Father Cares: The Last of Jonestown

All the days of my life, ever since I've been born, I've never heard of me, speak like just me before, I've never heard of me, speak like just me before, and all the days of my life, ever since I've been born, I've never heard of me, speak like just me before, Father Cares, the last of Jonestown, from National Public Radio. How do you feel about your main diet tonight? I'm prepared to die for this family if I have to have these freedoms, thank you to. A story of murder and a story of suicide in the jungle of Guyana, a story told by many voices, including the voice of one who might have been there, one who survived.

In the aftermath of Jonestown, the FBI found in the jungle hundreds of tape cassettes, 900 hours of recordings made in Guyana and Southern California. James Reston, Jr., who had visited Jonestown in the days just after the tragedy, filed legal action under the Freedom of Information Act to obtain access to the tapes. Reston has now written, our father who art in hell.

This radio program is the story of the last of Jonestown, based on Reston's research for his book, including the actual tapes, the recordings of the voice of Jim Jones and the followers of People's Temple. The story ends on the night of November 18, 1978, you will not hear the actual tape from that night, the sounds of death, you will hear a reconstruction of that night. The program does contain material and language that may be offensive to some listeners. The narrative was designed by James Reston, Jr., and Noah Adams, to share the consciousness and memory of those who knew what happened in Jonestown. At the end, he would say he was born out of due time. The world not ready for his message, he was too highly evolved. His principles were too pure, his commitment too deep, his love to all embracing for

this time. For this planet consumed, if it was, with hatred and racism engraved. The most segregated institution in America is the Church of 11 o'clock on San Juan. The most racist institutions are the Churches. You can listen to the broadcast over and over, all the religious broadcasts. You can hear hate. You can just listen to the close ear or the scrutinizing mind. You can hear hate all the time, teaching people to hate one another. Perhaps father was evil decades before. Perhaps he was insincere and cruel and even beat the old from the beginning, but he was surely bold and exciting with an animal sexuality. His voice was captivating, his presence commanding, his power was overwhelming. I've got to find out who's willing to think. The truth will shit.

It's only right that I will be like I am. I want you to be like me. I don't want you to worship me. I don't want you to be like I am. I want you to become what I am. I want you to enjoy the fearlessness that I have, the courage that I have, the compassion that I have, the love that I have, the all-emcompassing mercy that I am. I want you to be what I am and something greater. I want you to give you more than I have. I want you to be greater than I am, and if you don't want to rule this route, then go to hell where you want to, but don't bother me. He rose from a silent stage in the early 70s, a passive time, and gathered, needed, passive followers. So this is their story, too. They too complicit in the crime of Jones down. He would tell them so at the end to urge them on. Father had always thought of himself as a historic figure, and therefore, knowing that everything he said was important, he recorded his descent into history.

Starting early on, when the people's temple was rising with enthusiasm in the Redwood Valley of California, when he proclaimed he was divine. And advised ways to show it. All right, thank you, because I'm going to hear, you know, and save you from the worst death I know of your throat being overdupped and having a trapeat, I mean having, I'm able to speak. You want to take away the horses that's in the morning? Now, you just begin to vomit and the cancer will unlogge. Hands clasps, hands clasps, I try, just clap your hands, I think they're the better. Just mountains, mountain, mountain, mountain, mountain, mountain, mountain, mountain, mountain, mountain. Now, just put your hand in there, and vomit, put your hand in, keep on clapping. She's putting her hand in her mouth.

She's losing. She's losing right there. Now, now I see the looses. Now it is. Now it comes. Now it comes. Spit it out. There it is. All of it's gone. Gone. All gone. There it is. The blood. Spit it out on the floor and on the hand. There it is. Now where it's broken, where that tissue. The point remains to be an awful bad taste. and that's teach you the points you want to be in all the bad case. So there it is, spit out all the blood over the hands of the honor floor. The cancer is out of control, the two received, came out of the body. Right now spit out here but there are all these stars with specific, that claim the name of Jesus Christ! Oh! A little sound, little sound, little sound, little sound. When I got through with her with my power, she was not only seeing fingers, but she told me the color of things and told me exactly everything I held in my hand.

The heating ceremonies were glorious spectacles of often rather amateurish light of hand. It was always quite open about the purpose of the ceremony. They do not want the healing of the mind. Heal my toe honey, heal my back, heal my bottom, but don't you heal my mind because my mind is too sick. Those who didn't like these displays or later the crude language left right away. Those who stayed accepted the fraudulence to receive the message, one that became a combustible mixture of sacrilegian socialism. By his own testimony, Father's spark of divinity had ignited into a great flame consuming all other gods. He said that he had come to the world under the guise of religion for the very purpose of destroying religion.

And yet many of those who had come to the people's temple from the other churches came with Christianity, and they could say, why not? In this time, why not the second coming, this time, this man? Christianity was never based on the idea of an unknown god. I'm going to cause you to know that you are what Jesus was. Jesus said that every human being was a god, that is written that you are gods. I'm a god and you're a god, and I'm a god and I'm going to stay a god until you recognize it your god, and when you recognize your god, I shall go back into principle and will not appear as a personality. But until I see all of you knowing who you are, I'm going to be very much what I am, God Almighty God. For most of those who stayed with Jim, who stayed in the people's temple, devotion was total, yet Father demanded, incessantly, expression of faith and gratitude and criticism of Jim

or the temple was blasphemy and treason. He had saved them from the sin of capitalism. Their salvation would come, tune, tune together. Under his guidance and protection, they would become dangerous and therefore important. Just remember, nothing worse than putting somebody in the corner when they've tried over and over and over to do righteousness and no one receive it. You get them in a corner, they're extremely dangerous. Extremely dangerous, aren't they? And I think you could sense the hands of these people that we are nonviolent people, but we're extremely dangerous because we've been fed up with energy and fed up with resilience.

Just remember, you don't have anything on me that I care about because everything that you have on me, I've let it all hang right out for everybody to see. Now you get worried about yourself. I don't mind losing my life, what about you? I don't mind losing my reputation, what about you? I don't mind being tortured, what about you? I'm just no longer afraid and I've lost interest in this world of capitalist sin and racism I've lost interest in it. So if somebody wants to make me stay in it by compromising with filthy minded people that cannot even have respect for somebody who would die for even his enemies and they want to cause anarchy in our midst, I would just assume bring it all to a gallant, glorious

screaming end, just bring it to a screeching stop in a one glorious moment of triumph. So you think about it. In the beginning of 1977, father was at the peak of his power. The temple had churches in San Francisco and Los Angeles as well as the Redwood Valley. The Redwood said 20,000 people they joined, with newspaper The People's Forum was reaching 600,000 people in the Bay Area and he had been named the head of San Francisco's housing authority. Jim was being praised by the mayor and the city council, even California's Lieutenant Governor. But then defectors from the people's temple, traders dead called them, started telling stories of manipulation and beatings and sexual depravities, things going on behind the closed doors. It happened almost overnight, the exodus to the South American jungle in the summer of

1977. Jim had been worried, a magazine article was being written about the temple. More rumors from the defectors, he tried to get the article stopped and failed and decided then to take his people to the temple's mission in Guyana, established three years before the exodus had always been in his mind. Leaving California was exciting, fathers said his people were persecuted and chosen. He talked about the care of ends of the Mormons, the long march of the Chinese communists. They were pilgrims on a quest for enlightenment and safety. But father was on a different quest. He wanted his people to follow him into the jungle, to be alone with the night and his voice. The sanctuary was in the small socialist country of Guyana on the northeast coast of South

America. The mission landed 24 hours away by boat from the capital city of Georgetown, a trip through silty coastal waters and then inland upriver slowly along the Guituma. The Guineas government had wanted people to settle here, but despite the lush jungle vegetation, it wasn't good land for farming. It was the proverbial desert, disguised as the garden of Eden. The rains would come and the jungle would grow, but that was all. And yet there was a strange beauty here, the trade winds blew constantly, cooling the intense heat. The air we clean in the sunset were lovely. The tropical birds and exotic fruits, all a welcome change from the noise and the filth of the San Francisco streets. Their energy pleased the Guineas, the land was cleared, crops were planted, wooden buildings were put up.

Officials would often come to Jones Town to see how the pilgrims were doing, perhaps to learn lessons for their own people, and to check on the health and education facilities. And sometimes experts give lectures about what was out there in the jungle. The North American course makes, I think you have a rhyme, red on yellow, killer fellow, red on black, venom, black. I don't know how many of you know that rhyme. You are not in North America anymore, forget it. It does not work on the South American brand. So if you see a snake with black, red and yellow rings right around the body, it has a good chance that you are looking at a coral snake. He is a really bad method. If you get bitten by one of those, then you do get a really bad bite. And you don't want a doctor, you want a preacher. The American settled in to their new life in the jungle. If now it seemed far away from the enemies, but it was who learned not far enough.

In the radio room at Jones Town, dad made a tape recording, a memo to be sent to the guy in these officials. The message was an explanation of a problem that had come up. A problem caused by, as Jim called it, revolutionary sex. Some years ago, a assistant district attorney who is a member of our church, Timothy Stone, came to me and other members of our governing body, which is a central committee that governs all of our churches. I stated that his wife was quite likely to commit treason. I had known prior to this time that his wife, Mrs. Stone, seemed to have some sexual interest in me.

