Like it was all just as we were being spoon fed. Damn I hate our media. Lying sacks of shit...Operation Mockingbird stoodges. No wonder Americans are so damn stupid. If our press was only vigliant and free...instead of owned by the Crack In America Corporation.
Speaking of which I just heard that our fearless leader is giving Poppy Bush the Presidential Medal of freedom. I think I will vomit. Gee maybe Obama can get him as a running mate in 2012. Let's put another Bush in the WH. Not that it makes a bit if difference. Puppets on a corporate string.

I miss the Kennedys. Too bad they were all murdered.

If I could afford it I would retire an move to Costa Rica. They abolished their military in 1949.

Dawn

[Peter Lemkin]

I did not know about the Hughes-Ryan Act. I remember watching this on tv and the way it was all played... Like it was all just as we were being spoon fed. Damn I hate our media. Lying sacks of shit...Operation Mockingbird stoodges. No wonder Americans are so damn stupid. If our press was only vigliant and free...instead of owned by the Crack In America Corporation.
Speaking of which I just heard that our fearless leader is giving Poppy Bush the Presidential Medal of freedom. I think I will vomit. Gee maybe Obama can get him as a running mate in 2012. Let's put another Bush in the WH. Not that it makes a bit if difference. Puppets on a corporate string.

I miss the Kennedys. Too bad they were all murdered.

If I could afford it I would retire an move to Costa Rica. They abolished their military in 1949.

Dawn

Well, thanks I needed that [a laugh] not at you...but at the thought of O-Bomb-Ya giving Poppy Skull & Bones, Nazi Sponsor Father, CIA all his adult years, murderer and fascist [and worse!] the Presidential Medal of freedom! This is certainly a definition of 'freedom' not in my dictionary nor vocabulary......I guess you have to be a Corporate fascist clone to know that definition.....and Obama falls yet another GIANT step in my mind.....he was already rubbing shoulders with W, as are most all of his cabinet! [and policies!]. Spare Change we can't believe in, at all!

Well, well, well, the American Tragedy has indeed become a Comedy

.....and we will not end with a bang...but a whimper
....soon, IMO.

I believe it was Dulles who said of the media in America that they [the Company] 'owned' anyone of any importance......[paraphrasing]

[Paul Rigby]

US Congressman Leo Ryan was the CIA's arch enemy. He was murdered right after visiting Jonestown to evaluate the conditions on behalf of his constituents.

Leo Ryan was one of the two sponsors of The Hughes-Ryan Act.

"The Hughes-Ryan Act is a 1974 United States federal law that amended the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961. The Act was named for its co-authors, Senator Harold E. Hughes (D-Iowa) and Representative Leo Ryan (D-CA). The Act required the President of the United States to report all covert operations of the Central Intelligence Agency to one or more Congressional committees within a set time limit.

This amendment addressed the question of CIA and Defense Department covert actions, and prohibited the use of appropriated funds for their conduct unless and until the President issues an official "Finding" that each such operation is important to the national security and submits these Findings to the appropriate Congressional committees – a total of six committees, at the time, growing to eight committees after the House and Senate "select committees" on intelligence were established.

The legislation was meant to ensure that the intelligence oversight committees within Congress were told of CIA actions within a reasonable time limit.[1] Senator Hughes, in introducing the legislation in 1973, also saw it as a means of limiting major covert operations by military, intelligence, and national security agents conducted without the full knowledge of the president."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hughes%E2%80%93Ryan_Act

I think Jonestown was an MKultra type experiment with mind control and drugs (lots and lots of drugs). And sure came in handy when the powers that be wanted to eliminate pesky ol' Leo Ryan. Now he's just a footnote to the larger Jonestown mythology.

Fine tribute to an outstanding politician.

Paul

[Christer Forslund]

the thought of O-Bomb-Ya giving Poppy Skull & Bones, Nazi Sponsor Father, CIA all his adult years, murderer and fascist [and worse!] the Presidential Medal of freedom!

Is that the O-Bomb-Ya of the Nobel Peace Prize? How suitable!

[Myra Bronstein]

I did not know about the Hughes-Ryan Act. ...

Well the most significant info is kept from us as you noted.

"Whether they liked him or not, most who knew Leo Ryan agreed he had flamboyance, tenacity, nerve and a knack for drawing attention to social abuses. A man who marched to the beat of his own drum, he galled bureaucrats, some of whom, according to a former aide, viewed the Democratic congressman from Northern California as the worst-case-scenario bull in their china shop.

