Meiers and JONESTOWN

[Anthony Thorne]

VII MOSCONE, MILK AND MURDER


"In a tight race like the ones George (Moscone) or (Joseph) Freitas or (Richard) Hongisto had, forget it without Jones. "[112]

-Assemblyman Willie Brown



"They are well dressed, polite, and they're also registered to vote. Everybody talks about the labor unions and their power, but Jones turns out the troops".[113]

-A Moscone campaign official


The Reverend Jim Jones was the predominant force behind the political careers of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and City Supervisor Harvey Milk during the last three years of their lives. Their assassinations, coming only nine days after the Jonestown massacre, suggests that Jones had engineered their deaths just as he had helped engineer their lives. This chapter is submitted as evidence that he did.



GEORGE R. MOSCONE

Moscone's rise to political power in San Francisco began on April 14, 1975, in a meeting between Lawrence Leguennac, the registrar of voters, and Thomas Mellon, the city's chief administrative officer. At the time, Moscone was the majority leader in the State Senate, but, as he phrased it, "Sacramento is boring as hell and ever since my childhood I've wanted to be the mayor of the world's greatest city." Reportedly, a deal between Moscone and other high-ranking Democrats, had been struck in which several politicians would shift offices to the betterment of all. Moscone needed more than just the assurance of a politician that he would be elected mayor. Help came from Lawrence Leguennac in the form of his revised procedure for voter registration. Under the pretext of a poor voter turn-out in the previous election, Leguennac and Mellon redesigned and relaxed voter requirements for the upcoming 1975 mayoral elections. Under the new system, an unprecedented number of registrars were deputized and issued an even larger number of voter registration books. Each registration had a duplicate yellow copy that was given to the voter to present at the polling places. The yellow copy was supposed to be compared to the original and confiscated at the polls to prevent citizens from voting more than once.

Moscone entrusted his campaign to Don Bradley, who had successfully managed the California campaigns of Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. Bradley later recalled what happened next.


...there was a meeting here in my office with Jim Jones, Prokes (Temple aide Michael Prokes), Moscone and myself. We requested help in securing volunteers and they said they could... They did the work in tough areas, fairly rough areas (like) the Tenderloin and south of Market. [114]


The marriage of Moscone and Jones produced what may well be the largest voter fraud scheme in California's history.

Moscone was one of five candidates in the November election. Some of his opponents, most notably Dianne Feinstein and John Barbagelata, were backed by the city's powerful real estate developers. It was a close race; too close, as no one received a clear majority and a run-off election between the two front-runners, Moscone and Barbagelata, was scheduled for the following month. Temple political propagandist Richard Tropp enlisted his troops to write as many as fifty letters each in support of Moscone and in protest of the need for a run-off election. Despite the efforts of the Peoples Temple, the December election was held on schedule.

Everyone in Jones' congregation was registered to vote; it was a requirement. Many had registered at Temple operated communes, indicating that Temple personnel had been deputized as registrars. Over one hundred and sixty Temple volunteers worked at Moscones campaign headquarters. Several hundred more canvassed the Tenderloin, Filmore, South of Market and the Western Addition areas of the city.

On the morning of the December election, Jones had over 800 of his followers rounded up and transported to the polls in the Temple's fleet of Greyhound buses. Each had been instructed to vote for Moscone, just as they had been instructed to vote for Moscone, District Attorney Joseph Freitas and Sheriff Richard Hongisto in the regular election a month earlier.

On election day, officials at the polling places neglected to confiscate the voters' duplicate yellow registration forms. As John Barbagelata said, lamenting over his loss, "You could have run around to twelve hundred precincts and voted twelve hundred times."[115] And that is exactly what the eight hundred Peoples Temple voters did. Their ballot box stuffing made the differences as Moscone won by only a slim margin, but Jones had miscalculated the voter turn-out for the run-off election and, in the final analysis, there were more votes cast than there were registered voters. Barbagelata claimed voter fraud and called for Moscone to run again in a special midterm election. Jim Jones contributed $500 to the committee opposing the proposal. He also contributed $250 to help pay for Moscone's inaugural expenses. The following month Barbagelata received a box of candy in the mail that concealed a bomb that, by chance, did not explode. After the incident, Jones offered him the protection of Temple bodyguards, but Barbagelata refused. Barbagelata continued to protest the election and, in June of 1976, he chaired a special committee of city supervisors who conducted public allegations of voter fraud. The committee discovered forged and printed signatures, as well as non-existent addresses and other irregularities on vote registration forms, all from the south of Market, Filmore and Western Addition districts where the major influence was the Peoples Temple. Barbagelata never realized the Temple's involvement, only that some major force had masterminded the fraud.

His committee submitted their findings to District Attorney Joseph Freitas who formed a special election crimes unit to investigate the allegations. Freitas hired none other than Temple attorney Tim Stoen to head the investigation. He later insisted that he did not know the assistant district attorney from Mendocino County had an affiliation with the Peoples Temple or that the Peoples Temple had played any part in the election fraud. Freitas was quoted as saying, "I didn't know Tim was a member of the Peoples Temple until after he came to work, and anyone who says it was a political pay-off is a liar "[116] a strong statement from a man who was often seen at the services of the Peoples Temple and who owed his political position to the election fixing of Jim Jones. Of course, Tim Stoen found no substantial evidence of voter fraud and the Peoples Temple was never mentioned in his reports.

As further evidence of fraud in the 1975 elections, over four hundred voter registration books were issued but never recovered. Those books that were recovered were locked in three vaults in City Hall. In December of 1978, Federal and State agencies requested the files as evidence in their investigation of the Peoples Temple and Tim Stoen. It was then that even the remaining books were discovered missing. Every list of voters in the 1975 elections has vanished without a trace.

Jones received his political pay-off only days after the election, when Moscone appointed Temple aide Michael Prokes to the committee that would screen potential candidates for the one hundred commission vacancies in Moscone's new administration. Over the next several months, Prokes succeeded in placing trusted Temple aides in key positions in city government.

