Was Jonestown a CIA medical experiment?

[Jan Klimkowski]

Jim Jones and the People’s Temple in Indianapolis

as above

[This caught my eye because I thought I remembered a reference in Albarelli to an MK-Ultra experiment run in Indianapolis. I can't quickly find the reference, but I'm still reading and digesting the sizable tome. -- EJ]

Pages 153-154 of Albarelli note the history and memoranda surrounding the use of Eli Lilly and Company of Indiana were, as early as October 1954, working with the technical services to be an alternative, in-country source for LSD for the CIA's MK-Ultra "in tonnage quantities". Page 154 notes Lilly's intent to study the effects of LSD "via the electroencephalographic techniques....".

Hmm - back in the 1950s, this means sticking electrodes into living brains to measure EEG patterns.

The abstract below is from 1965, and is experimentation on cats.

Behavioral and electroencephalographic effects of LSD
Z. P. Horovitz, M. I. Mulroy, T. Waldron, R. Leaf
Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences
Volume 54, Issue 1, pages 108–110, January 1965
Abstract
D-Lysergic acid diethylamide tartrate (LSD) was evaluated in cats with permanently implanted electrodes for effects on behavior-EEG correlations and on rates of responding for electrical stimulation to the lateral hypothalamus (self-stimulation) and responding for milk reward. Doses of 10 and 15 mcg./Kg. of LSD intraperitoneally increased responding for lateral hypothalamic self-stimulation, stimulated observable behavior, and caused a low-voltage fast cortical EEG to predominate. A dose of 25 mcg./Kg. of LSD produced slight decreases in self-stimulation responding. It also caused disorientation, howling, and periodic pacing and staring. This behavior was associated with a change in EEG pattern toward a slow-wave high-voltage response.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.10...5/abstract

This one is 1955, and is experimentation on rabbits, and probably extrapolated only to human behaviour:

Journal of Nervous & Mental Disease:
November 1955 - Volume 122 - Issue 5 - ppg 424-432
ORIGINAL ARTICLE: PDF Only
The Cerebral Electrographic Changes Induced By Lsd and Mescaline Are Corrected By Frenquel

First page of paper can be seen at link below:

http://journals.lww.com/jonmd/Citation/1...Lsd.2.aspx

However, even if electrodes haven't been stuck in living human brains, this paper reveals mescaline and LSD clearly have been given to humans who have then been studied by doctors. Also, the references at the end of the first paragraph suggests EEG measurements have been made on living human brains.

The young Reverend Jim Jones kept monkeys and worked in black communities.

I've long suspected the monkeys were used in experimentation - maybe directly by Jones, or maybe as cast offs from laboratory experimentation. However, as the later history of the People's Temple and Jonestown clearly demonstrates, Jones regarded his black flock as experimental subjects. Maybe he started experimenting much earlier than previously expected.

A man of the cloth working with poor blacks would have perfect cover for Tuskegee type covert experimentation. Ie the Tuskegee MO: pretend you're offering medical treatment when in fact you're running a secret experiment on your subjects.

Also, at Jonestown, secret medical records of each subject were meticulously kept and ID wristbands were worn:

At the scene, bodies were stripped of identification, including the medical wrist tags visible in many early photos.

According to survivors' reports, they entered a virtual slave
labor camp. Worked for 16 to 18 hours daily, they were forced to
live in cramped quarters on minimum rations, usually rice, bread
and sometimes rancid meat. Kept on a schedule of physical and
mental exhaustion, they were also forced to stay awake at night
and listen to lectures by Jones. Threats and abuse became more
common.[159] The camp medical staff under Dr. Lawrence Schacht was
known to perform painful suturing without anaesthetic. They
administered drugs, and kept daily medical records.[160]
Infractions of the rules or disloyalty led to increasingly harsh
punishments, including forced drugging, sensory isolation in an
underground box, physical torture and public sexual rape and
humiliation. Beatings and verbal abuse were commonplace. Only the
special guards were treated humanely and fed decently.[161]

On the scene at Jonestown, Guyanese troops discovered a large
cache of drugs, enough to drug the entire population of
Georgetown, Guyana (well over 200,000)[177] for more than a year.
According to survivors, these were being used regularly "to
control" a population of only 1,100 people.[178] One footlocker
contained 11,000 doses of thorazine, a dangerous tranquilizer.
Drugs used in the testing for MK-ULTRA were found in abundance,
including sodium pentathol (a truth serum), chloral hydrate (a
hypnotic), demerol, thalium (confuses thinking), and many
others.[179] Schacht had supplies of haliopareael and largatil as
well, two other major tranquilizers.[180] The actual description
of life at Jonestown is that of a tightly run concentration camp,
complete with medical and psychiatric experimentation. The
stresses and isolation of the victims is typical of sophisticated
brainwashing techniques. The drugs and special tortures add an
additional experimental aspect to the horror.[181] This more
clearly explains the medical tags on the bodies, and why they had
to be removed. It also suggests an additional motive for
frustrating any chemical autopsies, since these drugs would have
been found in the system of the dead.