After the riots in Watts in 1965, Ryan, then a California state legislator, traveled to that community under a false identity and became a substitute teacher to investigate conditions in the black community. Five years later, he again went undercover and had himself strip-searched and locked up in Folsom State Prison to discover what life in such a facility was really like. In 1978, he made plans to spend that Christmas season incognito once again, this time as a Postal Service employee to investigate complaints of bad working conditions.

As a congressman, his brassiness caused him to routinely do things which to others were unthinkable, such as “dropping in” at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, to interrogate the spymasters about what they hadn’t been telling Congress.

“He was,” according to a source formerly close to Ryan, and who once accompanied him on a trip to Langley, “a pain in their ass.”

As a member of the House of Representatives’ International Relations Committee and its foremost CIA critic, he was the House sponsor of the Hughes-Ryan Amendment, a 1974 law that required the CIA to notify eight separate committees of Congress—totaling some 200 legislators and staff—prior to conducting undercover operations.

Hughes-Ryan also banned CIA covert paramilitary operations which were not expressly approved by the president and Congress. The agency hated this, a former Ryan associate told*Freedom. But the Hughes-Ryan Amendment, which seriously restricted CIA covert operations internationally, was only one index of Leo Ryan’s impact.

In 1975, Ryan leaked word of the CIA’s involvement in the Angolan civil war to CBS newsman Daniel Schorr, creating a wave of major embarrassment for the agency which reverberated for years.

In 1977 and 1978, Ryan pressured the agency to reveal the extent of its involvement in psychiatric “mind-control” experiments. Among the tests he pushed to expose were those performed in the early 1970s on inmates at a state hospital in Vacaville, California, which may have included among their subjects Donald DeFreeze, known as “Cinque,” a central figure in the 1974 kidnapping of Patricia Hearst.

By poking into intelligence agency-sponsored psychiatric experiments with DeFreeze and closely related subjects, Ryan stirred up a mixture that threatened to explode with major criminal and civil liability.

On September 25, 1978, less than two months before the Jonestown tragedy, Ryan submitted a petition to then President Jimmy Carter, seeking to have Patricia Hearst’s seven-year prison term commuted to the 18 months she had already served.

In October 1978, a month before Jonestown, investigative reporter Jack Anderson published a syndicated column entitled “CIA May Have Inspired Cinque,” based on information that most likely had been leaked by Ryan or someone in his committee. The column detailed statements from one Clifford Jefferson, who claimed to have known DeFreeze while they were incarcerated together and to have participated in psychiatric experiments with various drugs, including mescaline, Quaalude and Artane.

According to Jefferson, “DeFreeze stated that he had gone through the same tests and also knew of stress tests that were given to prisoners in which they were kept in solitary, harassed and annoyed until they would do anything asked of them to get out; then they were given these drugs and would become like robots.

“He [DeFreeze] said that when he got out, he would get a revolutionary group to kidnap some rich person. They would hold that person tied up in a dark place, keep him frightened and in fear of his life, then give him mescaline and other drugs, and the person would become a robot and do anything he was asked to do—including killing others.

“He thought a good one to kidnap would be one of the Kennedys. Then the revolutionary group would get great publicity and could get the person to get them money.”

Although DeFreeze died in a 1974 shootout with Los Angeles police, CIA documents have since confirmed the agency did perform drug tests on inmates at Vacaville under its MK-Ultra program. These tests aimed at studying what effects drugs and stress had on prisoners to determine at what point individuals would “break” and become willing to follow orders blindly.

As described by Dr. Lawrence T. Clanon, Vacaville superintendent, the CIA appeared interested in “whether drugs could be used in questioning people or gaining their cooperation, or combating that effect.”

[COLOR="Red"] Leo Ryan’s spotlight had been trained upon one of the darkest and ugliest corners of the American intelligence establishment, one for which the level of culpability could scarcely be measured—psychiatric “mind-control” experiments, possibly combined with an illegal domestic operation—and one which elevated his status from gadfly to mortal enemy.

“I told him to leave them alone,” a former Ryan associate told Freedom. The congressman was accustomed to busting down doors, he said, a dangerous practice when dealing with an agency experienced in the art of assassination. Ryan, however, pressed ahead.[/COLOR]

In March 1997, the Federal Bureau of Investigation announced that it would release for the first time nearly 39,000 additional pages of documents concerning Jonestown, the Peoples Temple and related matters under the Freedom of Information Act. As these documents become available and are examined, new revelations concerning the mass deaths at Jonestown in 1978 and the killing of Congressman Ryan continue to mount. The documents include 8,603 pages from the FBI’s investigative file and an additional 30,229 pages. The bureau made the papers available based on a 1993 FOIA request filed by Freedom.