In March of 1976, Moscone announced he was appointing Jim Jones to the post of Human Rights Commissioner the same
title bestowed upon him in Indianapolis, fifteen years earlier. On the day that Jones was to be sworn into office, he slipped, unannounced, through a side door to the mayor's office and, after a fifteen minute meeting with Moscone, emerged to tell the awaiting press that he would not accept the post but would be appointed to a different position.

On October 18, 1976, Moscone submitted the name of Jim Jones for a seat on the San Francisco Housing Authority, a $14 million a year agency that manages the city's low income housing units. When it appeared that city supervisors might not approve the appointment, Moscone enlisted the help of Assemblyman Willie Brown, who introduced legislation in Sacramento giving the mayor the power to appoint members of the Housing Authority without confirmation from the Board of Supervisors. Eventually, the supervisors did confirm Jones' appointment as well as that of Temple aide Carolyn Moore Layton, who also received a job with the Housing Authority. By January 24, 1977, Moscone had cleared the way for Jones to be elected Chairman of the Housing Authority. As chairman of the city agency that controlled low income housing, Jones was in an excellent position to arrange for government-funded apartments for his congregation. The Peoples Temple had since shifted its center from Mendocino County to San Francisco, where Jones saw to it that most of his agency's $14 million budget benefitted his followers.

Throughout 1976, Mayor Moscone, D.A. Freitas, Sheriff Hongisto and Assemblyman Willie Brown were often seen at Peoples Temple services where they were received as honored guests. On September 25, 1976, Jones hosted his own testimonial, twenty-dollar-a-plate dinner at the Geary Street Temple in San Francisco. Seated at the head table were Moscone, Brown, Freitas, California Lieutenant Governor Mervyn Dymally and State Senator Milton Marks. Also present were the full range of political activists from Eldridge Cleaver and Angela Davis on the left to Walter Heady, chairman of the John Birch Society, on the right. Each took turns to praise the work of Jim Jones and to present their tributes , awards and honors. Senator Marks presented Jones with a plaque bearing a resolution commending the Peoples Temple that he had managed to get passed by the State Senate. Such was Jones' political power in San Francisco.

In September, 1976, Rosalyn Carter visited San Francisco to officially open the presidential campaign headquarters of her husband, Jimmy Carter and his running mate, Walter Mondale. Fearing a poor turn-out for the ceremony, Mrs. Carter contacted Jim Jones, who provided six-hundred of the eight hundred who attended her rally. Jones, who shared the speaker's podium, received a roaring ovation from the crowd while Mrs. Carter was received politely but coldly. He was showing off, as was his security staff who followed in the every footstep of Mrs. Carter's Secret Service escorts as they secured the area for her public appearance.

That evening, Jones met privately with Rosalyn Carter in the restaurant of the posh Stanford Hotel in the city's Nob Hill district. Presumably they discussed U.S. relations with Cuba. Ever since his involvement in the Bay of Pigs invasion, Jones had a reputation with the CIA as an expert on Cuba. Days later, Mrs. Carter phoned Jones to thank him for his help and the two began an exchange of written correspondence that continued well into 1977.

In the first week of October, less than a month after his meeting with Rosalyn Carter, Jones traveled to Cuba for a meeting with Fidel Castro. Soon after he returned to San Francisco, he was debriefed by Walter Mondale. Mondale was on the campaign trail and not scheduled to visit San Francisco, but apparently his business with Jones was sufficiently important to interrupt his tour, for his chartered jet was diverted to the San Francisco Airport. Mondale never left the airport runway. and few people realized he was even in the city. Jim Jones and Mayor George Moscone were invited to join him in the surveillance-free interior of his jet for a private meeting. Jones later reported they discussed "U.S. relations with Carribean countries," a deliberately vague reference to Cuba. Actually Mondale offered Jones an ambassadorship to Guyana, but later "complications" arose. As soon as Mondale left San Francisco, Jones began to make arrangements for another trip to Cuba where, in December of 1976, he once again met with Fidel Castro. There was definitely something transpiring between the new Carter administration and Castro's Cuba, and Jim Jones provided the conduit for the discussions. If true to form, Jones would not have been content to be just a messenger, but would have wanted to engineer this new relationship and probably did. One of the first letters the new First Lady wrote on White House stationery was to Jim Jones.


April 12, 1977

Dear Jim,
Thank you for your letter. I enjoyed being with you during the campaign -- and do hope you can meet Ruth (Carter
Stapleton) soon. Your comments about Cuba are helpful. I hope your suggestions can be acted on in the near future.

Sincerely,
Rosalyn Carter


As if his political rewards were not sufficient, Jones hosted one last testimonial to himself before he permanently left San Francisco for Jonestown. The occasion was the forty-eighth anniversary of the birth of civil rights advocate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The January 15th event at the Peoples Temple was the largest interracial celebration ever held in the city. To no one's surprise, Jones received the Martin Luther King Humanitarian of the Year Award. Governor Jerry Brown gave a speech, as did Ben Brown, the head of President Carter's transition team. Mayor Moscone also attended, having long since established the relationship with Jim Jones that helped to legitimize both their public careers. Jones was also named "Humanitarian of the Year" by the Los Angeles Herald Examiner.

In July 1977, New West Magazine published a damning expose of Jim Jones and his Peoples Temple. Under threat of political siege, Jones retreated to Guyana and his experimental community of Jonestown. Following his departure from the United States, the exposes continued to increase in intensity. The San Francisco Examiner, dated August 7, 1977, carried the following front page headline: "Rev. Jones: The Power Broker; Political Maneuvering of a Preacher Man". The Examiner's political columnist, Bill Barnes, was hot on the trail of Jim Jones when supervisor Quentin Kopp requested that the District Attorney's office conduct an official investigation into the Peoples Temple. Mayor Moscone and D.A. Freitas vetoed all such requests. Freitas later claimed to have opened his own investigation but did not reveal its existence until after the massacre in Jonestown, leading critics to claim he announced his investigation only to cover-up his own complacency in his personal dealings with Jones.

