Was Jonestown a CIA medical experiment?

[Jan Klimkowski]

In a revised version of his article, Jim Hougan has made a major contribution to our understanding of CIA control of events in Jonestown. It wasn't just Dwyer....

I.3 THE NOIWON ALERT


As Dr. Mootoo's evidence established, most of the people at Jonestown were murdered. How is it, then, that Jonestown has become synonymous with "mass suicide"? An "After Action Report" of the Joint Chiefs of Staff helps to establish the chronology of the myth.
According to the Pentagon, which took responsibility for transporting the dead back to the United States, the National Military Command Center (NMCC) was first notified of an incident in Guyana at 7:18 P.M. on Saturday, November 18. [23] This information, apparently based upon the reports brought back from Port Kaituma by the escaping small plane, was that Congressman Ryan had been shot at the jungle airstrip. [24]
At 8:15 P.M., a Department of Defense MEDEVAC was requested by the State Department. Its mission: to evacuate the wounded from Port Kaituma, and to return the bodies of those who had been killed at the airstrip.
At 8:49 P.M., the State department relayed a request from the Prime Minister of Guyana, Forbes Burnham, asking that a pathologist accompany the MEDEVAC. Why Burnham should have requested a pathologist from the U.S. is uncertain. The information available to him at the time would seem to have been restricted to the news that Congressman Ryan and others had been ambushed by small-arms fire.
Six hours later, at 3:04 A.M. on November 19, the C-141 MEDEVAC left Charleston, N.C., bound for Guyana.
Barely 25 minutes afterward, at 3:29 A.M., the JCS chronology indicates that "CIA NOIWON reports mass suicides at Jonestown." [25]
All entries in the JCS chronology are Eastern Standard Time. In Guyana, however, it was one hour and fifteen minutes later than in Washington, D.C.---which means that the CIA notified the Defense Department of the "mass suicides" at 4:44 A.M. (Guyana-time).
But how did they know?
How did the CIA know that anyone was dead in Jonestown---let alone so many as to justify the notion of "mass suicides"? And how could the CIA be so mistakenly certain of the manner in which the dead had died: that is to say, suicide rather than murder?
Somehow, the Agency learned of the mass deaths while it was still dark, hours before the Guyanese Defense Forces arrived at the commune. According to the "narrative summary" of the JCS report:

At approximately 1800 that same evening (November 18), Reverend James Warren Jones, the founder and leader of the Peoples Temple cult, held a meeting of all members. He convinced them that they and their children would have to die. The members of the cult lined up and began receiving a poison drink. Guards were stationed around the compound to insure that no one left the camp..." [26]


But how did they know?
This has been a mystery for than 25 years. Until recently, I was of the opinion that the Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy, Richard Dwyer, had returned to Jonestown after the ambush at Port Kaituma. What made me think so was an excerpt from the so-called "Last Tape" that Jim Jones made, while sitting on the dais at the pavillion in Jonestown, cajoling his followers to kill themselves. [27] Against a background of wailing and screams, we hear the following: one hears
JONES: "And what comes, folks, what comes now?"
UNMAN [28] [in background]: "Everybody...hold it! Sit down right here..." [loud background noises, agitated]
JONES: "Say peace, say peace, say peace, say peace...what comes, don't let...take Dwyer on down to the middle (?) of the East House. Take Dwyer on down."
UNWOMAN: "Everybody be quiet, please!"
UNMAN: "Show you got some respect for our lives." [29]
UNMAN: "Let me sit down, sit down, sit down."
JONES: "I know... (Jones begins to hum, or keen.) "I tried so very very hard... Get Dwyer out of here before something happens to him."
UNMAN: "Jjara?"
JONES: "I'm not talking about Jjara, I said Dwyer."
The tape is anything but indistinct, and there would seem to be only one way of making sense out of it. Dwyer, however, always denied that he returned to Jonestown that night---and one would like to believe him.
But there has always been reason to doubt Dwyer's veracity (though not his courage---he behaved heroically at the Port Kaituma airstrip). According to Dr. Julius Mader, an East German academician with ties to the Stasi intelligence service, Dwyer was actually a CIA officer. [30] This opinion would appear to have been based on analysis of Dwyer's background, which included his enlistment in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, followed by service in the fly-blown capitals of Syria, Egypt, Bulgaria and Chad.
In other words, Dwyer looked like a spook. And Mader wasn't the only one who thought so. Kit Nascimento, Guyana's Minister of Information at the time, has stated flatly that Richard Dwyer was the CIA's Chief of Station in Guyana when the Jonestown massacre occurred.
But Mader and Nascimento were mistaken.
The real CIA station chief was a colleague of Dwyer's who worked with him under State Department cover in the American embassy. Upon learning of the ambush at Port Kaituma, and of the deaths of two children and their mother at the Temple's Georgetown headquarters, it was this person who got on the radio---and stayed on the radio into the early morning hours of the next day. [31] Desperate for information, he eventually tuned in a transmission from the police station at Matthews Ridge, a few miles from Jonestown. The man at the other end was Odell Rhodes, who'd just escaped from the settlement. It was Rhodes who got out the news that Jonestown was devouring itself.

......

23. "Guyana Operations," After-Action Report, 18-27 November, 1978, prepared by the Special Study Group, Operations Directorate, USMC Directorate, Joint Chiefs of Staff (distributed 31 January, 1979). All times are taken from Appendix B, "Chronology of Events." Click here to return.

24. Ibid. Click here to return.

25. Ibid. The JCS chronology cites the following reference: "CIA 191138Z Nov 78". NOIWON is the National Operations and Intelligence Watch Officers Network. Click here to return.

26. Ibid., p. 6. Click here to return.

27. The tape was obtained from the FBI under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). I've quoted from the FBI's transcript of that tape. Click here to return.

28. "Unman" = Unidentified Man. Click here to return.

29. On the tape-recording that I have, it appears that this is actually Jones's voice, and that he says, "Keep Dwyer alive!" and then adds, "Sit down, sit down, sit down." Click here to return.

30. Mader is the author of Who's Who in the CIA. It's in that book that Dwyer is named as a CIA officer. Click here to return.

31. Because of the circumstances under which I learned of his identity, I am awaiting the former Chief of Station's permission to make his identity known. C

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