He confirmed that matter and asked me to try to keep her in our church by that means. Of course, my wife was consulted about the situation before it began and she too agreed that we should attempt to utilize whatever method, short of violence, certainly. That wasn't necessary to keep this woman because she was making various threats that, unless I showed her some attention, she was going to do one thing or another. Out of this, the whole union came a beautiful son. I loved this child deeply and she has now showed her true reactionary colors and gone

back to her bigoted families who were openly racist. I would rather die than see the child brought up in such an environment. Needless to say, this is the reason why I'm staying close to our new home with Guyana these days. That was Jim's side of the story. There was another Timothy Stone had once sworn that Jim had indeed sighed to the child, John Victor, but now he said that it wasn't true that he'd signed the paper under duress and Grace Stone would also insist that her husband, not Jim, was the true father. There has never been any real proof. Only two months after they got to Guyana, Grace Stone's attorney traveled to Georgetown to ask the Guineas court to enforce the legal order from California, giving custody to

the mother of the child. The attorney expected cooperation from the Guineas authorities and expected to take John Victor Stone back to California. Jim had different ideas and the first white knight took place. The first knight in this strange land, when they would not know if they would live or die. There with the rain in the mud, the people of John's town, decided they would never allow John Victor Stone, John's town's child, to be taken away. Jim's voice, some loudspeakers, deployed them out into the dark, they stood in defiance and wet the draggled group, even the children, even the sick and the old, with machetes and pitchforks waiting for the attack, Jim promised was coming, waiting for the first sniper's bullet.

And Jim went to the radio room to contact Temple headquarters in San Francisco, by a short wave. He felt betrayed by the Guineas government. The Guineas government he thought he could control was coming to arrest him. This would not happen. The minister of justice can stop this from happening. We will not allow any of our people to be taken. And of course, we can't wait here endlessly, endlessly, because we have only so much food and so much resources, new people have lived by pacifism, but we do have the right to die and everyone made that decision. We want to stop too, we'll give it permission to leave, but we will die unless we are given freedom from arousal and given asylum somewhere. And we are not suggesting, we are not suggesting, do you copy? Any compromise we make on the part of the child, we do not feel that any president should be set of giving anyone that we feel the talent to stay with you all.

The Guineas police had come to Jonestown to serve Jim with the legal papers. He head from the police when they came. They nail the papers to one of the buildings and left him with now an attempt of court. And as the night went on, the short wave radio crackled in the air with mother Marcelin pleading with her husband from San Francisco. I also offered to be arrested, but the people voted unanimously not to let me go. I'm glad to go, I'm glad to go, no problem about it. Marcel, I'm glad to be arrested, but it has no meaning other than principle. And I could not let this child go to her, she, by his own testimony, by his own testimony from in heart. When I asked him if he wanted to go back with her, it would be all I wanted to be happy. He told me some of the most horrible things he did that you could ever imagine, that he did to him and said to him, I want peace for my children, I want them to live, I want

them to have a future. They're wanting to die too quickly and some of them, I am the one that's holding back. Roger, Roger. I just want to say that I am your wife, I've been your wife for playing here. I know the pain and the suffering you've gone through for socialism, for the complete economic and racially quality, I know about the beautiful child God and I know why he was conceived and I was very much involved with it. I know the pain and the suffering, and it's hard for me to believe that all of these children that are brilliant, who have so much to give to the third world, are going to have to be sacrificed because of stashism and hate that exists in the world, I don't really understand. But I still understand here's the stand there and it would give 100 percent.

If you don't get control of your emotions, you could destroy the greatest decision in history. We are asking for asylum for asylum. But the greatest decision in history would not happen that night. The threat of mass suicide worked. The police would not come to get John Victor Stone, where they would come back to get father. And the first white knight in the jungle became part of John's young mythology of victory. And they could threaten, again, with the conviction that their adversaries would always back down. We stood up and resisted and I won the battle on the basis of an unknown weapon. You are telling stories. I mean, I'm not sure when you were here. I'm going to be here. I won't lie to you. I said, anybody can have something like that. I've got four of you. One thing I want to say. I insisted with them. Four after reading. One of them. They won't give it to me.

What I want. I want to be sure at any time anything comes our way. I can talk to the whole world. But it has nothing to handle the corn. You see what I'm saying? I've got four readers. I wonder, so what you only want to write to me. So we got part of it. And follow that saying. The story of glory. The people of the temple worked long days in the fields, stood in long lines for food. The people of the temple worked long days in the fields, stood in long lines for food, and at night, after dinner, they would be assembled in front of the pavilion, for the town forum meetings. Everyone, even the children, almost a thousand people, looking up at father, and he would ascend to the big wooden chair, cushioned with pillows, a small table beside him, a couple of soda pop always full. His aid stood behind him, the temple banned off to one side, and for long hours, well

into the morning, he would hold forth, as the leader, an inquisitor and judge, father and God. He led the songs and the prayers and the trials, and told them of fearful events happening out in the world that it escaped. It was their only source of information, their only dispenser of justice. Just before their only Christmas in the jungle, Jim's mother died, she had come with them to Jones Town. The death came at a tense time, the US government had stopped sending the social security checks, a mistake that was quickly corrected, but it was perceived as a threat since the seniors of the temple were bringing in about $40,000 a month. The night after his mother died, Jim talked about the death. He was bitter, he blamed the people for making his mother worry, and then he talked about much more.

What you have to get to do, I didn't do that, no I never did in states, but I do it now. I buy whatever the hell I can get. You know you buy a telephone bill and buy your mail. You can buy anything in the United States, yes you may go to the restroom. They'll take our money to give us information about the FBI. Don't tell me they won't because I've already got it. They take my money to give me information on who Grace Stone's talking to, and don't spare her neck. If you want to commit treason, you better be sure you know what you're dealing with, because after we were all dead over here, you might go to a social party after you tried to get your little reward, your little 30 pieces of silver for selling out the greatest people on earth, and you walked in with the Judas tribe, and the wife of Judas might be one of the ladies I'd laid to make a socialist. She might give you slow poison in your champagne. You don't know how clever I am.

One thing you all done to underestimate me, I made plans for treason long ago, because I knew I couldn't trust nothing. I knew I couldn't trust anything but communism and the principle in me, yes, restroom. I knew that that's what I had to depend upon, not depend upon the arm of the flesh, and never put all your eggs in one basket, so honey, I put my eggs in many places. You figure that out if you want to. Some of you too, now you don't know what I'm doing, what Jim Jones is all about, you can't even follow him. You haven't even, you haven't even smelled where he's at yet, much less followed him. You don't even know who he is, and you might miss him if you didn't have a real good look at him. You wouldn't even know who he looked like. You really haven't got next to him, but I've got all kinds of things in store. You, you who are stupid pissants and reptiles and lower than the primates, you can make a hoopie if you want, but your hoopie makes me sticky, and so you can make your hoopie while I do something that's far more significant, I got me some big plans, both here, there,

and everywhere. You've got a lot of plans. This is NPR, National Public Radio. You are listening to Father Cares, the last of Jones Town, with actual tapes recorded by Jim Jones and his followers. Thousands of miles away in California, the relatives of Jones Town residents, their contact cut off from their loved ones by Dad, were becoming troublesome. The group was formed called Concerned Relatives, and with the prized effector as Timothy and Grace Stone, the custody battle for John Victor became the center of the challenge, they also set a petition to the U.S. State Department charging human rights violations in Jones Town. It was complicated, for many years, Father had worked to break down blood ties, the bonds

to him had to be much stronger. The crisis developed between Jones Town and the Concerned Relatives, in a newspaper, a parent was quoted as threatening to liberate his son from the jungle using mercenaries. And in Jones Town, a new theme for hysteria, Father imagining out loud, gruesome scenes of paratroopers falling from the sky above them, invading the sanctuary, Father set up a stronger and more visible security force, armed with crossbows and often with guns. The people were frightened, but some were also proud, how could there be heroism without a strong enemy? The troubles continued, more accusations from California still unproven, the relatives back home, now the enemy now became despised, and at night the people of Jones Town lined up in front of a pavilion eager to get to the microphone to testify, to tell Jim in

the congregation the best story of what they would do to their families if they had the chance. It tells right quick one line what you think should be done with your relative. I'd like to kill my so-called brother and Bill Errant for the crap that both of them have caught us all these years since they've left. Thank you. Sandy knew that this was the last hope for many people including children, and when she wants to lie herself with people who wish to destroy this place, I think she should be wiped out. It happened to occur to me a good way of beating somebody up is to have him christened like a boat. If her skull was split, it would serve a good purpose. I sure don't want me to have that christening of the boat to my precious bike loved ones back there because I don't need much to anybody but the middle class and they would definitely get that wrong.

I think that Mr. Tuberts should die, and that I'm not sure, you know. Mr. Tuberts has always killed me this badly, Mr. Tuberts. He's always been Mr. Tuberts, everybody comes to Mr. Tuberts. I don't want to know it, it's funny, I like it, Mr. Tuberts, go ahead. I think that I should take a knife and cut Mr. Tuberts all up real good, and then make them look like, you know, I'm cutting them up and then put poison in them, but all my relatives over there haven't eaten them and they're all done. You've been talking to Ray, that's what you've been doing. My mom is a dance fool, but I don't like the fucking shit out of you. I'm glad I put my life on the night to save you.

See my mom was a goddamn fool, I don't think the fucking shit out of you. My dear, my dear, come on, because I'd be the one who's on the shot, I don't like it. My mom was a goddamn fool. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, how do you copy me? Father demanded a news conference by a short way radio. The press gathered in the office of the Temple's Attorney in San Francisco, waiting to hear a statement from Jonestown that was to refute the charges of the relatives and in the jungle in the radio room, father was ready, he stood close as one of his aides took the microphone. My name is Harriet Trock, I have a large degree and I'm currently teaching at the Jonestown Community School. I have a statement to make on behalf of People's Temple in response to the grossly false and

malicious statements that continue to be made about our community here in Diana, do you copy? And with Jim whispering instructions, Harriet charged that the allegation to the concern relatives were cruel and monstrous lies that their relatives wanted to bring mayhem to the promised land. But then she made more clear, more public, the totality of their commitment. Finally, we would like to address ourselves to a point that has been raised it seems about some statement, supposedly issued officially by People's Temple, but whose authorship we hear are unaware of to the effect that we prefer to resist harassment and persecution even if it means death.