On August 2 1977, Jones contacted Mayor Moscone via radio-telephone from Guyana to formally resign his position as Director of San Francisco's Housing Authority. Moscone would continue to publicly defend his friend, even though he suspected, as did everyone else that neither Jones nor his political influence would ever return to San Francisco.

Moscone continued out on an ever-thinning limb to support Jones right up to the point he received news of the massacre, when, according to witnesses, he broke down in tears and vomited. Moscone realized he was in serious trouble. The newspapers were full of stories of reported Temple hit squad Jones had sent to San Francisco to kill his enemies. Though Moscone was a friend, he was still afraid for his life. The incident with Bonnie Theilmann at Ryan's funeral "scared the daylights out of him" and left him alone in the church pew to ponder, not Ryan's fate, but his own.

On November 23, 1978, the day after Ryan's funeral the city desk of the San Francisco Chronicle received an anonymous phone call from a man who said that his brother "was just back from Guyana and that the mayor should be warned to have someone with him at all times."[117] When asked his brother's identity, the caller replied, "If I told you that I wouldn't see tomorrow. Just please tell the mayor to take care of himself." The Chronicle informed the police, who informed Moscone, who reacted to what he considered a serious threat to his life, by employing bodyguards round- the-clock. Late-night, anonymous phone calls to the mayor's home confirmed reports that the Peoples Temple was planning to murder him.

Overall Moscone followed Bonnie Theilmann's advice and said little or nothing about Jones or Jonestown. It had been a difficult week for the mayor. It began with the news that his foremost political supporter, confidant and appointee had lured hundreds of San Franciscans to their deaths. Wednesday, he attended the funeral of his friend Congressman Ryan. Thursday, the police informed him of the assassination threat by the Peoples Temple. All week long the San Francisco newspapers brandished headlines about an alleged Temple "hit squad" in California. By Friday, Moscone had been physically, mentally and emotionally drained but, with one last burst of energy, he took a stand on Jonestown. He sent a telegram to President Carter requesting the cost that Washington underwrite of shipping the remains of the Jonestown victims back to their native California. Little did he know that his telegram, that at least implied some federal responsibility for cleaning up the atrocity, would be his last official act as mayor. "Thank God it's Friday," he must have thought while leaving City Hall for a well-deserved weekend at home.

The police and bodyguards, who were just an invasion of privacy earlier in the weak, proved beneficial in keeping the many visitors at Bay. They turned people away at the front door and fielded calls about the Peoples Temple which permitted Moscone to spend a relatively quiet weekend with his family. Early Monday morning, the mayor and his bodyguard arrived at City Hall. About two hours later, Mayor George Moscone was assassinated, as was City Supervisor Harvey Milk.



HARVEY BERNARD MILK

Harvey Milk was born May 22, 1930 to a Jewish family living in Woodmere, New York. His grandfather, Morris Milch, had emigrated to the New York City area from Lithuania years earlier and Americanized the family surname. At the time of Harvey Milk's birth , there existed a strong movement for homosexual rights in Germany that had its beginnings in the 1880's. By the time Milk was seven years old, the movement had suffered a major setback when Heinrich Himmler ordered all German homosexuals to be rounded-up, labeled with pink triangles and sent to the level 3 death camps. Over three hundred thousand homosexuals died in the Nazi gas chambers, making their group second only to the Jews in the number of people exterminated in the Holocaust. As a child, Milk had no idea that he would lead the next movement for gay rights in the Western World; a campaign that, at least for Milk, would end as did its predecessor.

Harvey Milk was a clown, inside and out. His nose, ears, and feet were extremely large. Awkward and unattractive, Milk hid his feelings of inadequacy behind a mask of humor. His quick wit would serve him well in his later years in politics, but in high school, it served to hide the fact that Harvey Milk was a homosexual.

Milk would later recount only two incidents in his childhood. The first occurred in 1943, when his parents sat him down to explain how the brave jews and homosexuals in Europe resisted the Nazis, against all odds of winning, because something that evil had to be opposed. The second incident happened in August of 1947 following his graduation from high school, when Milk was arrested along with other homosexual men who congregated in Central Park. He was charged with indecent exposure for his bare chested sunbathing.

Milk went on to study math and history at the "poor man's Yale", as his classmates called Alban State College. Immediately after his graduation in 1951, Milk followed in the family tradition and enlisted in the Navy. His father had been a submarine crewman during World War II and his mother, Minerva Milk, was one of the first woman to volunteer as a Navy "yeomanette" in 1918. Milk was Chief Petty Office on board the U.S.S. Kittiwake, an aircraft carrier stationed in the Pacific that saw some service in the Korean conflict. He would later tell his voters that the Navy dishonorably discharged him when they discovered his homosexuality but this was not true.

After the Navy, Milk returned to New York, where he met Scott Smith, who would become his companion, lover, business partner, campaign manager and, in the end, executor of his estate. American society's view of homosexuals was undergoing drastic changes at the time. During World War II, U.S. opposition to Nazi Germany prompted an alliance with homosexuals who fled from all around the world to the sanctuaries of New York City and San Francisco. But following the war, the U.S. government, spurred by the McCarthy era witch-hunt, began a systematic persecution of homosexuals that reflected the prejudiced attitudes of Nazi Germany. In only a few years time, the United States was beginning to profess the very ideology they ad gone to war to oppose. Homosexuals were dismissed from the military and various U.S. government agencies by the thousands. So many were fired from the Central Intelligence Agency that they remained as a group, relocated en masse to Sausalito, and occupied a sizable neighborhood in that San Francisco Bay Area community.

Eventually, Harvey Milk and Scott Smith moved from New York to the more tolerant San Francisco but found much the same anti-gay sentiment in California, where homosexuality was "an act against nature" and a punishable felony. Even in liberal California, a restaurant or bar could have its liquor license revoked simply for serving a drink to a known homosexual. But all things considered, San Francisco was a far better environment than New York City and the two transplants moved into the city's gay neighborhood of Castro Street, where they established Castro Camera. Their mall shop soon became a focal point in the area and Harvey Milk's involvement in business and civic action groups earned him the unofficial title of the "Mayor of Castro Street."