At the time of his death, Leo Ryan’s spotlight was trained on one of the darkest corners of the American intelligence establishment—psychiatric “mind-control” experiments, possibly combined with illegal domestic operations. His probe included tests performed at a Vacaville, California, state hospital (above), reportedly involving Donald (known as “Cinque”, top) DeFreeze, a central figure in the 1974 kidnapping of Patricia Hearst. A month before Ryan’s murder, Jack Anderson (right) published a column entitled “CIA May Have Inspired Cinque,” exposing the secret experiments, with Ryan or his committee the most likely source of the information.

Contrary to what is popularly reported in the media, the FBI files document the Peoples Temple as a mainstream religious congregation, with statements on behalf of the group by a range of political figures including Senators Walter Mondale, Hubert Humphrey, Henry Jackson, Sam Ervin Jr., Warren Magnuson and Mike Gravel, Congressmen Philip Burton, Ron Dellums and Don Edwards, Congresswomen Bella Abzug and Patsy Mink.

The papers demonstrate wide support for the organization. Actress and activist Jane Fonda wrote: “I also recommit myself to your congregation as an active full participant—not only for myself, but because I want my two children to have the experience.”

They also show its leader, Jim Jones, as a respected minister of the Disciples of Christ, the Protestant church of former President Lyndon Johnson and millions of other Americans.

And they show that while the church underwent a long period of harassment, surveillance and infiltration at the hands of government intelligence agents, these intensified once the group, founded in Indiana, relocated to San Francisco, and particularly after its headquarters moved to Guyana.

Indeed, in 1977 and 1978 came anonymous threats against the Peoples Temple, accompanied by random acts of violence against group members. It was in late 1977 that heavy pressure began on Ryan to visit Jonestown—pressure which built to a crescendo shortly before he agreed to go. Those pushing him to take action against “cults” included psychologist Margaret Singer, while others, among them Tim Stoen, a former member and top aide to Jim Jones with alleged ties to the CIA, pressured Ryan to visit Jonestown. (See “The Real Cult,”.)

The nearly 39,000 pages of documents released by the FBI to Freedom under the Freedom of Information Act document the Peoples Temple as a mainstream congregation and show it enjoyed wide support, as from Jane Fonda, who wrote: “I also recommit myself to your congregation as an active full participant—not only for myself, but because I want my two children to have the experience.”

[COLOR="red"] More than 20 months after Leo Ryan was killed, his five adult children—two sons and three daughters—filed a lawsuit based on extensive investigation into what had precipitated their father’s death.

Filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California on July 31, 1980, the suit asked for general damages of $3 million, plus costs for Congressman Ryan’s funeral and bringing the action.

The lawsuit charged that “the Jonestown Colony was infiltrated with agent(s) of the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States.

“[That] the name of one said agent was Phillip Blakey, a trusted aide of Peoples Temple leader James Warren Jones.

“[T]hat said agents were working with the Department of State and the Central Intelligence Agency to use the Jonestown Colony as part of the Central Intelligence Agency’s MK Ultra program.

“[T]hat massive quantities of mind-control drugs were found at the Jonestown colony after the fatal incident of November 18, 1978.”

Phillip Blakey had traveled to Guyana to select the site for Jonestown and to begin clearing land. He was one of the few survivors of the mass killing.

The lawsuit furthermore charged that Richard Dwyer doubled as an agent of the Central Intelligence Agency and that Dwyer “arranged for the transportation of decedent [Ryan] and his party once in Guyana; briefed decedent and his party on the events and conditions at Jonestown upon their arrival; and escorted decedent and his party to Jonestown in November 1978.”

It alleged that Dwyer “as an agent and employee of the Central Intelligence Agency ... negligently, maliciously and intentionally withheld crucial information about the Jonestown Colony which would have prevented harm to decedent.”

It further charged that Dwyer “knowingly, intentionally and maliciously led [Ryan] into a trap at the Port Kaituma Air Strip, which cost decedent his life.”