Those who are lying and slandering our work here, it appears, are trying to use this statement against us. We are not surprised to be a copy. However, it would seem that any person with any integrity or courage would have no trouble understanding such a position, do you copy? Dr. Martin Luther King reaffirmed the validity of ultimate commitment when he told his freedom riders, quote, we must develop the quiet courage of dying for a cause, close quote. And we, likewise, affirm that before we will submit quietly to the interminable plotting and persecution of this politically motivated conspiracy, we will resist actively putting our lives on the line if it comes to that. Do you copy?

They will hear the statements from the people very shortly, I am almost finished. This has been the unanimous vote of the collective community here in Guyana. We choose as our model not those who marched submissively into gas ovens, but the valiant heroes who resisted in the Warsaw ghetto. Patrick Henry captured it when he said simply give me liberty or give me death. If people cannot appreciate that willingness to die if necessary, rather than to compromise the right to exist free from harassment and the kind of indignities we have been subjected to, then they will never understand the integrity, the honesty and the bravery of people's temple, nor the depth of commitment of Jim Jones to the principles he has struggled for all his life. Do you copy?

I am about finished. Thus clothed with the mantle of Martin Luther King and Patrick Henry, they had made the ultimate commitment their vote was unanimous it always was. They would not be submissive and slaughtered, they would be like the heroes of the Warsaw ghetto. Perhaps this provotto drew little more than smiles from the peoples in San Francisco, so distant was it from their reality, but in the jungle it was not a laughing matter. But don't ever say hate is your enemy. Love is practically cause me to just get you destroyed. If I had hated a little more, just a little more, we would have had a little less trouble. Because I look at my faults analytically, sure you got love, principal, but don't say hate is my enemy.

What does it say? What's that word? Hate is mine. I got to fight a day and night. What else else else is there? Love is the only weapon. Shit. Bullshit. Martin Luther King died with love. Kennedy died talking about something he couldn't even understand. Some kind of generalized love and he never even backed it up. He shut down. Bullshit. What else does it say? The only weapon was might cut out the fight? I got the help of the weapons to fight. I got my cost. I got penalties. I got guns. I got dynamite. I got a hell of a fight. I'll fight. I'll fight. I'll fight. I will fight. I will fight. I will fight. I will fight. Yo seconds. Mhm. Not the man is a directors. Yeah.

Thanks to fight. You'll fight. Let the night wear with it. Let the night wear with it. Let the night wear with it. Let the night wear the cause I can hear. Let the night wear with it. Let the night wear with it. In Guyana, the grand experiment went on. More jungle land was cleared, more buildings went up, including a school, a large library, and the mission's health clinic, the best equipped in the area, and the young Jones down, Dr. Lawrence Shankt,

who dad had saved from drug addiction, even performed as a Syrian operation taking instructions over the shortwave radio. And when a doctor from the state visited Jones down, he praised Shankt as a modern day, Albert Schweitzer. But father was not happy. He felt trapped, and he was sick, a stomach fungus, difficult to diagnose, causing a high fever. And all we'd gone through hell in the high water and sacrificed. You think I'm gonna let somebody betray that? He talked about the dissidents among them, those planning trees, and he feared the secret resistor, the one who had learned to mow the gratitude to sing the songs with gusto to keep awake for the endless monologues in the people's rally. But anyway, if you would run away, and you get all the way back to New York, you're not a cog, you won't get by. And father was frightened of those who were trying to find a way to escape.

The least indication of disaffection was to be reported. Some tricky tests were devised, such as planting this loyal statement, just to see if it would get back to father. And children began to spy on their parents. Be careful. The Santa Claus is checking his list, and who's nodded, and who's nice. For many, the experience in the jungle had drained their spirit and their soul dry. There had been so many crises, so many catharsis, his father grandly called his rebukes to them personally, that they were simply exhausted. And some began to long for the final crisis, because the endless, manufactured, unresolved emergencies had become the real hell. There was, however, some stirring of rebellion, if a direct challenge to Jim's authority were to come,

it would be from the elite of the camp, among them many well-educated professional people, lawyers, nurses, social workers, former professors, and psychologists. So, elitism and intellectualism had to be crushed by a simple method. Dad would send an intellectual to the psychological department, the ultimate Jonestown punishment. I just like to say about the government. I mean, intellectuals like me can finish it. I just, I wasn't really referring to, I wasn't referring. I wasn't referring to the group that I felt that I was smarter than anyone else. I just, I just meant that I was referring to people that are familiar with the arts and the kind of intellectual

background, but I really don't consider myself as an intellectual. So, I really, I just use that word, but I really wasn't referring to the group. You'd be moving in with Brother Bikeman and you won't be very well for a while. And I hope that you learn, because I have to exert my power with the sense of justice and will, because you have stepped too far. It's time you knew what Marx and Lenin and all those thoughts, comparable thinkers have to say about present conditions. And I expect him to do his study and his homework in the introduction of socialism. I expect you to do it.

And when you are back in good health, I expect you to be on the job and doing your task when you are back in good health. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Rise and I sing United Forever. And live this communist dream. I mean, shall we hold your arm up, Brother? Seven months before the end, one of Dad's inner circle got away. Deborah Layton Blakey, who for years had been intimately involved

with the innermost secrets of the temple, part of a group of younger white women, intensely loyal to Jim, but Jonestown was not what she had expected, so she said later, but she kept quiet about her rebellion. And her chance came. She was sent to Georgetown, a guy in his capital to work at the temple headquarters there. And one morning, Deborah Blakey went to the American Embassy in Georgetown to ask for protection and for passage back to the United States. She spent two days telling the embassy officials all about going on in Jonestown, before they had only hearsay evidence, now they had a firsthand account. For Jim, this defection was a catastrophe, he had trusted Deborah Blakey, and he had sort of a hostage system when temple agents were sent out on secret missions, they usually left relatives behind, and Blakey's mother was still there. But when Jim found out and called for his people

to gather at the pavilion, he didn't talk about Deborah Blakey. He brought up other problems. He said the American and the Guineas governments were joining in conspiracy to end his glorious experiment. Who in the hell wouldn't be ready for a white night? Don't I'd like for one to come and not pass? His wife, Mother Marceline, stood by his side, and never disputing him now, and shouting out threats in a grainy voice that resonated with him. I'll tell you one thing if you're counting on me, let me out, forget it. All right. Every day I lived since I was a child, first time I felt guilt when Lundall died, I wanted to commit suicide. I had still some little dogs and cats of life that had me alone to take care of them at that age. That's all that kept me through. A little bit later my mom needed me and some poor soul down the road needed me. There was more in my door to have been treated badly

than come along black in the community that I always was their champion. It's always been that way. Somebody needed me. So you can do what you have to do because I stay alive and do all this thinking. And I am bored and I am disgusted and I am sick with people who do so little with socialism when they have such a good example to follow. Father went on and on into the night. His congregation scared and confused and worried. He needed them now even more. They responded often with shouts of praise and murmurs of amen and lined up to come to the microphone to testify to their love for him and their love for socialism. I love so pure they would do anything to prove it. Commit suicide. Even kill their children. How do you feel about it?

You may die tonight. Dad, from 16 to 69, I kept listening to Vietnam to fight a war that I didn't know anything about. I had no possible to die in that war. You have saved my life so many times, Dad. Now I will help my life my own. I'm living on your time. I will die for you right now, Dad. I will live in the face of frontline with you right now. Thank you, Dad. Since I've been here, I've all I've seen is the beauty of socialism. And I feel that my life is fulfilled. And if death comes, it's no big deal to me because I've already lived my life just being here with the family. Thank you, Dad. Thank you. I really, really find my family not just dying. I'm prepared to die for this family if I have to do some freedom. Thank you, Dad. I'm also prepared to die after 44 years of not being able to contribute anything to this life or finding any point.

A reason for it at all. And not being well-known at all. There sure would be no glory in it. But for the children here, for the freedom, as long as there is one remains on this earth that isn't free, none of us are free. And I've prepared to give my life if need be. Did you take your daughter's life if it came to us? No, I'd give mine in a place at first. When did I die for her? I mean, where did the fight of fascism stand? You know, I've got on a sensitive standpoint. That maybe you think about it. They brought up a sensitive question. And you may not understand the gravity of that question. But all of our children have faced this. We went through white nights. So they'll not be hurt. But we have not any child. Because there's any difficulty by facing this kind of thought. Jerry, the question would be, if the fascists were coming up the road right now, and we were going to lay down our lives and fight for it, you say you would give your life for your child. But would you leave it for the fascists to have?

What would you do in that case? It came to that. I would have to take her life. Hi. Hi. Do you understand that? Do you understand that? But she's so old, she'd fight. How was your child? 11. When she passed the age, we'd fight at 11. It's under that. We'd consider that. She would take up a cutlass and fight till she was dead. Unless it came to an overwhelming invasion, then we would gently put them to sleep, which we have. They never know what had hit them. We are already prepared for that. A people who are really loving, and a father who's genuinely compassionate, is prepared for all such emergencies. But you don't do that as long as there's alternatives in which you can make a mock. You don't do that unless there's alternatives. All alternatives are closed for you to make a mock against fascism. Yes.

I think you all should doubt it. If it's our turn, I'm willing for the to stand with you all the way. Just like I always have told you three years ago that everything seems and will always be the same. I'm not changing. You don't need to sit anymore. I'm not your father. I know you do. I know some of my people that others go, I felt like they're going to hurt you. When you hurt you, you hurt me. I tell you the truth. I'm not going to lie. You're doing the father hell. You're doing the family hell. I give up my brother. I remember you fighting for you. I remember when you sang, I never sing it for us right now. I'm going to sing it for you. All the day in my life. It will say that I've been born. I never heard of me. Speak like this man before. I never heard of me. Speak like this man before. All the days of my life.