Aspiring to be the first self-avowed homosexual to be elected to public office, Milk campaigned for a seat on the city's Board of Supervisors in the 1973 election with a promise to shift the control of the city from the powerful real estate developers to neighborhood groups who would have compassion for people and not just a passion for profit. Milk lost the election due to his inexperience, lack of financial resources and shabby, longhaired appearance. His campaign did serve to organize a new gay political force that was well prepared for a more important issue that was developing in the state capitol. San Francisco Assemblyman Willie Brown had been trying for years to strike the 1872 "crimes against nature" statute from the California law books. The legislature had repeatedly defeated his reform bill and then Governor Ronald Reagan had vowed to veto the bill even if it as passed by the Senate and Assembly. But, by 1975, Ronald Reagan was no longer governor and Willie Brown's reform bill was, once again, revived. Brown argued his case before the Assembly while his close Majority Leader George Moscone, political ally, presented the bill to his colleagues in the Senate. Moscone's motives were obvious. He planned to run for mayor of San Francisco in the fall elections and his efforts to reform the laws governing homosexuals would certainly secure the substantial gay vote in the city. The final Senate vote on the issue was a twenty to twenty tie. Moscone convinced the legislators to invoke a a rarely used rule a and sequester the Senate chamber until a decision could be reached. State Lieutenant Governor Mervyn Dymally flew from Denver to Sacramento to cast the first tie-breaking vote from a lieutenant governor in decades. The reform bill passed and California, as Dymally phrased it, was "one step farther from 1984."

Harvey Milk's political supporters contributed to the promotion and eventual passage of the homosexual reform bill. Milk, who had since cut his hair and dressed in a suit he purchased second-hand from a local dry cleaner, was more presentable to the major political figures he encountered during the campaign. Each of the three key men in Sacramento who were largely responsible for the success of the bill, Willie Brown, George Moscone and Mervyn Dymally, had more than Harvey Milk's politics in common; each had a close personal relationship with Jim Jones. State Assemblyman Willie Brown would become one of Jones' foremost proponents. Mayor George Moscone owed his election, later that same year, to the work of Jones. Lieutenant Governor Mervyn Dymally was often seen at the Peoples Temple for both public and private meetings with Jones. Dymally even visited Jonestown on two different occasions. Judging from Harvey Milk's new circle of political friends, it was almost a foregone conclusion that eventually he would encounter Jim Jones.

Milk ran for the Board of Supervisors again in the 1975 election. He had expanded his base of power to include an unlikely group of supporters: labor unions. Milk and his campaign manager, Scott Smith , had been very instrumental in organizing gays to march with Cesar Chavez's pro-union farm workers. They also succeeded in persuading local gay bars to ban Coors Beer after the Adolph Coors Company prevented their employees from organizing a labor union and the unions called for a boycott of their product nationwide.

Milk's foremost labor supporter was Stan Smith, the secretary treasurer of the San Francisco Building and Construction Trades Council. Even with the support of the gays. Milk lost the election, and the labor unions, finishing seventh. All six incumbents were reelected to the board.

Following the election, newly-inaugurated Mayor Moscone, impressed with Milk's nearly successful campaign, appointed him to the city's Board of Permit Appeals, the powerful court that had the ultimate say in matters concerning all permits issued by the city. For one who aspired to political office, Milk remained a board commissioner for only a brief

five weeks before he defied Moscone, who fired him when he announced he would run in the 1976 election for the post of State Assemblyman from the 16th District.

Substantiated reports circulating in the news media described a political deal that had been struck between State Assembly Speaker Leo McCarthy, George Moscone, Willie Brown and other prominent California Democrats a year earlier. The deal was complicated, but basically it involved the shifting of several Democrats from one office to

another. Moscone got to be mayor of San Francisco, while his vacant Senate seat was filled by Leo McCarthy's old law partner, John Foran. Foran's vacated Assembly seat was to be filled by McCarthy aide Art Agnos. Milk wanted to be a city supervisor, not an assemblyman, but his resentment of what he considered backroom power brokering politics compelled him to oppose Agnos and the political machine that backed him.

"Milk vs. The Machine" was the campaign slogan that threatened the status quo of California Politics. Milk was not opposing Art Agnos but the power brokers who backed him, and largest of these was the Reverend Jim Jones. Like Moscone, Agnos supported the Peoples Temple and, in turn, they supported him and set out to insure his election to office. Knowing this, Milk was surprised to receive a telephone call from Jim Jones.


That was the Reverend Jim Jones on the telephone. He apologized for not knowing I was running and said that he did not mean to back Art Agnos as much as he was doing. He told me that he will make it up to me by sending us some volunteers.


An aide asked Milk, "He's helping Agnos and now backing you?"


Of course not, Jones is backing Agnos and giving him a lot of workers, but he wants to cover his ass, so he'll send us some volunteers too... Make sure you're always nice to the Peoples Temple. If they ask you to do something, do it, and then send them a note thanking them for asking you to do it. They're weird and they're dangerous, and you don't want to be on their bad side.[119]


A few days later, Temple aide Sharon Amos phoned Milk to request that he send 30,000 copies of his campaign literature to her office for distribution by the hundreds of Temple workers that Jones had promised. Milk should have suspected a conspiracy to harm his campaign as soon as Amos, who was supposedly offering him workers, required that his assistants deliver the literature to the Temple. He naively believed Jones' promise to canvass the city in his name and, though 30,000 copies was all he had or could afford, Milk sent all of his printed campaign literature to the Temple. Sharon Amos accepted the delivery and unceremoniously dumped the entire lot into the trash.

The race was close. Early polls' showed Milk in the lead but he was losing ground to Agnos' well-financed campaign. Milk had lost most of his union supporters, retaining only the endorsements of the Laborers, Fire Fighters and Teamsters. He also lost some of his gay supporters, who preferred to elect gay sympathizers rather than gays to public office. State Senator Milton Marks was one of the few politicians to publicly back Milk's bid for the Assembly.