Note also the presence of orphans in the California People's Temple. Orphans were frequently used as human guinea pigs in covert experimentation:

With his new wealth, Jones was able to travel to California and
establish the first People's Temple in Ukiah, California, in 1965.
Guarded by dogs, electric fences and guard towers, he set up Happy
Havens Rest Home.[98] Despite a lack of trained personnel, or
proper licensing, Jones drew in many people at the camp. He had
elderly, prisoners, people from psychiatric institutions, and 150
foster children, often transferred to care at Happy Havens by
court orders.[99] He was contacted there by Christian missionaries
from World Vision, an international evangelical order that had
done espionage work for the CIA in Southeast Asia.[100] He met
"influential" members of the community and was befriended by
Walter Heady, the head of the local chapter of the John Birch
Society.[101]

All these excerpts above are from John Judge's "The Black Hole of Guyana: The Untold Story of the Jonestown Massacre".

See also:

The (People's) Temple also used electroshock treatments to modify the behavior of the children entrusted to their care. In a locked room of the San Francisco Temple was a machine that only the children to be disciplined and an attending nurse were allowed to see. The machine was named "The Blue-Eyed Monster" though later reports referred to it as "The Blue-Eyed Demon". Some said this Aryan devil was a simple cattle prod, others claimed it was a heart defibrulator or the shock treatment machine the Temple had acquired from Mendocino State Hospital. Few children would describe the apparatus; but those who did said it was a scaled-down version of an executioner's electric chair. The child was strapped into the metal chair and electrodes were attached to various parts of his or her body. Though the machine itself was hidden from the general adult congregation, Jones would call out the names of those children to be disciplined and they would be taken into the Blue-Eyed Monster's den. A microphone, attached to the public address system, was placed in the room. The general congregation heard no noises from the machine only the screams of the children attached to it. The child emerged from the room and ran to Jim Jones; grovelling at his feet to say "Thank you - Thank you" in robot-like repetition.

Later, in Jonestown, the physical beating and shock treatments of the Temple children were replaced with sheer terror in the form of "Big Foot"; a monster that Jones told them lived in a shallow well on the outskirts of the jungle community. Children who misbehaved were lowered into the well, where, unknown to them, adults were hiding in the darkness. The adults made animal sounds and grabbed at the child's dangling legs in a feigned attempt to pull him into the abyss.

[p388-9, Was Jonestown a CIA Medical Experiment?, Michael Meiers]

[Charles Drago]

Hmm - back in the 1950s, this means sticking electrodes into living brains to measure EEG patterns.

Jan,

If it is warranted to conclude that, at any given point in the 20th and 21st centuries (at least), publicly acknowledged technology lags at least twenty years -- if not much, much longer -- behind repressed technology, then might mind control techniques in the 1950s have been far more sophisticated than electrode pokes?

[Jan Klimkowski]

Hmm - back in the 1950s, this means sticking electrodes into living brains to measure EEG patterns.

Jan,

If it is warranted to conclude that, at any given point in the 20th and 21st centuries (at least), publicly acknowledged technology lags at least twenty years -- if not much, much longer -- behind repressed technology, then might mind control techniques in the 1950s have been far more sophisticated than electrode pokes?

Charles - yes. And I share your working assumption that covert (deep black) science is frequently 20 years or more ahead of overt science.

However, whenever I've conducted original investigative research into medical experimentation - whether it be techniques to sterilize humans or trial mind influencing drugs or whatever - I've found that the medical journals of the 1940s to early 1960s frequently contain frank and full details of nonconsensual, unethical and callous human experimentation.

For instance, papers about the experiments of MK-ULTRA electrode and lobotomization specialist Robert G Heath at Tulane routinely contain much gruesome detail.

My considered judgement is that, in the 1940s-early 60s period, it was assumed that scientific papers in medical journals were only going to be read by other medical professionals. Also the notion of "informed consent" was not well developed. Doctors did pretty much what they liked, assumed consent, and assumed what they did was legitimate.

This arrogant attitude is clearly apparent in the writings of such as Ewen Cameron, President of the Canadian, American and World Psychiatric Associations, the American Psychopathological Association and the Society of Biological Psychiatry. And MK-ULTRA electroshock maniac.

By the early to mid-60s, pesky investigative journalists started blowing the whistle on unethical and abusive human experimentation - see eg the SDS and journalistic expose of Jolly West and Gov Reagan's "let's do psychosurgery on blacks in a disused missile base" proposal.

It is also my considered judgement that this increased oversight led to the deliberate use, by intelligence agencies in particular, of three population groups in covert human experimentation: prisoners, orphans and cult members.

NB Soldiers have always been used as human guinea pigs.

i) Prisoners have always been considered expendable, with little access to "respectable news outlets" and unlikely to be believed anyway.

ii) Orphans have noone in loco parentis to protect them. Or rather they are unfortunate enough to have The Man in loco parentis.

iii) Ultimately though, cults were the perfect plausibly deniable solution for major covert human experimentation. The Symbionese Liberation Army were led by convict Donald DeFreeze, who received his Phoenix Program treatment at Vacaville. The People's Temple were given custody of orphans, and recruited ex-prisoners and poor blacks.