It will say that I've been born. I never heard of me. Speak like this man before. Come on, say. Never heard of me. Speak like this man before. All the days of my life. It will say that I've been born. Never heard of me. Speak like this man before. That's true. Wherever the hell it's brought us. It brought us on principle. It brought us on courage. And it brought us to the right place. And if we hold on, we'll make it. I never heard of me. Speak like this man before. I never heard of me. Speak like this man before. All the days of my life. It will say that I've been born.

Never heard of me. I never heard of me. I never heard of me. I never heard of me. I never heard of me. Speak like this man before. All the days of my life. It will say that I've been born. I never heard of me. Speak like this man before. All the days of my life. I never heard of me.

If by any chance you would make a mistake. To try to come in and take any one of us. We will not let you, you will die. You will have to take anybody over all of our dead bodies. I never heard of you. I never heard of you. The night ended. Once before, Father had said, we came so close, my darlings. But this night would be in Jones' down legend.

The night Father said he died. He meant it metaphorically. He had decided that his infinite goodness could no longer be given to his people. And received. They were beyond his help. He had sentenced them. And then he suspended the sentence, waiting for the glorious moment. This is NPR National Public Radio. You are listening to Father Cares, the last of Jones Town, with actual tapes recorded by Jim Jones and his followers. The concerned relatives in California had found an important ally, a congressman, Leo Ryan.

His district was outside San Francisco, where Jim still had some strong political influence. Congressman Ryan had a niece who had become deeply involved with Scientology, and he sympathized with the torment of the temple relatives who came to him for help. And Leo Ryan had always been attracted to unorthodox, highly visible causes, like baby seals and whales. Six months before the end, Ryan was making real trouble. He asked the Department of State to investigate Jim's passport, and he wrote a letter to the temple declaring his support for Timothy and Grace Stone in the battle over the child. And the congressman wanted to know when he could visit Jones Town. In the jungle, in Jones Town, Father was worried and intrigued. A confrontation was possible, a cataclysmic confrontation, the gallant moment watched by an admiring world.

However, at the same time, Dad wanted to get away from Guyana to a final sanctuary, truly beyond the reach of the class enemies, as he called them. He wanted to go to the Soviet Union. Cuba was also a possibility. Contacts had been made with the Cuban Embassy, the choice, though, between Russia and Cuba, was something to be discussed and voted on. Go ahead. Tari, I come in to tell you, I don't want to go to Cuba. Okay, Pop. Dad, I want to say that I don't want to go to Cuba. What do you say to Cuba? No, I didn't say that. I said, if one of you couldn't get in, I won't go. I won't go out to the booth. If you stay, I'll stay. I need to decide where I'm going. You know what you're going with me?

These people are going with I go or not. How many are going to Cuba? Edward Moore? Which way is Cuba, Edward? What's that? Is it over that way? Oh, I'm sorry. To the northwest of Piggory. Oh, thank you. I think I'm very dependent personally on your leadership, on the family being in tech. I think a lot of other people are. I think if we go to Cuba, we won't be in the same position. Maybe in the beginning, they'll accept us as an intact group with your leadership. We might not always be in that position. We humble about saying that you'll do whatever is necessary and do whatever work is necessary. By the way, you should be writing up a chop as some of these should write up. There should be some notes. If there's any difficulty, we will certainly, you know, change. I mean, if anybody can take out of it, can educate we will more than gladly. Those that can fit in and they can make analysis of it,

and we will be happy. And if we were all at once there, you know, we got the same situation we got here. We can white night run bases or nothing. Right on. Much love. Much love. Now I see a lot of study now in the library. Attention, attention. Tonight at 7.45. Here's the day. There's a dot. Review. Stop the moment. From the position. From this way to Washington. Then testing will take place. And we will talk about African leaders, our media and our rotation. Followed by agricultural fishing and a catharsis. Now you will have to study the ocean. I'm going to give some news, but you can study on the right board. I can explain just after. By fall, Father was on the loudspeaker every morning with the news from Radio Moscow. He gave lectures on Communist theory and the Soviet Constitution

and language lessons were started. And in the pavilion at night, Father intensified the news quizzes to see if the people were learning fast enough. Okay. What was the basic premise of Mao? Your menu already passed. What was the basic premise of Mao? Mao would say, two said there's only one way revolution can come. Do you know, Millie? Help hold it now. How does Mao say two and say the only way you can break a revolution and keep it? Where is the only way I think you can keep it about being peace and being alma. Oh, shit. I mean, peace. Mao would say two and said that? Oh. No, no, no. He's ahead of China. He's ahead of the revolution of China. He marched 6,000 people all the way up there. No, that's not a long march. I haven't mind on something else. Okay. What did he say? There's only one way you can bring about a revolution for people. The only way you can bring it on is by killing. Well, what is? That's okay. I won't let you pass up.

But what do you say? You had a nice little phrase that everybody should know. Change only comes with a lot of seniors. Got it. Change comes through. That's right, senior. And that's good. Because you, by rights, would have every reason to forget something. Change must come through the barrel of a gun said Mao is a two. This place would be a paradise tomorrow if every department had a supervisor with a submachine gun. If they know shit here. Right? Everybody worked? We had no trouble. That's a shame. We have the right to do certain things. The government is suggesting we get armed. So we will be able to enforce our laws. Yes. Thank you, dear. You passed. And constantly training about what to do, how to act, what to say, what to wear, when important visitors came to Jonestown. What do you call this place? We call it Yellowstone. That's right, say we. Good.

You never say family. Just say, I'm asking you about the weather, dear. How's the weather out here, Jonestown? I don't know about how the weather is. The weather is beautiful out here. It is. What kind of weather you got? I know it's beautiful. I'm going to talk like a reporter could talk. The weather is beautiful. What do you mean, Mao? What do you mean, Mao? What do you mean, Mao? What do you mean, Mao? It's always nice and warm. It's never cold. Oh, that's fair. You seem to say that. What are your political beliefs? I don't have no beliefs. You don't have any beliefs at all? You have no beliefs at all? What do you believe in? In my own beliefs. What are your beliefs? Dovesons? No. No, I don't want somebody to say the word, I don't want somebody to say it without mispronouncing it. The first word. You'll never use the word unless you could say it. Socialists? Socialists? Socialists? I'm sick of this shit. But everybody ought to know how to say it.

Socialism. What are your religious beliefs, madam? Okay, I ask her. You should avoid the reporters like a plague, honey, because you don't think well of your feet. Do you just say hi? So you're up there still with me? You never nod your head. You never smile. You don't do shit. What are you? Two people came to Jonestown to celebrate the epic nature of the noble experiment. Three is going to be here for many days, too, so you've got to keep this policy going on. We don't want the classes and stuff. They came as myth makers. One was the temple's greatest supporter back in California, Mark Lane. Dr. Mark Lane, his father, called him. The other Donald Freed, a playwright and novelist, who told father he and the Jonestown struggle would be a good subject for Hollywood movie. Today, we're very privileged and honored to have with us Don Freed.

He's written books about the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and Senator Robert Kennedy. He's currently involved in an investigation of the truth behind the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, the great civil rights leader. You've seen the people's temple community in Jonestown. Could you give us some of your reflections and observations, not only the nature of the project, but of its significance? This could not be called a utopia. It seems to me it really is a sophisticated socialist dialectical materialistic experiment and the dialectic between the people here, where they'll come from in the United States. Each one with their story. And then this sort of existential present as the jungle gives way to schools and dispensaries and agriculture and culture. I think no place in the world offers a microcosm of what we mostly call human nature.

I just want to close by telling you that this has been an absolutely rare experience. I guess you hear that from everybody who comes here but let me join with the chorus. Then, you know, to get on that train in Jonestown and it's going back to the 19th century in terms of the modes of transportation. My back is a century earlier. The heritage of British imperialism. Of course, is to move back every country, which is a colony, at least one century beyond where it should be the present time. But you go there and you're in the 19th century until you stop right down there and then you come on into here and you don't just come up to the 20th century, you're in the future all of a sudden. And so it's a big mode. And either this is the future or there won't be any. Because that's so true.

That's so true. The people of Jonestown thought about the future a lot. Father kept them confused and hoping they knew, though, that they would not be going back to America. Very late one night, father called one of the seniors up to the stage. A man who had made the mistake of telling friends about wanting to make just one more visit home. All right, how many witnesses are two? Do you understand that you want to go back to the States? Now, when he took father literally, when father was sending these people that wanted to go back so bad, he said, well, after all the people get here, you can get your money and go back, a swim back, anywhere you go. When he took father literally, that he took care of. For the time we get ready,

all right, people get ready to go back. He can float back. That's what he told. And he took it. I mean, his sister. Yeah. I'm not playing. He said, I really want to get away from him by Christmas, I will be gone. That may be true. That may be true. By Christmas, do you want to be gone? Yeah. By Christmas, do you want to be gone? By Christmas, do you want to be gone? Could I go home and make a trip to see my people? By Christmas, you'd like to be gone? I would like to make a round trip to Christmas. I'm asking you one question. You have listened here many times to what I said. And I do not intend now to repeat myself. I have established myself on this proposition, unequivocally clear, and I have now moved from a Ministry of Socialist Office into the Office of Savior. Do you want to be able to go home what you call home my Christmas? No. No. When you tell after you're people,

you get your fork. You could try to go home. Do you see you get all the folks over there? It's a fearful thing to fall to the hands of a living. Are you finding the humans? I'm now in the office. I have the power to send you home by Christmas, but it's not on transfer of their lives. Do you just take anything and make a big thing out of it? That's not a big thing. That's blasphemy. It's blasphemy. It's blasphemy. It's blasphemy. They may find good humor in your much badgerings. I do not. It's blasphemy to talk about going back when you have not been given any approval, but there've been no request, or even any mandate made.