As election day drew nearer, Milk received an increasing number of death threats. Naturally these threats concerned him especially since he was opposing "The Machine." In the last days of his campaign, Milk's father died unexpectedly and he returned to New York for the funeral. The expended trip expended what little time, energy, and money he had held in reserve for the final critical days of his campaign. Early election returns gave Milk the lead but the tide turned when late returns were tallied from the Black neighborhood precincts controlled by Jones. Milk lost by 3,600 of the 33,000 votes cast. Art Agnos, "The Machine", and Jim Jones won.

On election day, voters also approved a measure calling for district, not city-wide, election of San Francisco's supervisors in 1977. This was a victory for Harvey Milk, not only because he advocated neighborhood control of City Hall but because the Gay Castro District would certainly elect a gay supervisor to the board and the "Mayor of Castro Street" was the undisputed candidate for the position.

The 1977 election was Milk's fourth campaign and third attempt at a seat on the Board of Supervisors. "Make Mine Milk" was the Madison Avenue slogan he copied from the American Dairy Association. Finally, Harvey Milk was elected to San Francisco's Board of Supervisors due, in no small part, to the fact that Jones had fled the country the previous July and exerted little influence on the November elections. Jones' parting statement to the San Francisco press was a rebuttal to recent media criticism in which he listed several dozen prominent supporters of the Peoples Temple. Without his permission and much to his dismay, Harvey Milk's name appeared on the published list. Four campaigns in five years had taken its toll on Milk's personal life. Scott Smith had moved out sometime between races and Milk found a new lover, Jack Lira, who moved into his apartment.

Though Milk made an honest attempt to fairly represent his entire constituency, he recognized his responsibility to present a good image as the country's first openly gay elected official. He took every opportunity to encourage homosexuals throughout the U.S. to "come out of their closet" and assert their rights. He worked hard to revive the gay rights movement that Heinrich Himmler had killed in Nazi Germany. Now, in 1978, there was a new fascist threat, or perhaps just a rebirth of the old. The year saw a rash of anti-gay legislation, introduced nationwide, by born-again Christian fundamentalists. Milk viewed these religious fanatics as the "New Nazis" and the most serious threat to human rights in the United States. In California, Senator John Briggs had succeeded in getting his Proposition 6 (The Briggs Initiative) on the November ballot. The measure called for a ban on the hiring of homosexual teachers in California, a controversial issue that Milk endeavored to defeat. With 6 pending, the annual Gay Proposition Freedom Day Parade took on the critical task of rallying opposition to the measure. As the event drew nearer, Milk, who was slated as a guest speaker, received more death threats in the Castro Camera mail; "You get the first bullet the minute you stand at the microphone.[120] Milk filed the typed postcard with the rest of his death threat collection and left for the Civic Center to address the largest gathering of people San Francisco had seen in a decade. Over 375,000 crowded in the open-air plaza to hear Milk say,


My name is Harvey Milk and I want to recruit you. I want to recruit you for the fight to preserve democracy from the John Briggs and Anita Bryants who are trying to constitutionalize bigotry. We are not going to allow that to happen. We are not going to sit back in silence as 300,000 of our gay sisters and brothers did in Nazi Germany. We are not going to allow our rights to be taken away and then march with bowed heads into the gas chamber...[121]


To conclude his rather dramatic oration, Milk proposed a gay rights march on Washington, D.C. for July 4th , 1979.

Milk worked double-time through the summer and fall, both in City Hall and on the campaign trail to defeat Proposition 6. He publicly debated John Briggs several times. The following is typical of his rebuttals:


John Briggs knows that every one of his statements has been repudiated by facts. Yet he never stops making wild inflammatory remarks that, to anyone who knows the facts, sounds as if it were the KKK talking about blacks or Hitler about Jews.[122]


Milk spoke the truth. By election day the only notable organizations to publicly endorse Proposition 6 were the Nazi Party, the Ku Klux Klan, and the Los Angeles Deputy Sheriff's Association.

Considering that Harvey Milk and Jim Jones were at opposite ends of the political spectrum in San Francisco, it is interesting to note the striking similarities between the two men, their philosophies and rhetoric. Milk, the first self-proclaimed homosexual to be elected to public office, utilized much of his media attention to warn of a Nazi-like

take-over in the United States by right-wing, Christian fundamentalists a category that roughly describes Jim Jones. In the privacy of closed Temple meetings, Jones preached that most people were homosexual and that he was the only true heterosexual in the Peoples Temple, but in truth he was bisexual, having had sexual relations with both the men and women in the Temple hierarchy. The rhetoric of Jim Jones was also very much concerned with a Nazi coup in the United States, in which Blacks would be rounded-up and forced into concentration camps as were the Jews and homosexuals in Nazi Germany. According to Jones, the New Nazis were planning to activate the abandoned World War II Japanese detention centers as New-Dachau, New Auschwitz and New Treblinka. His warnings are a grim reminder of what could and did happen in the United States. The basic difference that set the two men at odds was that Milk was exactly what he professed to be but Jones was exactly 180 degrees opposite from his public image. Though both men were prominent advocates of the theory that the Nazis posed a threat to minorities in the United States, Milk was sincere, while Jones, though honest in his presentation of the problem, neglected to tell his congregation that he, himself, was the greatest threat to their well-being.

By the fall of 1978, Jim Jones' influence had been absent from San Francisco politics for over a year and Harvey Milk's career blossomed. Part of Milk's popularity stemmed from the national recognition he received for his public debates with Senator John Briggs and his proposed gay rights march on Washington. Art Agnos capsulized Harvey Milk's political potential "He's going to run for mayor. You know what? I think he can win. That guy (Milk) will one day be the mayor of San Francesco."[123] Things had gone well for Milk that fall day and he didn't mind being detained an extra forty-five minutes at City Hall for a committee meeting. He arrived home late at 8 P.M., entered his apartment and called to Jack Lira, but there was no answer, only a puzzle. Starting at the front door there was a trail of voter registration forms that Milk followed through every room in the apartment. The trail grew progressively messier with crumpled anti-Briggs literature and empty Coors beer cans until it ended at a black velvet curtain hung from the rafters of an enclosed back porch. A note pinned to the curtain read, "You've always loved the circus, Harvey. What do you think of my last act?"[124] Behind the curtain hung the lifeless body of Jack Lira. A paperback book, entitled Holocaust, had been nailed to the beam that secured the rope noose. Milk cut the rope, lowered Lira's body to the floor and ran a few doors down the street to a firehouse, but the rescuers who followed him back to the apartment were unable to revive Lira; he had been dead for about forty-five minutes.