The Ryans’ lawsuit was dismissed for reasons that have to date never been fully disclosed. A source close to the family who aided them in their quest for justice told Freedom of threats received which he attributed to the CIA. Every time he made a move, he said, a warning would arrive on his doorstep by a circuitous route. “A letter would show up,” for example, he said, stating, “’We’re watching you.’”[/COLOR]

Although many others lost their lives on November 18, 1978, according to Dr. C. Leslie Mootoo, then chief medical examiner of Guyana, the overwhelming majority of the deaths at Jonestown were murders, not suicides.

Dr. Mootoo, the government’s top pathologist and the first physician on the scene, told Freedom that many had died from injections of cyanide. After 32 hours of nonstop work in stifling heat, amid decaying flesh, in Mootoo’s words, “We gave up.” By that time, 187 bodies killed by injections had been examined by Mootoo and his team. Victims had been injected in portions of their bodies they could not have reached themselves, such as between the shoulder blades or in the back of an upper arm. “Those who were injecting them knew what they were doing,” Mootoo said.

Many others had been shot. Charles Huff, a former member of the U.S. Army Special Forces in Panama, was one of the seven Green Berets who were the first American troops on the scene following the massacre. He told Freedom, “We saw many bullet wounds as well as wounds from crossbow bolts.”

Huff noted that those with fatal bullet or bolt wounds appeared to have been running toward the jungle that surrounded Jonestown. Corroborating the information from Dr. Mootoo, Huff said that the adults who had not been shot had been killed by injections between the shoulder blades. The killers escaped before the arrival of Huff and his team.

U.S. Air Force Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty, who worked closely in key positions with the CIA and the Joint Chiefs of Staff for many years, told Freedom that Leo Ryan had moved in too close to certain skeletons that could never be safely disturbed. A relentless and uncompromising investigator, nothing could stop Ryan—short of violence. But how could such a high-profile personality be eliminated without bringing down upon the perpetrators an investigation to end all investigations?

A very real possibility is that by making the assassination part of an even larger catastrophe, the central drama itself—that of a courageous individual blocked from probing reports of illegal, unconstitutional, government-sponsored psychiatric “mind-control” activities—was obscured.

Colonel Prouty noted evidence of the involvement of a larger force in the operation: “The Joint Chiefs of Staff had prepared air shipments of hundreds of body bags. They didn’t normally keep that many in any one place. Within hours, they began to shuttle them down to Georgetown, the main city. They couldn’t possibly have done that without prior knowledge that it was going to happen. It shows that there was prior planning.”

Prouty said, “We would provide the agency with the things they were requesting, without any questions. That’s the way the business works.”

At Jonestown, he said, the JCS provided the body bags, the airlift and all the rest on a timetable that shows advance knowledge. “The JCS wouldn’t have moved at all on their own,” he said. “They didn’t give a damn about Jonestown.” These and other unusual events, he noted, “are the kinds of earmarks that define the hand of American intelligence.”

Nearly two decades after the death of Congressman Leo Ryan, America is still owed a definitive explanation for the many unresolved questions surrounding the tragedy. To begin, all documents and records from all relevant agencies should be released in full. Only then might the full truth be known.

http://www.freedommag.org/english/vol29I4/page04.htm

[Myra Bronstein]

I think it's important to underscore the fact that Leo Ryan was lured down to Guyana then murdered. His murder was not an afterthought, it was a set up.

[Peter Lemkin]

the thought of O-Bomb-Ya giving Poppy Skull & Bones, Nazi Sponsor Father, CIA all his adult years, murderer and fascist [and worse!] the Presidential Medal of freedom!

Is that the O-Bomb-Ya of the Nobel Peace Prize? How suitable!

Ya got me there...I guess that is what passes for 'poetic justice' these days......:dancing2: in the Potemkin Village known as Planet URTH inc.

[Jan Klimkowski]

I think it's important to underscore the fact that Leo Ryan was lured down to Guyana then murdered. His murder was not an afterthought, it was a set up.

Perhaps lured. Perhaps he couldn't be persuaded not to go.

My own sense is that the Jonestown mind control experiment was running amock. Once Ryan travelled to Guyana, the game was up. And he was slaughtered by Jonestown assassins. See footage here @c2:45 and 3:08:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSRKWb4LO3w

For more on the deep political origins and dimensions of Jonestown, including Dwyer's CIA boss, see also thread here:
http://www.deeppoliticsforum.com/forums/...php?t=2195

The article quoted in post #6 in this thread is from Freedom, which is the house journal of (one faction of) the Church of Scientology. For various complex reasons, Scientology has been consistently critical of the pain-hypnosis-trauma techniques of the "MK-ULTRA"-type programmes. However, Scientology itself is part of the intelligence complex, and the major split appears to have happened at the time of the NSA/DIA/Military Intelligence remote viewing programmes involving Scientology Level VII Operating Thetans Pat Price and Ingo Swann.