Now, if I cease meditating for you, for you, you won't need to go home. Do you want to go home? Well, then be seated and shut your mouth and don't be in my face anymore. For many months, the temple had been talking to Féador, Timothy of the Third Secretary of the Soviet Embassy in Georgetown, reportedly a major in the KGB. Timothy of had arranged for positive articles about Jonestown to appear in the Soviet press. Father wanted to make the last part of the epic journey of persecution to Russia. The Jonestown basketball team and the temple band were set to make a cultural exchange going to Moscow. It would also be a scouting mission to look for a new home

for the temple. Dad said the most likely place was a balmy locale on the east coast of the Black Sea, a region known as Krasnodar. It was so warm there that oranges grew on the trees and in winter only a light dusting of snow. The talks with Timothy of had become more serious. Dad said he wanted to arrange to transfer the temple's fortune to Soviet banks, but the diplomat was cautious. He wanted to know more about father. He expressed concern about Jim's cult of personality. So happy to have you with this comrade. Comrade, comrade, comrade, comrade, comrade. Don't say brother, say comrade. How many will say comrade now? So if I ever say comrade, you'll know we got some comrade right here. Everybody say comrade. Everything you can see, please use your mind to straighten this up and clean it up all during that time.

Say comrade, Jim, comrade, Jim. Comrade, Marcelin, too. Comrade, Marcelin. All of this place, yeah, you bet you. All of this so we get pictures. Lenin there, you got what's his name? That other old fool. I love you very much. Think now as you go down the path, please. On healings, blessings, protections, for the cares, for the cares. We can tell him his voice, he cares. He cares if you're all with me. Good night, comrade. Good night, comrade. Good night, comrade, comrade, comrade, comrade, comrade, comrade. Good night, comrade, comrade. Finally, Timothy came to Jonesdown, along with a Soviet doctor, an official visit, a tour, long discussions with father of banquet and speeches and music. In 1981, everything will have changed.

You will see, you will see, you will see. You will stand in line with your path for to sign and the government says no to your car. For the first time, hundreds of guests have come through here in the name of socialism. Hundreds of guests, but for the first time, and now I give you without further ado, the Chancellor and the chief of the best department of the Embassy of the USSR of Guyana. So proudly, Thieradour, Timothayev,

will you come forward? He is deserving of your welcome and your praise. Thank you very much. Hello, my name is Dr. Vyacheshevich. First of all, on behalf of the Embassy of the USSR, I would like to send to you my deepest and our deepest and most sincere greetings to the people

of the first socialist and communist community of the United States of America in Guyana and in the world. This gentleman said something that I cannot quote here. He gave me more peace than ever before. I know after I heard his words, I didn't need to worry about my family. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Yes, in the fall of the year, in my tyranny world.

In the last month, father became desperately sick and seems scared. The fever stayed and got worse.

The fungus honeycombed his lungs. His diabetes gave him terrible headaches, made him dizzy. His hands were swollen to clown-like proportions. His blood pressure soared to the stroke level. I am very emotionally disturbed with another trader

who has stolen our money. It only amounted to a few thousand dollars. But I am disturbed because that's what caused my heart attack somewhat of the state, and I'll get everlasting one of them. I want to tell you every last damn one of them will die. They will die. I declare it to you. I will not stop until everlasting one of them is dead. And I'm a long way from death. Even though I was three minutes dead, I'm a long way from death. He had lost 40 pounds. If nothing happened, he would soon die of natural causes. The third time running, someone had tried to poison my food. We have a settlement or understood it in the microscope. What kind of beast do we have in our midst? The addiction had begun in late summer, starting with brandy and coeludes, then injections of tranquilizers and antidepressants, father thought he had cancer, so he started taking powerful antibiotics

as well, destroying any natural defenses his body had left. His speech slurred. His mouth was dry. He licked his lips constantly. Most of the time, he lay in his bed, drugged, naked, delirious. Father looked and sounded pitiful. And the sight of him instilled in some of the people a desperate desire to escape. In others, the will to commit suicide, suicide before father wanted it to happen. If you feel suicidal, I may be able to lift certain burdens. Don't be so silly to lay your life down, to give the fascist a laugh and the newspapers a headline. Please, if you can't relate to that related, the woman to ten, the priesthood of Mamba, or Steve Biko, how many, how many do I have to name?

This is horror. This is horror of horrors. We would let down people like that. I can't imagine it. A congressman was coming. And they've got a congressman. They want to come in close to the member of the John Brooks Society, just to drop on. Drop in, and my opinion is to tell him to stick it in. Leading a real invasion, real enemies, including the newsmen and the concerned relatives, father said the congressman had supported fascist dictatorships and racism. The congressman was wicked. His invasion was evil. They must be ready. They've got to be involved in the radio room. Just days before the congressman would arrive, a drum of a dangerous chemical was unloaded at John's town. It was quickly stored away in the clinic,

but a few of the people saw it. They tell the most horrible tales. They whip up dreams of men, out of their old nightmares and evil souls. Late on the night of November 17th, after the festivities at John's town, put on for the visiting press in congressman Ryan and his staff, a note was given to Ryan from a temple member who wanted to escape. The next day, 14 people asked to leave with the congressman. A televised interview, father seemed to come apart before a world that watched later. Congressman Ryan was attacked by a man with a knife, not seriously hurt. And he soon left with a staff, with the defectors, with the newsmen. A flatbed truck followed into the jungle, carrying the gunman. A father called them, is Red Brigade. If they come in here by night,

they are kidding me. Thank you. Much love. Dad climbed up into his chair for the last time. His first words, I've tried to give you a good life. His voice was strong again, perhaps the last power he could bring to himself as savior. He said they were sitting on a powder keg, things had happened. The fascists would soon come after them. And when the troops came in along that muddy road, they had better not find anyone alive because they would torture them. They would start with the babies, and then the seniors. So father made his final proposal. There was not a media agreement.

The people wanted to talk about it. What about Russia somebody asked? Father said it was too late. How could Russia accept them now? Now that the murders had happened? Maybe the congressman was still alive. Maybe the plane had not fallen from the sky. No, Jim said. The congressman was dead. And three newsmen were dead. And a defector was dead. The line formed. The children were first. The seniors next. Be kind to the seniors dad said. Some seem peaceful, even grateful. Others fearfully downfall. But they saw no escape, no rescue. A few resisted physically. They were held down. The poison injected. There was screaming almost chaos. Father had said it would not hurt. And now he's cold at those who made a fuss. The screaming was not dignified, not communistic.

But many now knew that this had nothing to do with communism. And a few got away. An old man lay in a ditch pretending he was dead. An old woman slept through it all. A security man tricked a nurse and hid under a house. And one man made his way to the back of the crowd. There a guard. A woman challenged him with a crossbow. No, sister. She wanted to say farewell to some friends. She saw them, they embraced. And when she turned away to look again and what was going on in front of the pavilion, he ran for the jungle, fighting his way several hundred yards in, and waited there, perhaps two hours, listening to the whale of pain, slow to end. And then it was quiet.

In the dark, he crept back into the camp to get his passport. Across the way near the pavilion, someone moved. It was father's nurse. She found Jim on his pedestal, surrounded by his now silent followers, 911 of them. He had swallowed the fistful of barbituates, but he would not or could not take the poison. And there in the faint light, father saw the woman. He begged her to shoot him. She arranged his hands across his chest and a pie as pose. She put a pillow under his head to make him comfortable. She shot him in the left temple, and then she flung the weapon away and discussed. Father cares, the last of John's Town,

written by James Reston Jr. with Noah Adams. The program is based on the research for the book, Our Father Who Art in Hell, by James Reston Jr. Production assistance by Jerry Galkins and Gary Covino. Technical direction by Skip Peasy, with Thawne Williams and John Widow. Musical adaptation by Kit Watkins. Edited by Chris Koch, produced by Deborah Amos, executive producer Barbara Cohen. Funds for this program were provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. If you would like a cassette copy of this program, call 800-253-0808. You can charge your order to Visa or a Master Charge, or you can order by mail, send full payment of $16 to NPR, post office box 237,

Niles Michigan 49120. This is NPR, National Public Radio. From National Public Radio in Washington, a National Radio call-in, I'm Bill Moyers, and our number in Washington is Area Code 202-857-0888. Area Code 202-857-0888. We invite your calls to talk with one another, and with our guests about this numbing, stunning account of macabre reality. Our guests include Bertamé Grossner. Most of you have heard her on all things considered, a commentator on the Black Cultural Experience, a poet and a novelist. Bertamé, what went through your mind as you heard for the first time

these tapes of that ending? Well, it was depressed, and I guess I was asking myself a question of what made these people, these Black people follow this crazy white man, and somehow I know that the racism, although it happened in Guyana, I think that it could only happen as Harry Goen said in America, and somehow it's connected to the legacy of a peculiar institution of slavery that messed all our minds up. I just am very devastated by the tapes, by Jonestown. Jonathan Z. Smith is a theology professor at the University of Chicago, and he's written extensively about Jonestown. And what was on your mind, as you listened? Well, as one of his studies,

and long history of religions, what's most striking to me is how little there is that's surprising in the tapes, how unusual they are. They become retrospectively, so I think only because we know the end. I was struck and listening by the obvious parallels to Israel's Jonestown, Masada, which we find capable of giving four nights of national celebration to, and yet have such striking difficulty attempting to understand this. So it's our own capacity to understand what we've heard that strikes me as really more unusual than what I heard on the tapes. Robert J. Lichten is a psychiatrist. He is a professor at Yale University, and he's written books about the Vietnam prisoners and about victims of the Holocaust. Robert Lichten, what were you thinking as you heard these tapes? Well, I also felt a bit depressed about the people who were victimized in this way, but as I heard the tape more, what one felt that one didn't know

in the same way from the story was, the way in which everything was surrounded by death imagery, Jones himself was ill, his mother died, he was afraid for the future of his family, he felt pressed to the wall, and he wanted to bring about this suicidal act, this mass suicide and murder before he died from some other illness. And I thought about the terrible dangers of losing worship of higher principles in favor of worshiping the person of the leader. Our phone number in Washington is area 202-857-0888. We welcome your calls directing your questions to either of our guests. Robert Lichten, is there any way of deducing what death meant to Jones? Was it liberation? Was it vindication? Was it success? I think what death meant this mass death that he brought about,

he meant it as his path to immortality. He meant it as his future. He could find his future, his immortalizing moment only in that mass suicide murder. That's what I think it meant to him. Bertimae, you mentioned racism and slavery, and Jonathan Smith, you mentioned massada. But in both of those cases, were there the equivalent of the charismatic leader, the principal agent of this horrible finale that we heard and know about in Jones? Well, I think that the people, the victims, the followers were the fact that they left the US for Guyana. I mean, as we, Black people, have always been, we've left everywhere we've ever lived for the Canaan, for a better, for the Promised Land. So I think we've been searching for, and we will follow anybody. I mean, we want a better life than this,

and you know, talking about the James, the Jones was facing death. Well, I think we live with that death image, imagery all the time. I mean, it's very depressing, and has been depressing for centuries for us. And so we, we have, okay, I'll tell you, personally, I've grown up, I grew up in the church, and the preacher that he represented, the leader, we've always followed him. But this, I don't see how this is connected with Masada, because I think, I don't quite understand that, because I think that, I really feel these people thought they were following him for, for a better place, for a Canaan, for anything better than what we have. What about that, Jonathan Smith? What did you mean when you mentioned Masada? Because in Masada, the Romans were a breast place, but the enemies of Jones were imaginary.