The police treated the death as a routine suicide. The story was front-page news but short-lived to the relief of Milk. For the next few days, Milk and Scott Smith, who had come to his aid, found notes, presumed to have been written by Lira, hidden throughout the apartment, in drawers, between the pages of books and magazines and even sewn in the seams of Milk's clothes. A large note, taped prominently on the kitchen wall read, "Beware the Ides of November."[125] Milk thought it was a reference to the November elections and the Briggs Initiative. He had no way of knowing that it foretold his own death. Nor did he seem to connect the death threats with Lira's suicide. If Milk suspected foul play in the death of Lira or in the untimely death of his father two years earlier, he did not state so publicly.

Milk's City Hall office was deluged with sympathy cards and letters, the most notable was a set of fifty letters from Jonestown. Temple aide Sharon Amos wrote, "I hope you will be able to visit us here in Jonestown. Believe it or not, it is a tremendously sophisticated community, though it is in a Jungle.[126] The remaining forty-nine letters from Jonestown, many identical word-for-word, all expressed the Temples' sorrow at Milk's loss and extended an invitation for him to visit them in Guyana. Jonestown was on a predetermined schedule of self-destruction and Milk was being invited to attend the final days if not the final day of the community. Milk declined the invitations, and aborted what appears to be an attempt by Jones to lure him to his death along with Congressman Ryan.

Two weeks after Lira's funeral, Milk met William Wigardt, a recent arrival on Castro Street who was half Milk's age. The two decided to live together. Suspicious Lira's of death, Milk warned his new lover as he unpacked, "You've got to remember, Bill, you're in the direct line of fire. If I get killed, you can be killed too. Somebody could walk through the door and blow both our brains out.[127]

Proposition 6 was defeated and Harvey Milk reveled in his success, at least the two weeks between the elections and the news of the Jonestown tragedy. The reports had a profound effect on Milk, who made no public statements but spent his final nine days unemotionally settling unfinished business in his life. He knew he was about to be killed. He revised his taped political will to read, in part, "Let the bullet that rip through my brain smash every closet door in the country."[128] Milk turned in his leased car, he knew he wouldn't need a car where he was going. He placed a sign in the window of Castro Camera, "Going out of business December 1st." He also arranged to borrow several thousand dollars from Carl Carlson (an airline pilot friend of his). The intention was to consolidate his debts. Carlson wanted to discuss Milk's plans to run for mayor of San Francisco in 1979, but Milk would only say, "I'm not going to be around then. Let's talk about today."[129]

On the morning of November 27th, 1978, Milk was waiting in his City Hall office for Carl Carlson to escort him to his bank for the agreed loan. Carlson was late and when he did finally arrive, Milk was interrupted by a phone call. Following the call, their departure was further delayed while Carlson used Milk's typewriter to type something, perhaps their loan agreement. They were just about ready to leave when former City Supervisor Dan White leaned into Milk's office and asked to speak with him privately. Milk and White walked to White's former, yet still unoccupied, office across the hall. White closed the door behind them. Carlson was still waiting in Milk's office, when he heard the five shots. He looked out just in time to be the only witness to Dan White leaving the murder scene. He rushed to the door of White's old office where he was joined by Dianne Feinstein. Together they discovered the body of Harvey Milk.

That evening over 40,000 mourners marched in a totally silent candle-light procession from Castro Street to City Hall in remembrance of the fallen supervisor. Milk's brother, Robert, flew from New York to San Francisco where he and his wife were guests in the home of Senator Milton Marks.
The services were held in the San Francisco Opera House. Robert Milk sat in the front row, flanked by Governor Jerry Brown and Lieutenant Governor Mervyn Dymally on one side and Acting Mayor Dianne Feinstein and a White House representative on the other. The Reverend Bill Barcus presided. "Tradition would expect me to tell you Harvey's gone to heaven. Harvey was going much more interested in going to Washington."[130] A former campaign aid read a poem that Milk had written earlier in the month, just for the occasion:


I can be killed with ease
I can be cut right down
But I cannot fall back into my closet
I have grown
I am not by myself
I am too many
I am all of us. [131]


Only the governor and lieutenant governor failed to rise for the standing ovation that followed.

As per Milk's final instructions, his body was cremated and about two dozen of his closest friends, including Scott Smith, Carl Carlson and William Weigardt gathered on the deck of the "Lady Frie," a 102 foot antique schooner, for the voyage under the Golden Gate Bridge and out to sea for the burial. The small box containing Milk's ashes was wrapped in the comic strip, "Doonesbury," a politically oriented cartoon exemplifying Milk's light-hearted treatment of a very serious political world. Enshrining the ashes was a neatly wrapped assortment of bubble bath, representing his homosexuality and several packs of grape Kool-Aid representing his killer, Jim Jones.

Once out to sea, the whiskey flasks were emptied and the marijuana cigarettes smoked. It was time. The ashes, the bubble bath and the Kool-Aid were spread on the waters of the Pacific Ocean and Harvey Milk was gone.

Milk was not a stranger to direct physical threats, but it was this unspoken threat, sparked by the news of the Jonestown tragedy that motivated him to finalize the business of his life. Milk firmly believed that Jim Jones was plotting to murder him. His final statement was not the "No! No!" that he reportedly screamed when he saw Dan White's revolver, but a summation of his actions in the last week of his life. Though his assassin approached from an unexpected angle, Milk's theory that Jones would kill him holds up well under close scrutiny. For months after the assassination, his sentiments were echoed in the predominant graffiti on Castro Street, "Who Killed Harvey Milk?"