Jonestown's ugly sister is the Symbionese Liberation Army.

Their monstrous father is the Phoenix Program.

Their diabolic grandfather is Nazi eugenics.

-----------------------

Handbrake turn:

The Freedom article states that Blakey was CIA:

“[That] the name of one said agent was Phillip Blakey, a trusted aide of Peoples Temple leader James Warren Jones.

Blakey was a Brit, and likely also had ties to British intelligence.

John Judge has written:

George Blakey, who married Debbie Layton, was from a wealthy
British family. He donated $60,000 to pay the lease on the
27,000-acre Guyana site in 1974.[109]

(snip)

In addition, there are indications that
Blakey and other members were supplementing the Temple funds with
international smuggling of guns and drugs.[168]

(snip)

Dr. Laurence Layton was Chief of Chemical
and Biological 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.[208] His wife, Lisa, had come from a rich German
family. Her father, Hugo, had represented I.G. Farben as a
stockbroker.[209] 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.[210] 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.[211] He also
contributed financially.[212]

(snip)

Terri Buford's father, Admiral Charles T. Buford, worked with Navy
Intelligence.[213] In addition, Blakey was reportedly running
mercenaries from Jonestown to CIA-backed UNITA forces in
Angola.[214] Maria Katsaris' father was a minister with the Greek
Orthodox Church, a common conduit of CIA fundings, and Maris
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.[215] 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.[216] Almost
everywhere you look at Jonestown, U.S. intelligence and fascism
rear their ugly heads.

(snip)

The cast of characters is neither dead nor inactive. Key members
of the armed guard were ordered to be on board the Temple Ship,
Cudjoe -- at the hour of the massacre they were on a supply run to
Trinidad. George Phillip Blakey phoned his father-in-law, Dr.
Lawrence Layton, from Panama after the event.[268] At least ten
members of the Temple remained on the boat, and set up a new
community in Trinidad while Nigel Slingger, a Grenada businessman
and insurance broker for Jonestown, repaired the 400-ton shipping
vessel. Then Charles Touchette, Paul McCann, Stephan Jones, and
George Blakey set up an "open house" in Grenada with the others.
McCann spoke about starting a shipping company to "finance the
continued work of the original Temple."[269]

That "work" may have included the mysterious operations of the
mental hospital in Grenada that eluded government security by
promising free medical care.[270] The hospital as operated by Sir
Geoffrey Bourne, Chancellor of the St. George's University Medical
School, was also staffed by his son Dr. Peter Bourne.[271] His
son's history includes work with psychological experiments and
USAID in Vietnam, the methadone clinics in the U.S., and a drug
scandal in the Carter White House.[272] The mental hospital was
the only structure bombed during the U.S. invasion of Grenada in
1983. This was part of a plan to put Sir Eric Gairy back in
power.[273] Were additional experiments going on at the site?[274]

(snip)

In addition, the killers of Leo Ryan and others at Port Kaituma
were never accounted for fully. The trial of Larry Layton was
mishandled by the Guyanese courts, and the U.S. system as
well.[275] No adequate evidentiary hearings have occurred either
at the trial or in state and congressional reviews. The Jonestown
killers, trained assassins and mercenaries, are not on trial. They
might be working in Africa or Central America. Their participation
in Jonestown can be used as an "explanation" for their involvement
in later murders here, such as the case of the attack on school
children in Los Angeles.[276] They should be named and located.

John Judge's full article, with footnotes, can be found in other thead.

[Peter Lemkin]

Jonestown's ugly sister is the Symbionese Liberation Army.

Their monstrous father is the Phoenix Program.

Their diabolic grandfather is Nazi eugenics.

Poetic and true.....well said.

It is just amazing how there are SO many 'episodes' in Deep Politics [Jonestown being a perfect example], any one of which, if explored to the truthful evidence and information [and that truth revealed to the naive Sheeple and Lemmings] could end the reign of terror, IMO...but as quickly they accumulate they are just as quickly turned into 'another' mythology and 'conspiracy nut stuff' and 'too complicated/conflicting' or 'details not sufficient to make heads or tails out of'.....when most of these apparent mysteries are as clear as day.......if one will only open up one's eyes and dare to look at the available evidence with an open and unbrainwashed mind....and notice the patterns!....its the patterns, stupid!