On the specific issue of measuring brainwaves and EEG, even allowing for the 20-year covert science lead, I doubt it would have been possible to do this in a non-intrusive fashion in the 1950s. However, I may be wrong.

The wiki EEG article contains some details of the history:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eeg

In 1947, The American EEG Society was founded and the first International EEG congress was held. In 1953 Aserinsky and Kleitman describe REM sleep.

[Charles Drago]

Thank you, Jan. I continue to find both your expertise and your generous sharing of it to be, well, extraordinary.

[Jan Klimkowski]

Thank you, Jan. I continue to find both your expertise and your generous sharing of it to be, well, extraordinary.

Charles - thank you. The respect is, of course, mutual.

The medical journals often reveal information whose importance only later becomes clear eg:

- foundation grants which reveal areas of covert interest when the foundation is later outed as a cutout. Eg research into trance and dissociative states is almost entirely spook-funded;

- location of researchers. For instance, I discovered that when a new, highly experimental, chemical form of sterilization was being moved (unethically) from rats to humans, one of the key field researchers was given a 2-year secondment to Indonesia under the military junta. No research papers were published, but local activists who I spoke with reported mobile military sterilization units travelling from village to village in areas of the worst represssion, such as East Timor. A few years later, a paper was written about the use of a revised chemical sterilizant in India and Bangladesh. Presumably the mutilated East Timorese women, with their chemically burnt fallopian tubes, were the first victims of the orignal chemical concoction. Their suffering preserved in covert human data sets, which could not be published in medical journals, but were known to the key players determined to develop and use chemical sterilzants on humans in field conditions;

- named authors on papers, and footnotes thanking fellow researchers, can also be important in establishing reserach nexuses. Who is speaking with whom? This is one of the key ways in which covert (deep black) research networks have been outed by investigative journalists. Cf symposia of scientists in a particular research area.

[Jan Klimkowski]

An important audio record. The video below contains a 7 minute portion of a press interview given in 1980 by Joe Holsinger, who was the legislative aide to Congressman Leo Ryan.

Ryan was murdered at Jonestown.

Although the video has imagery of Jim Jones and the Jonestown victims, the voice throughout is that of Joe Holsinger.

[Jan Klimkowski]

The bard John Judge rapping about his Jonestown investigation.

WARNING: there are graphic photos of corpses of the Jonestown victims in the archive footage accompanying the audio of John Judge.

[Lauren Johnson]

An important audio record. The video below contains a 7 minute portion of a press interview given in 1980 by Joe Holsinger, who was the legislative aide to Congressman Leo Ryan.

Ryan was murdered at Jonestown.

Although the video has imagery of Jim Jones and the Jonestown victims, the voice throughout is that of Joe Holsinger.

Listening to this interview, I realize that as ineffective as the press was at the time of Johnstown, we could not have the kind of ponted questioning of the reporters. They are actually attempting to be journalists.

This interview is, from the point of view of journalism, is an artifact of history -- a curiosity that could inspire the Coen brothers, the Leni Riefenstahls of the age, to make yet another pointless film. Bring back Javier Bardem as Jim Jones. Make it something along the lines of Burn After Reading.

CIA Superior: What did we learn, Palmer?
CIA Officer: I don't know, sir.
CIA Superior: I don't fuckin' know either. I guess we learned not to do it again.
CIA Officer: Yes, sir.
CIA Superior: I'm fucked if I know what we did.
CIA Officer: Yes, sir, it's, uh, hard to say
CIA Superior: Jesus Fucking Christ.

[Anthony Thorne]

I borrowed the Meiers book via interlibrary loan here in Australia (total copies available throughout the country - one) and photocopied it in its entirety for personal reference a few months back. It's a remarkable volume and really needs to be read and dissected by more researchers. The lengthy section where Meiers deals with the involvement of Mark Lane is particularly eye-opening. Jonestown is a deep event if there ever was one, and it would be quite something to read the full story of the event via some unredacted secret internal CIA report that put the whole event into context - not that such a report will ever appear. The Meiers book is the next best thing though and it's another chapter of America's deeply bizarre and sinister secret history.

[Jan Klimkowski]

I borrowed the Meiers book via interlibrary loan here in Australia (total copies available throughout the country - one) and photocopied it in its entirety for personal reference a few months back. It's a remarkable volume and really needs to be read and dissected by more researchers. The lengthy section where Meiers deals with the involvement of Mark Lane is particularly eye-opening. Jonestown is a deep event if there ever was one, and it would be quite something to read the full story of the event via some unredacted secret internal CIA report that put the whole event into context - not that such a report will ever appear. The Meiers book is the next best thing though and it's another chapter of America's deeply bizarre and sinister secret history.

I agree.

I have a hard copy and tried to contact Meiers more than a decade ago, but his publisher claimed to have no contact or forwarding details for him.

Joe Holsinger - see my post of his 1980 interview above - was a major source of Meiers. A major source and possibly more.