Daniel James White

Dan White was born into a large Irish Catholic family that moved to an area of San Francisco located about two miles south of the Castro Street District. This ultra-conservative Catholic neighborhood produced most of the City's police and firemen; Dan White would become both. Despite the liberal, even radical, influence of San Francisco, White remained the stereotyped image of a conservative, clean-cut, All-American boy. Fiercely competitive and so serious minded as to totally lack a sense of humor, White would be elected captain of the Woodrow Wilson High School baseball and football teams. According to a probation report, White used his skill as a Golden Gloves amateur boxer, on at least one occasion, to assault Black teenagers who were integrating the student body of his high school in the early 1960's. Even at this early age, Dan White was a self-appointed spokesman for his race; he had every intention of living up to his surname.

Following his high school graduation White enlisted in the Army on the last day of 1964. As a paratrooper with the 173rd Airborne Division, he was sent to Vietnam in July of 1965. Though he spent much of his tour of duty in the relative peace of Saigon his service in Vietnam earned him a promotion to sergeant and three medals. He was honorably discharged from Fort Bragg, North Carolina in 1967.

White returned to San Francisco where, after an unsuccessful short stay at City College he joined the San Francisco Police Department and arranged to be assigned to the Ingleside Station in his old neighborhood. He was a tough police officer who exemplified the rigid behavior pattern that psychiatrists recognize as an occupational hazard of police work, a condition they describe as the "Wyatt Earp Syndrome. Twice, White received a "Captain's Commendation;" in both cases for his capture of suspected felons after a dangerous high-speed car chase. Regardless of his motivations, White often risked his own life in the pursuit of his work, first in the army, then as a policeman, later as a fireman then possibly later still as a politician. White was a policeman's policeman, voted most valuable player in.the 1971 law enforcement softball tournament, coached by his St. Elizabeth grammar schoolmate, homicide inspector Frank Falzon. Falzon and White were also the shortstop and second baseman respectively on the state championship police baseball team. It was Falzon who would later book White for the murder of Moscone and Milk.

Dan White lived more comfortably than his salary should have allowed. He sold his $8,000 Jaguar sports car and purchased a $15,000 Porsche that he drove daily over the Golden Gate Bridge from his new home, a fashionable houseboat in Sausalito. Things had never been better in White's life, which makes the unexplained happenings in 1972 all the more suspicious. White was granted a leave of absence from the police department. He gave up his houseboat, sold his car and even gave away some of his personal possessions to embark on a cross-country hitchhiking trip that since has been referred to as White's "missing year." During 1972, White traveled alone and had little or no communication with his family or friends in San Francisco; no one really knew where he was. There are no records of his trip. He never bought a travel ticket or used a credit card. According to White, he followed in the footsteps of his hero, author Jack London, and visited Alaska where he said he worked for a time as a security guard. He returned to San Francisco but, for some unknown reason, did not resume his position in the police force. Instead he became a fireman assigned to the Moscow Street fire station.

Conspiratorialists have theorized that White spent his missing year in an MK ULTRA assassin training school. The project, which was largely under the control of Jim Jones, could have programmed White as it has been accused of programming Lee Harvey Oswald and others. "Programming" is a strong word. Actually, the process might well have been as simple as planting a hypnotic suggestion, that when triggered by a predetermined code word or phrase, would render the subject in a trance. He would then walk through the assassination, someone else would fire the fatal shot but he would remain as the scapegoat who couldn't honestly remember what had happened during the killing. Certainly, if White was involved in the MK ULTRA project, it will remain a closely guarded secret for decades to come, but it would explain why White, who might have been honed to a hair trigger, could no longer be trusted in uniform with a gun. Six years later, Moscone and Milk would be murdered.

Dan White married Mary Ann Burns, a fireman's daughter, and the newlyweds purchased a $70,000 home that they intended to pay for with his salary as a fireman and her salary as a schoolteacher.

A co-worker, Michael Mulesky, later recalled his association with Dan White. "You could always depend on him. He never really got excited or nervous."[132] Mulesky's opinion was unique as every other person who knew Dan White viewed him as impulsive, ill tempered, and childish. Though he often threw embarassing tantrums when he didn't get his way, White's service record in the fire department was unblemished. In 1977, he was cited for heroism after saving two children from a burning house. Four days before Moscone and Milk were killed, White was scheduled to receive a second award for rescuing a mother and child from a high- rise fire but was too busy to attend the presentation. Following White's arrest, Fire Chief Andrew Casper said, "The man still deserves the award and, we'll do it discreetly and as best we can.[133]

The 1977 elections marked a distinct shift in power from the wealthy real estate developers, who had controlled the city-wide election of supervisors to the neighborhood groups, who could now select local leaders in district elections. Under the new system, the real estate developers were able to maintain a slim majority on the Board of Supervisors but they lost some of their political power base with the election of such local advocates as Harvey Milk. The 1977 elections changed little as the wealthy conservatives still remained in power through their supported candidates like Dianne Feinstein and their puppet, Dan White.

"Unite and Fight for Dan White" was the slogan of what might best be termed an angry campaign for a seat on the Board of Supervisors. White's campaign literature best describes his politics:


I am not going to be forced out of San Francisco by splinter groups of radicals, social deviates and incorrigibles. You must realize there are
thousands upon thousands of frustrated angry people such as yourselves waiting to unleash a fury that can and will eradicate the malignancies which blight our beautiful city.[134]


White would later privately confide to board colleague Harvey Milk that his comments on "social deviates and incorrigibles" referred to drug addicts but the voters in his ultra-conservative District 8 took him to mean the gays who had taken over the Castro Street District, only two miles from their neighborhood.

Most of White's campaign supporters were police and fire personnel, who canvassed District 8 door-to-door. White reportedly bullied his opponents in the election, even hiring youth gangs to disrupt their rallies. On one occasion a group of Nazis, in full dress uniform complete with "Unite and Fight for Dan White" buttons, posed a threatening appearance at a district meeting. When White's opponent asked him to have the Nazis removed from the meeting, "Gentle Dan," (as the Nazis called him) refused. White's intimidation tactics were successful. He won the election.