Well, in the field of religion, that doesn't count for much. An unseen enemy, an unseen God, as strong as a scene one, in fact, usually in religion, stronger. You had the same phenomenon, in a group of people who were isolated, cut off from the clanger of other voices, focused entirely on their problem, with a leader, who found that, in death, there was a way of making a statement that they could not see themselves making in life. The difference is that, for Jones Town, we could listen to all 900 hours of tapes. We have more data on the ordinary discourse of a religion, than for any other religion in the history of mankind. We know their major statements. We don't know how they talked day in and day out. We don't hear the loudspeaker announcements about flies and so forth. We don't have a feeling for this, so that the sources on something like Masada don't allow easy comparison,

but the situation is very similar. A leader, a people cut off with their own voice only to hear, and a gesture, a death understood as a gesture, that the enemies you could see in one case, and you, after all, could see the enemies here. Congressman Ryan represented them, and more would no doubt come. Robert Lichten is connected with us, via satellite in New York. Do you see any connection between Jones Town and either the Exodus of slavery or the finale of Masada? Well, I'd like to differentiate it from Masada in a very specific way. One thing very important to Jones Town was the elevation of suicide as both threat and theology. Jones used it as a threat. We will destroy ourselves. We will create this mass scene of death and killing if you come in and do something we don't want you to do.

And he actually won the occasion on a couple of times with those white-night threats. But he also elevated suicide to be a kind of quasi-theology. The group formed itself and its power as he trained them again with these white-night practice sessions around that threat of suicide. So suicide was a highly manipulated process that he made into the group's theology. That's very different from Masada. We have a call and a question from Dave Steinbacher from Blacksburg, Virginia. Mr. Steinbacher, you're on the air. How you doing, Bill? Fine, thank you. Let me just say off the bat that NPR doesn't die in my job with all things considered as well as this show and the other things they broadcast. Let me ask you or any of the guess you have there to comment as to the following. Bill is quite apparent from the word of God, the Bible, that our enemy is Satan. And Jim Jones, unfortunately,

got tangled up with Satanic deception. And we are not fighting flesh and blood as Ephesians 6, 12 states where Satanic deception is spiritual wickedness. And if you look around the globe today, it's pretty apparent that we are in the last days as how Lindsey's book Lake Ray Planet Earth can count into Armageddon states. Jim Jones, Sung Young Moon, El Ron Hubru with Scientology. You can go on and on. There's a dramatic increase in all this, say, all this Satanic worship, all the cults, no cults. And I'm not sure if any of your guests, you know, are Bible experts or whatever, but it is pre-apparented. In the last days, there's going to be seducers trying to deceive whoever they can deceive. And today, responding to this point, and let me let you get all with your answer. Thank you very much. Thank you, Dave. Very much. William Blake said, man must have religion,

even if it's the religion of Satan. What about it, Jonathan Smith? What about the Satanic connotations of this perverted form of religion? Well, I don't find that a terribly useful model. But if I stayed with Scripture for a moment, one of the problems is, there's no telling which side you're on. What do you mean? You come to me and say, Lord, Lord, and did great works in my name, but I know you not. Until we're across to the other side, we won't know who was on whose side. Furtimey Grozner, when we were listening, you kept nodding when you heard the cadences of the songs, Song of Capello, and I kept nodding when I heard the rhythms of the preacher rhythms familiar to me, and hundreds of Sunday meetings in church in Marshall, Texas. Do you see this as a satanic form of evil, as our caller suggested, or a perverted form of a good religion? Well, I mean,

I could start with a song that's called What Side you're leaning on, leaning on the Lord side, leaning on the other side, and we, I mean, that's the struggle, isn't it? And I don't, no, I don't, I don't, I don't see it as that. I really see it as a, I talk to a lot of people about this, I like to say ordinary people about this tragedy, and they felt that it was, the devil's work, but they don't, in terms of, the last days, I, well, I just feel, there's black people we've been left in the last days for so long. Robert J. Lichten, you write a great deal about the death imagery, and you've written about it in regard to Jones Town. Religion is preoccupied with death historically, but always with the resurrection that follows. Did you find any element of resurrection in the religion of Jones Town? Well, I'd say a couple of things, both in response to that and to the caller.

Yes, there's evil, but if you want to look at it in more or less psychological terms, what I think the caller was getting at was a kind of apocalyptic atmosphere that we live in, and that, in a way, Jones was part of and was also playing on or manipulating. That is, we live in a time in which there is a lot of feeling and thought and imagery around everything being destroyed. That has to do with nuclear weapons, which were an issue for Jones, which were part of all this, and also, with, I think, our basic confusions around historical change. There was something of the resurrection or the attempt at revitalization, surely in Jones's version of religion or as mix of religion and a kind of visionary socialism, and he could, unfortunately, only achieve that kind of resurrection or revitalization by taking the whole group to its doom. He talked of creating something of a utopian community,

but I think his deeper impulse was to take the group with him in a massive death that was itself to be the means of revitalization. Our phone number in Washington is Area Code 202-857-0888. From Philadelphia, we have a call Bill Jones, Mr. Jones, you're on the air. Uh, yes, I'd like to be a legend from New York to ask whether or not, instead of seeing Satanic and good, aren't all religions really locked in the same way in the end to some human need of ours to be sheep. If you look at the first generation of every great faith on this earth and some of that not so great, you see charismatic characters, you see mooney behavior, you have the Mormons, you have the Puritans in America, you have the Ayatollah Comeini, Oliver Cromwell, Jesus Christ, you have Socrates, you've had voices

in his head, St. Paul, who was an epileptic. How do we know that, in the end, the religion itself isn't just the statement of some mass mob or some need to be hypnotized by stone binders that we humans have on our subconscious. Thank you, Mr. Jones. Our Theologian is not in New York. That's our psychiatrist. Our Theologian is Jonathan Smith from University of Chicago here with me in Washington. Jonathan? Well, I'd love to have yielded to New York on this one. I think one of the things you, I mean, you can set out a model like that, but that doesn't get you very far. What you have to understand is regardless of the origin of the genesis of it, it has a power, it has a power to be hypnotized it has a power to be constructive, it has a power to be destructive, that power is clearly there. It's not a kind of madness. You heard an awful lot of rationality on that tape. You heard a good bit of argument. You heard an appeal

to precedence. You heard somebody who was, in fact, working very hard in a very public idiom to make sense. And, you know, if I wanted to say it's a need to be a sheep, I'd have to interpret art that way. I'd have to interpret so many things to which we give a cent. So, simply the fact that we are sent to things doesn't help very much. We have to judge in some sense the quality of that which we give a cent, too. Do you think that Jones was mad? No. You do not. No. Robert Lifton, our psychiatrist, do you think that Jones was mad? Well, I think he moved into paranoia. I think at the end, he was psychotic. So, I'd call that mad. I don't think, but I would agree with, you know, my theological colleague, that simply to call him mad doesn't explain the situation at all. You have to really look at a whole host of social currents and the situation he was in and some of the things we've been discussing. But I do think he was mad at the end. Why is it that so many messianic programs of social liberation

have in them the germ of future tyranny, such as Jones Town, finally became? Mr. Lifton? I think it has to do with a kind of absolutism or totalism that one can sometimes find equally in the rebel and in the original oppressor with Jones, I think, one has to say that he started in his religious efforts with a mix of a kind of charlatanism that's not unknown in combination with a fundamentalism. But he was addressing real issues that people felt during the 60s and 70s. Issues of social injustice, of civil rights, and especially of black deprivation in this society, and of nuclear war in its threat. I think what happened or one way of looking at what happened is the terrible combination of pain and conflict caused by having to worship a man, a person, as a god, as a deity. I think that's an enormous strain on all followers

and an enormous strain on the would-be deity the leader himself, even though he asked for that worship, and he's quoted in Reston's book a saying one time, it's very hard, it's very hard indeed to be God. I think it really is, and I think that kind of pressure was one of the forces that pushed him over into a psychotic state in my view. From New York City, we have a call from Jacob Robinson. Mr. Robinson? Yes. I'd like to say tonight that I've seen this program really didn't spread Mr. Jim Jones, really real intent, which was to take these instant people, people who had a lot of laws and also had a lot of doubt about the world's situation and things around them, who was looking for a way out. And I feel Mr. Jones took them in such a way to make them feel that he had the way out. But all the time,

deep down, Mr. Jones, spiritual self, I mean by spiritual, when you tell us spiritual things, you deal with the struggle between good and evil. And your question, Mr. Robinson? Robinson is why, why, tonight, nobody, and to the preparation of this no takes, didn't put like, or, which would say, two opposites of Jews and a tape that's plainly Mr. Jones, real intent. Verdame Grossman, do you think there are two opposite views of Jim Jones? No. No, I don't, I don't, I don't think there are two opposite views. I think, I think he was mad. I think he was a driven mad of, I think he was mad when he started. I think he was mad for a long time. And I think that, frankly, right now, I see a lot of mad people on the streets of New York, Washington, et cetera. I think that a lot of people are mad.

