Framed: America's Patsy Tradition    

(www.jonestown.com)

 No one ever questioned who ordered the assassination of Congressman Leo Ryan as he departed from the notorious Jonestown. “Jim Jones ordered…” was all the public needed to hear. “Bizarre cult” assassinates Congressman, then lurches into a macabre orgy of suicide and murder at the command of their deranged leader, Jim Jones. Stop the investigation! No need. We already got “the story.”

Finally, after twenty years, one brave soul steps forward with the truth. Her name is Laurie Efrein Kahalas, and she is the survivor from Peoples Temple who rescued the entire archives from the church headquarters in San Francisco following the tragedy. Her job had been to counter the smear campaign by government-orchestrated reporters who had never visited Jonestown yet refused to print glowing reviews. She and a tiny on-site staff also had to counter the government plants who had left the group, their highly-placed handlers, and the tiniest handful of “aggrieved ex-members” who signed what they were told to sign, and said what they were told to say. It was a nightmare of smears, persecution, harassment by government agencies, continual threats to send in mercenaries and one actual mercenary attack.

Jonestown was lavishly praised by visiting doctors, educators, Guyanese cabinet ministers, and relatives of residents. It was “a dream come true” for most people there – no drugs, crime, racism, unemployment, substandard housing, education or medical care that plague the inner cities of the United States. The great majority were happy, and fiercely loyal to their magnificent breakaway from conditions Stateside. All they wanted was to build in peace.

Although it is many steps from a smear campaign to the claim that Jim Jones was FRAMED for the murder of Congressman Leo Ryan, all those steps are being filled in with documentary evidence. Ryan was killed by a C.I.A. hit team, NOT connected with Jonestown in any way. Ryan and the C.I.A. had an ongoing hatefest. The C.I.A. also had a war with Jim Jones. At the time of the Jonestown Tragedy, the entire community of Jonestown was actively planning to relocate to Russia during the Cold War.

Congressman Ryan had been lined up for this an entire year before it happened. Ex-member right wing zealot named Timothy Stoen lined up C.I.A. nemesis Leo Ryan to “investigate” knowingly false and volatile charges against the community. Stoen took the lies and smears of two vain young women, Yulanda Crawford and Deborah Layton, as “proof” that Jonestown was a “concentration camp,” and won over Leo Ryan with his knowingly false and volatile claim of paternity to Jim Jones’ own son.

Stoen repeatedly threatened to send in mercenaries, even being recorded in newspaper editorials and State Department logs. The community had sustained one previous mercenary attack a year before the tragedy happened, which was also an assassination attempt against the community’s leader, Jim Jones.

Kahalas in no way “defends mass suicide.” She sees zealotry and fanaticism on all sides, but emphasizes that the community’s attackers were intelligence agents, with political motivations: Peoples Temple was a successful role model for racial and economic equality under attack by the F.B.I., and building ties with the then-Soviet Union during the C.I.A.’s Cold War. The community’s defenders, on the other hand, were brave and committed people who risked everything to build their dream overseas and, by all reports, were succeeding.

In the middle were a thousand innocents trapped in a remote jungle, repeatedly smeared and threatened, militarily defenseless, and without even a phone to call in help. Just weeks before the tragedy, arch-enemy government agent Joseph Mazor came into the community and announced that the mercenaries’ plan had been “mass extermination,” only thwarted by the obvious contentment of the community. That had been in broad daylight, with people just going about their daily business. Now it was on the heels of an assassination, heading into the middle of the night. How much greater the peril!

It is for these reasons that Kahalas definitively sides with the community’s defenders, whatever their deadly descent into traps and frames. The reality was that the people of Jonestown were legitimately terrified for their lives from an impending military invasion when they suicided out. Several sources have now confirmed that the Green Berets were indeed into Jonestown clandestinely within five or six hours after the assassination, and they kept everyone else out for over 24 hours, including the MEDEVAC unit which came for the Congressman’s party just seven miles away. The tragedy happened the night of Saturday, November 18th, and no one was let in until Monday, November 20th.

There is documentary evidence that the community went to its death relatively peacefully (i.e. no brutalization), yet by the time the Guyanese coroner was brought in, he found “hundreds of bodies forcibly injected” and several, including Jim Jones, had their heads blown off. The last person to leave Jonestown alive told the Matthews Ridge coroner’s jury that the community had fallen completely silent for 30-45 minutes, and that then suddenly there was a chorus of cheers, and still later on gunshots. Dead people obviously cannot cheer, nor can they shoot themselves.

The bodies at Jonestown were deliberately desecrated after death. The reason? To make Jim Jones look like a brutal murderer, so no one would ever question that it was he who “ordered the assassination,” thus protect the frame. Yet it is clear from the final tape made at Jonestown, again and again (and again and again and again) that Jim Jones did not even know who fired the shots, and that he was anguished, panicked and horrified at the killings.