During the formal inauguration, each new board member made an introductory statement. White used his time to pay tribute to his Irish grandmother. The impression was that of an athlete, who after scoring the winning goal, looks into the television cameras to say, "Hi Mom!" In Harvey Milk's introduction, he said, "A true function of politics is not just to pass laws, but to give hope." In a harsh response that would set the tone for their political relationship, Supervisor Dianne Feinstein said, "Hope is fine, but you can't live on hope. The name of the game is six votes.[135]

Six votes was the majority on the Board of Supervisors and Feinstein quickly established that she and her real estate supporters had control when she was elected Board President by a 6 to 5 vote. White voted for Feinstein, while Milk voted against her. In the coming year, most of the major issues confronting the board were decided by a six to five vote in favor of Feinstein and White. Dianne Feinstein was a product of "old city politics." A conservative with the facade of a liberal, she earned a reputation with the press as a "limousine liberal." Harvey Milk's opinion of Feinstein was not as kind, he called her "The Wicked Witch of the West."

Like the other newly elected supervisors, Dan White hosted post-campaign fund-raising dinners to help defray expenses. Labor leader Stan Smith attended one such benefit. A huge American flag hung from a balcony overhead. The theme from "Rocky," a powerfully dramatic piece of music, heralded the appearance of White, who marched in a stiff, military manner back and forth on the balcony. Smith's dinner companion made the comment,


I'm not sure whether he thinks he's George Patton or Adolph Hitler, but he sure makes me nervous... There's something wrong with that man.
He's wound up too tight. Something is wrong.[136]


Her first impression of Dan White was reinforced when she had the opportunity to speak with him personally, "He responded like he was programmed. He was like a spring ready to go off.[137]

Intelligence was not one of Dan White's attributes. It has been said that he could be easily manipulated by anyone whose argument included the words, "God" and "country." White was a puppet of the real estate developers who first suggested that he run for office and Dianne Feinstein who secured her sixth vote by befriending the political novice as his mother mentor. White was so naive that he was not aware the city charter prohibited elected officials from holding municipal jobs. Much to his surprise, he was told to resign his $18,000 a year job as a fireman. His wife was pregnant with their first child and not working. White soon realized that he could not support his family on the meager $9,600 a year salary paid a city supervisor. He needed financial help and Dianne Feinstein came to his aid and sealed his fate.

Feinstein introduced White to one of her real estate developer friends, Warren Simmons, who was planning a shopping complex on Fisherman's Wharf, the city's most popular tourist attraction. The development, dubbed, "Pier 39," was very controversial from the start. The local news media, in article after article, accused city officials of using their public offices to favor the privately owned development with gifts of city-owned building materials and scandalously low tax assessments. On the Board of Supervisors, it was Dan White who lead the fight for lower business tax assessments in general that, in retrospect, benefitted Pier 39 and Warren Simmons. Press accusations escalated when several city supervisors, commissioners and other officials received lucrative business concessions in the Pier 39 development. Dan White's reward was a small shop that he saw as a way out of his financial difficulties. His new business sold baked potatoes, French fried potatoes, and fried potato skins to the thousands of tourists that passed by every day. A very popular and conceivably profitable hors d'oeuvre, White's stock in trade prompted him to name his shop, "The Hot Potato" but considering the trouble it got him into with the FBI, he might have more aptly named it, "The Proverbial Hot Potato."

In the November 1978 election, the only district in San Francisco to approve Briggs Proposition 6 was White's conservative District 8. In what would become the ultimate irony, White also supported Briggs' successful Proposition 7 calling for an automatic death penalty for anyone who killed a public official in the course of his duty. Moscone and Milk presented the foremost opposition to the bill but, despite their efforts, it passed into law. The first person tried under the new law would be Dan White.

On November 10, 1978, White submitted a letter of resignation to the mayor, citing financial difficulties in supporting his family on a supervisor's salary. His new business needed his attention and, as evidenced by his action, was more profitable than his job at City Hall. Moscone accepted White's resignation effective immediately. On November 15, 1978, the afternoon that Congressman Leo Ran arrived in Georgetown, Guyana on his congressional investigation into Jonestown, Dan White emerged from a meeting with the Police Officers Association and the Coldwell Banker real estate firm to announce that he wanted his job back. He denied reports that the police department had pressured him to reconsider his resignation, but did say, "A few people from real estate firms have talked to me"[138] Mayor Moscone returned White's letter of resignation and told reporters, "As far as I am concerned, Dan White is the supervisor from District 8... A man has a right to"[139] change his mind. Moscone soon reversed his decision to reinstate White. Some say it was due to pressure from Supervisor Harvey Milk, who reminded Moscone that, if a liberal were to be appointed to serve the balance of White's term in office, Dianne Feinstein and the conservatives would lose their majority on the board. The newspapers reported that it was San Francisco's Chief Deputy Attorney, Tom Toomey, who spearheaded opposition to White's reappointment. Toomey called for a one week delay while his office reviewed the legal question of reinstatement. During that same week delay, San Francisco received news of Jonestown. The death toll increased with each progressive day until the grand total was reached on the same day that Tom Toomey presented the Mayor with twelve page legal report that read, in part,


San Francisco city charter does not provide for the withdrawal of a resignation once accomplished. As long as there is a legal
uncertainty, we don't think White should vote on the board.[140]

Based on the city attorney's report, Mayor Moscone announced to the press, "I want to make it clear I no longer feel duty-bound to appoint Dan White. This will be a three-year appointment and I want someone with roots in District 8."[141]. Moscone also said he would announce his decision the following Monday, November 27, 1978, at 10 A.M. Through it all, the only board member to publicly support White's request for reappointment was Dianne Feinstein. She was trying to was protect her sixth vote.

[FONT=Verdana]On Sunday evening at about 7:30 P.M., Mary Ann White returned home from an unexplained trip to Nebraska to find her hu...