I don't think that Jim Jones was, there's another point of view. He, he did what he did and people followed him. And I, I don't quite understand what this person is asking for. Let's see if we can get a question from Janie Mannes from Illinois. Janie Mannes? Yes. I am interested in why there can't be more legislation against obvious organized groups in America. And these stopped some way. These cults seem to have some sort of obvious slavery, of these physical, of these, of these and other types of mental brainwashing that these have so much in America. Jonathan Smith, could legislation prevent this kind of cultism? No. In a number of ways outside of obvious problems about First Amendment, at what

point would you invoke the legislation? Here's a man who won the Martin Luther King Humanitarian of the Year Award. Here is a man who was the major civil official in San Francisco. Here is a man who had a career that occurred before television cameras. At what point would you make the judgment that people's temple had turned into something to invoke legislation about? Secondly, surely the history of religion. Christianity, being a very good example, shows that, in fact, a cult flourishes when it is illegal and legislated against, so that you would accomplish nothing practically by doing it, and I would find it strange to try to find the point at which prosecution would be viable until civil and criminal laws, which were broken in this case, are broken. Our phone number in Washington is Area Code 202-857-0888, and from Iowa City Iowa, Kevin Crowley is on that line. Mr. Crowley? How do you do, sir? First, I'd like to say

that I'm the director of Unbound Incorporated, which is a halfway house for ex-members of pseudo-religious cult. And I'd like to make the comment that Joan Stone is not a unique situation, and that, for instance, the Unification Church has an island off the coast of South Korea, that they're prepared to go to is Reverend Moon decides that it's necessary. The divine light mission has property in South America, and their members have often told to update their passports. And I'm wondering if, Mr. Lichten, Dr. Lichten, couldn't talk a little bit about fraud control and coercive persuasion in groups such as this. Dr. Lichten? Yeah, well, there was a process. It's more recorded in Reston's book than it is on the 90-minute segment of the tapes that we heard that does show

a kind of systematic manipulation of people in the Joan's Town group. One could list a number of criteria for coercive persuasion or thought reform, and it is a kind of continuum. But I'd mention two here that are very important. One is total control of communication in an environment. That together with a cult of confession and criticism and self-criticism, but total control of communication is a key. And a second, a kind of ultimate criterion, is what I call the dispensing of existence. In an environment, there is so created an idea of truth that only those will hold to the considered truth. In this case, Joan's truth are considered to have a right to exist. That can be metaphorical in the sense of not having the right to be a proper full citizen in this community, or it can,

under more duress or more malignant conditions, become literally something like violence or murder. And there was such a process in this group, and of course it exists in other cults or other groups. What I think one has to do is examine each group, not make sweeping statements, but certainly look for patterns of this kind. And in an earlier study, I tried to describe eight such criteria by which one might be able to at least evaluate whether one could say this is a process of coercive persuasion or thought reform. That's one way of looking at this problem you raise. Briefly, Dr. Lyft, and how do you explain such collegial passivity on the part of these 900 people? Well, it turns out it was a mixture of passivity and a certain amount of rebellion that was violently suppressed and a good number of people were killed with injections of a cyanide. But I do think that

to the degree that there was passivity, they so merged with Jones, both through this process I described of shifting the worship from higher ideals to the person of the leader. To call that charisma is true, but it doesn't say enough. And the continuing process of thought reform like examination, which in this environment, from the evidence we had, had an awful lot of humiliation and really psychological brutalization and a certain amount of physical brutalization. All this, I think, rendered at least a significant number of the followers, very passive and really agents of Jones as well. And we've seen that can happen and it does happen in other cults as well. But it also has to be said that we don't know how many rebelled, perhaps, if one carefully counted all those who had injection marks, one would find quite a sizeable number had been murdered.

And that has to be said as well. I'm Bill Moyers and this is National Public Radio in Washington. On the phone from Philadelphia is Shimo Jaramogi. Mr. Jaramogi? Yes, how are you this evening? My question has a few questions. One, why were black so gullible to the persuasive techniques of Mr. Jones, in particular? And what was the role of the KGB US and other intelligence agency in Jones County, America? Bernie May Grozener, would you take that first? We were talking already. Well, yeah, as I said before, I believe that as blacks and black people, I think that they, these people that followed him were so alienated. And also, because coming out of tradition, we come out with religion, meaning so as I said, I think it sounds simplistic, but I mean, we followed, he said all the things and we were talking about the cadence of the, I mean, he preached. He could preach. And we followed the preacher. And the flock went low.

That's right. And so, I would like to get into more of why? So many black people, what was he saying to get these black people? And who were these people? And what class were they from? And why were these black people following him? And what did he, what did he give them? And what did they need? I think that he filled the void in their life and he gave them something. What? Well, he told them he was going to give them something. Whatever all the preachers do. They never give you very much anyhow. I mean, why do people go every Sunday, you know, and do what they do? But in terms of Jonestown, I think that when they went with him to another country to look for the better life, I think what he promised him was very real to them. What was so bad here? This hell, this must have been hell. And a lot of people, you know, thousands of black people feel that this is hell.

And thousands of millions of black people go to church on Sunday to feel better. That's heaven from 11 o'clock Sunday morning. So why they went, why they were black people? I can understand that. But I wonder about us, the people are, I mean, like the families that were left from the victims. I think about myself. I mean, I want to know, are there people in my family that are so alienated? Could I have had a cousin there? I mean, I really, and I've thought about this when Jonestown happened. I mean, who were these people? And I understand, I don't know if this is correct. You have to tell me, there are still some bodies that are unclaimed, is that true? I do not know the answer to that question, but certainly they were following what they considered to be a prophet. That manipulative thing that he could do. He could do that, because these followers could be the sheep, if you want to call them that,

because he was the only one talking to them. Now, the other part of it, I can't answer. And it had to do with the role of the KGB agent, Jonathan Smith. You have a... Another intelligence agency, as well, perhaps. I know of none, except in a particular lawyer's fantasy. Pardon me? I know of none, except in some lawyer's fantasies. And what was that? That there was a role by intelligence agencies in this. I see no evidence of it. The fact that you had a Russian there, the fact that you had language of Marxism and communism, we really have to get used to the fact that in most of the world, Marxism and religion are very comfortable with one another. Iran being the most recent example of it. But what about the mixture here of Marxism and Christianity? Remember the song that was sung, Lord, lived this communist dream? Yes. Lord, lived this communist dream? It's not very different than Shelley today. That's what part of... That's what part of the concern about the mixture of communism and Roman Catholicism

is one of the most potent forces in South and Central America today. The tune was different, but I mean, the tune was familiar, but it's the words that change it. From Washington, D.C., right here, where we are this evening, is Ken Rothschild. Mr. Rothschild, you're on the air. Okay. Yeah. I'm concerned with... I'd like the panel to examine this from a broader perspective of what this type of an event represents to us as a culture. Because I'm beginning to, and possibly imagine, but see patterns of bizarre crimes and bizarre deaths. I mean, I find everything from the shooting of John Lennon to the slangs and Atlanta, to even the assassination attempt on Reagan for what purposes seem ridiculous, to the fascination with the murder of Dr. Turner or up in New York to drugs, even as far back as Richard Speck and the senseless street crimes

that are going on now. So I have a feeling that there's something beginning to take place. Now, patterns that are showing a weakness or a systematic weakness in our sense of community and our sense of binding philosophy and I think it's a symptomatic of a cultural problem. Well, let's ask that question of Robert Lichten, who's with us via satellite from New York. Well, then, speaking as your man in New York, yes, I think there's something to what you're saying, at least to the extent that we are in a time where a lot of classical symbols of society, a lot of the bonds of society have fallen apart or are at least under duress. But I do think we should be a little careful about a kind of absolute statement of a series of bizarre crimes increasingly inundating us. We can sometimes have that feeling because we have a general feeling that we're losing control over our lives where confused about a lot of historical developments and a lot of trauma

in America specifically has gone through in the last few decades. But you know, that takes me back to something I wanted to say about the previous question, why were the blacks so gullible? I think very simply what Jones gave them was hope. And hope means to be connected to the larger human group. I wrote a book called The Broken Connection, Jones offered a reconnection to these people in some immortal way and they felt it, they believed it, but it's not just blacks who are gullible. After all, in other cults, one finds similarly a group of people who are the soldiers, the followers, so to speak, who are quite sincere and who believe and who seem to be gullible and they're manipulated by the higher-ups who run things with a mixture of some claim of being the Messiah on the one hand and enormous deception on the other. And that's the model here as well. Certainly, this community of hope ended in the banal democracy of death.