The film taken of the assassination by a journalist on site from NBC, reveals a sophisticated professional military formation, executed perfectly, brutally, and in complete silence, and using dum-dum bullets. This was all beyond the capabilities of anyone living at Jonestown, which was in no way, shape, or form an “armed camp.” Stoen and defector Deborah Layton said there were “hundreds of guns” at Jonestown, but both Guyanese and American authorities later found all of thirty-nine small weapons, mostly 22. caliber – barely enough to defend 1,200 people against the natural hazards of the jungle.

NO ONE EVER INVESTIGATED THIS ASSASSINATION. The reason given? That it was “obvious” that as insane cult leader was responsible for all the carnage. The public never learned that there was NO PROOF.

It was “the perfect frame’: Do away with two C.I.A. nemeses in a single night, Leo Ryan and Jim Jones. Kill one of them, then blame the killing on the other!!

The public was never told what Leo Ryan or Jim Jones had in common: Leo Ryan was the most anti-C.I.A. Congressman of his day, doing everything in his power to both investigate illegal C.I.A. operations, and to force the C.I.A. to report their covert operations to Congress (Hughes-Ryan amendment of 1974). Jim Jones was targeted by both the F.B.I. and the C.I.A., as an (allegedly) dangerous black power revolutionary with ties to the Soviet Union.

The reality was that Jonestown was a peaceful agrarian commune, with seniors who were blessed with love, acceptance, nutritious food and good health, children getting a first-class education in an environment which fostered their every talent, and young people taken from the rage of the city streets to the joy of a community that was built and nurtured by their own hands.

www.jonestown.com, the website of Laurie and Dan Kahalas, is devoted to exposing this story, based upon first-hand experience, exclusive documentation, and investigative research. You can also order her riveting memoir, “SNAKE DANCE: Unravelling the Mysteries of Jonestown” through the website, for those who want a frank and heartfelt rendition on emotional and spiritual levels, as well as a political exposé. No holds are barred!

The website has already received over a quarter million hits and climbing. Many are undoubtedly curiosity seekers, for even with its copious sourcing and logic, the story is 180 degrees from what the public has been indoctrinated to hear. Shifting the public consciousness is a formidable task, for a story that was accepted by the whole world, SANS PROOF. But Kahalas is in for the long haul.

The purpose of this piece is to alert the readers of FRAMED that there were never any legal proceedings, or evidence, or hearings, for the assassination of Congressman Leo Ryan. Evidence was manufactured, manipulated, and covered-up, even accompanied by murders of key people who could “spill the beans.” This and more is included in the pieces on the website.

Please visit www.jonestown.com. And know that this is just the beginning. The aim is a new Congressional investigation, but the pivot on which that may rest is public awareness. Its authors are deeply appreciative for all support, feedback, and efforts on their behalf.

A subsequent article on September 18, 1972, “‘’Healing’ Prophet Hailed as God at S.F. Revival,” Kinsolving claims a parishioner

“. . .in this respect, Peoples Temple resembles a cause or a social movement more than a normal church. . . . Jones’ message is that people should subordinate their personal desires in the service of their fellow human being for the greater good of humanity.

“As Jones concluded, most of the audience stood up and applauded and cheered. . . After Jones’ sermon, a ‘seniors dance’ was introduced, and more than a dozen older people, in their 60’s, 70’s and 80’s and even 90’s came up to the raised platform at the front of the church. They began to boogie to the jazz music played by a 66-year-old at the piano. . . . Several younger people joined the oldtimers, including a young white guy who looked like a vintage redneck. I must admit this scene moved me deeply. . . seeing the old people dancing was too much. Where else in our society do old people get up to entertain younger people?

“Though an energetic. . . person, his [Jim Jones’] eyes reveal fatigue, the result of a grueling work schedule and usually only about two hours of sleep a night. . . the Chronicle ran a two-page story about how Jones had collapsed from exhaustion after a Housing Authority meeting. he had not slept the previous night because he was counseling a suicidal drug addict going through withdrawal.

“What keeps him going? ‘Seeing human lives rehabilitated keep me going. . . . Why should I complain about my life? There’s nothing better to do with my life’. . . He acknowledged that he gets discouraged sometimes. But something seems to reinspire him, such as Laura Allende’s [wife of the slain Chilean leader] visit [to the church] last January. She is suffering from... cancer, yet continues to keep up a hard schedule of speeches about [Chile]. ‘That’s what keeps me going. . . I have seen sainted people that are living epistles. . . and you say to yourself, “What less can I do?”

“. . . Jones apparently tries to practice his version of Christianity. . . thoroughly. He has made his share of enemies for the political stands he has taken. . . But no one accuses Jim Jones of being a hypocrite.”

2. More contacts: Mayor Tom Bradley, Los Angeles; First Lady-to-be Roslyn Carter;

3. Excerpts from letters of praise from government, columnists, law enforcement, the religious community:

4. Handwritten note of thank you from Gay activist Harvey Milk.

5. Additional articles:

1. “Peoples Temple Attracts Heroin Addicts, Youth,” Los Angeles Sentinel, February 12, 1976;

2. “Peoples Temple: Service to Fellow Man,” The Fresno Bee, September 19, 1976.

3. “Jailing of Newsmen Protested on Coast,” The New York Times, September 11, 1976.