Word: jonestown
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Dates: during 1978-1978
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These examples of the Rev. Jim Jones' paranoia and delusions surfaced last week in a 215-page manuscript that was made public by former temple member Jeannie Mills in San Francisco and in further interviews in Guyana with stunned survivors of the mass suicide at Jonestown...
...several survivors, including Tim Carter, a Jones lieutenant, say his complaints were lies. The result of the autopsy conducted by Guyanese officials on Jones has not been released. But Guyanese-born Dr. Hardat A. Sukhdeo, deputy chairman of clinical psychiatric services at New Jersey Medical School, who flew to Jonestown to help counsel survivors, says the report shows no evidence of disease. Says Dr. Sukhdeo: "The complaints were all part of Jones' progressively suicidal depression." According to survivors, Jones regularly dosed himself with tranquilizers and painkillers, including Valium and morphine sulphate. Tim Carter told Dr. Sukhdeo that the night...
...would move his cult to the Soviet Union. A delegation from the commune talked twice with Feodor Timofeyev, the Soviet press attache in Georgetown, about a possible move, but a memo of that meeting shows the Russians offered little encouragement. Russian consular officials and a Russian doctor also visited Jonestown, which was the object of a favorable report by Tass. In the past few months, Russian language classes were held at the commune. Members had to recite Russian phrases, like "good morning," before receiving their rice-and-gravy meals...
Despite their dubious and sometimes deadly activities, the cults have remained pretty much outside the law. Evidence emerged last week that the U.S. State Department had been given ample warning of the impending catastrophe at Jonestown but had not acted decisively. Deborah Layton Blakey, sister of Larry Layton, the commune's alleged executioner, sent the department an eleven-page statement detailing Jones' paranoia and brutality, the suicide drills, the weapons present in the camp, the malnutrition and sickness that were rampant, and the state of fear in which most of the inhabitants lived. She claims that the commune...
...their defense, State Department officials contend that there was little they could do about Jonestown because no residents complained about conditions there. Law enforcement agencies are reluctant to tangle with groups that can claim the protection of the U.S. Constitution's provision on religious freedom, and in recent years the courts have expanded this protection. At the same time, partly because of abuses by some agents during the Watergate era, the FBI has been sharply restricted in its undercover activities. FBI agents argue that the only way they could have found out what was happening in Jonestown...