And do you find that often the case in religious cults, Jonathan Smith, is this the normal fate of such utopian communities? No, but end in banality very often. Yes, rarely I think do we have, you know, the occasion to do what was left to us. Most utopian communities peter out over a long time. They don't have the occasion to make a final dramatic statement to arrange bodies of black and white arms around each other, young and old arms around each other. That's a rare thing. Usually they just get old and tired and we don't hear very much from them any longer. And yet this one ended in a violent explosion which Mr. Lichtenen and our caller Mr. Rothschild from Washington suggest represents something abandoned in society. What do you think that is? What is there in this particular time

that created the Exodus from San Francisco to Jones Town? Well, that I think is easier for me to understand. First, you see, I can't put this with all of the other events he listed because those were solitary. What again is complex about this one. Is this was the creation of a community? Not a solitary acting in a sense to thwart the community. What he offered among other things in addition to what's already been said was in San Francisco surely connection with power. Real power. He really could deliver. And he had connections. He went to the president's inauguration as the president's guest. Few preachers get to do that. There was an enormous objective power. When I'm talking about charisma more recently, more preachers recently are going to inaugurals, but go ahead. Now, I think what happened is that the power began to turn against him. We moved him into civil and criminal proceedings. And so one went to a space

where he could not be interfered with. And I think my own thought would be that I think it could have gone on there a very long time, but power from outside of that place came to look at him. And in the invasion of the congressmen and that surely is how it was perceived, San Francisco and all that they left behind came as of them and all that it went sour upon which they built a great deal of hope. This is not just pie in the sky, but real hope. It seems to me was then challenged. And as he said, when you get us in a corner, people get dangerous. Which is certainly not an absurd observation. I think there was... May I come in here? Surely. I think there was real hope. I agree. And we agree on that. But I think you're a little too kind in your evaluation of Jones and his pattern. I don't think it would have gone on for a long time in the jungle with or without the impingement of external power.

I think everything we can see in his behavior suggests that he was heading for an apocalypse. He reminds me in one sense, not absolutely, but in one sense of the Japanese novelist, Mishima Yukio, who was waiting for the right occasion on which to take his life and a couple of others with him in order to make a statement. I think Jones was also consciously, preconsciously in some way, waiting for the right moment to bring about this group apocalypse, his own death and that of the group around him. And he would find it whether or not Congressman Ryan came or someone else. You think suicide was the final act in the script all along? Well, I think it was very strongly in the script. Yes, it was the final act in the script and he was determined to come to it. But he wanted to do it on the right occasion. He chastised people toward the end when they wanted to commit suicide a few days or a few weeks too soon. He wanted en masse. We have a call from Arlington, Virginia, and Mr. Jonas Bernstein. Yes, hello. Um, Jones had forensic credentials

and his social experiment was admired by many in the establishment in San Francisco on elsewhere. Charles Crown, the post reporter that was with Ryan's party and was wounded at the airport was impressed by the community's commitment to socialism. Apparently, even with the knowledge of the Soviet style to talk to our brutality against dissidents and the proliferation of arms, the media in its coverage seems to dismiss the Jones group as a cult and it must or avoided the it's totalitarian predilection. My question is, Charles' attitude to be explained, number one, and number two, doesn't this show that total commitment to an ideal such as socialism and that total commitment to socialism I heard repeated innumerable times on the tape? Doesn't this lead inevitably to the totalitarian society as described by Hanna Ehrin or Soltan Eton? Who wants to try that question? Is there something to the idea that the search for utopia often ends in totalitarianism, terror, and annihilation? Well, I would say

beware of an assumption that socialism in itself inevitably leads to something like this that makes no sense at all. But well, absolute commitment to any belief system, absolute commitment, or what I would call totalism or totalization of belief and that is an all or non-stands in which one cannot tolerate any alternative to the belief or anything less than the belief. Now, that stands whether it's held toward socialism or toward capitalism or toward a religious or secular belief of any kind of course can lead to the next step of seeking of victims and to violence. Well, in a sense, I think that if it doesn't tell one thing that, for instance, like capitalism, I would say, well, is that even be the element? But it seems to have an element of an ideal, of a progress, of a sense of a total totally new future. I think that seems to be true and drives fantasy,

it seems to be true and not to Germany and in various communist resolutions. Our phone number in Washington is 202-857-0888. And on the line right now is Gurney Williams of the Broxville, New York. Mr. Williams. Dr. Lutton. I notice a striking change in Jones' voice during tapes from the final month. And it raises the question about how much Jones' physical health may have affected his behavior. We know that his diabetes was causing severe headaches and we know that the fungus had spread from his stomach to his lungs. Could the deterioration in his health have brought him that extra small step to the point where the bullets began flying and the poison began flying? I think his physical deterioration was very important. I mean, he clearly did become ill. You can also see it in the pictures and you do hear it in the change of his voice. I don't think he can single out any one cause. They all seem to come together. And it does include

physical ill-health. He was very sick and was apparently dying. He also partly through that and partly through prior tendencies that were very strong became, in my view, psychotic with a wild paranoia that I also hear in his voice. And he did feel impinged upon by outside forces. And he did feel entrapped. There was no way out. So I would say all these things combined rather than any single cause. Has anyone traced the roots of that psychosis beyond the physical causes? You mean in his case? Yes, sir. Well, I don't know whether his psychosis as such has been carefully studied or written about by anyone. But I would suspect, I think there's evidence that he had at least tendencies in that direction prior to his ill-health, his ill-physical health, that one could find in his earlier behavior. But it may be that his physical deterioration was a very important factor in tipping him over. But for all of that, he was able to bring what Burtamae

grows and they're whispered under her voice a moment ago as that magic. What did you mean when you said he could bring magic? Well, I was talking about the preacher really. The preacher brings magic too. I think that in terms of religion, I'm not talking intellectual. pretty emotionally. We believe and as a black person, I see when I go to church, I go as a follower. I mean, that's why you choose your particular church to follow that particular religion, that particular minister, pastor, preacher. And so I don't mind that. But in its magic that happens to you, it is a feeling for an hour and a half, or two hours, a magic that can take you out of your circumstances. And when we said earlier that, someone said earlier, I think New York said earlier that this was what happened in the 60s and 70s. Well, we've needed magic since we have been here to, we've needed

to feel magic for a few hours at least. And so, religion or the ritual of worshiping, I don't have any problems with that. But, Jones had that thing. I don't know where he got it. Now, that's something, I don't know. Did you see in him any of what was referred to in the script as his animal sexuality? Was that part of the magic? Well, personally no, but I understand what they meant by that, yes. I mean, he had the preacher thing, the preacher's have. He had the magic of the preacher. I mean, you could hear it in the people, yes. And the people, yes. He had that. Celeste Quinn is on the line from Urbana, Illinois. Celeste Quinn. Yeah, hi. Hi. What I'd like to say is I think we're hitting this from the third person perspective. And, I think the really frightening thing is that it goes way beyond the race issue in those people in Jones Town and Jones and the man himself. What I'm wondering is,

what is it in my life and your life that could happen to us? Jonathan Smith, would you answer that and be very personal? Well, I think that the, the capacity to, you want take ourselves too seriously, the capacity to listen to ourselves at times, to exclusively is surely there. In all of us, Jones again, it seems to me is, is most interesting because, again, I repeat, he was so public for so long. This is not a, a Charlie Manson living in Death Valley in an abandoned movie set. That's somehow we can understand. That's a cook. This one is one who talks like us, who he says it himself. If I walked among you, you wouldn't recognize me. And I think it's, it's those capacities, which are, I think, present in, in all of us. It's the very thin line between

love and hate. Between powers that can go in either way, all of those things I, I take it are in, in all of us. What about you, Robert Lichten? Is there something in you, you've studied others for a long time? Is there something in you that might respond to Jones like summons? I'd have to say no. It is not going to be arrogant about it, but I have an aversion. Maybe it's partly from my very first study being this whole issue of totalism, but I've developed a kind of allergy to calls for absolute utopia and for totalistic claims made by anyone. I do think that Jones is not an ordinary man, not just like you or me. I think he's extreme and special. But what we are saying, and here I agree, our own tendencies toward arrogance, toward wanting a little bit of worship from others, or on the other side

of the coin, and it's the same coin in a way, our unwillingness to think for ourselves, the ease of sliding into becoming a rote follower. Maybe these are the tendencies that each of us has in some way, and I can't claim to be a devoid of them, that make us, at least, understand this phenomenon and bring us a little closer to it. But I do think he's extreme and we shouldn't just say he's just like us. Let's ask us, somewhat about him who grew up in a church in which Jones preached. On the line is Cheryl Cox from Baltimore, and she used to listen to Jones preach. What about that, Cheryl Cox? Well, it's kind of difficult to come in touch with this, because I've been working on it for a couple of years now trying to see somebody that, sort of a personal possession in my distant past that maybe the preacher was a funny school teacher in your church. And suddenly, these catapults are national and international recognition of everyone think about. And I hear other people who did not know the

man talk about him. I knew him in a church in Hamilton, Ohio, at 648 Keaton Street. It was basically a storefront church brick and a little wooden street, and upstairs was a cold stove. It must have been maybe 1956, 55-56. I was between the ages of 5 and I knew him from 5 until I was 10. But the impression is just as crystal clear as if I had seen him today. When I heard his voice on the radio, it was just like I was hearing him when he was must have been in his early 20s. When people asked me what was it that brought others to Jones at that time in the mid-50s, in Hamilton, Ohio, the mid-west, there was no other interracial church, and there was a very small church. I think the thing that impressed me the most was the love I felt as a child was in that church. It's very hard for me to gather now what happened to this man

and this incredible power he had. Did you feel that love? Did you feel that love from him personally? As a child, I thought it from the group. You could get his preaching with much difference in the inner church and the inner church and the inner church and the inner church that I came up in a Pentecostal home. Now I'm no longer Pentecostal, kind of background that with fire and brown stone. At any other Pentecostal church I had ever been to, not going to make it to heaven. The Methodist to heaven. The people in the church across the street were going to make it. Then, Jim Jones about love, and he talked about brotherhood, and there were other churches reprieving this unity and segregation and separation. He was teaching unity. And from everything I felt about him, it's very hard as a child now to say, what happened somewhere between Hamilton and Ohio and Guyana? You never once saw any early animation of such an attitude or behavior that became Jonestown. No, I didn't. I

never saw him. I talked to other people because not only my mother, but all my aunts were involved, and they were business women. They were, you know, fairly aware people. Were they mesmerized by his preaching? Yes, I mean, I can I remember in 1973, I went home and my mother had a picture on her panel. You know, it was and he continued to donate to him. And it was a point. Now, when I wanted to an oral history, some day I'm going to go back home and talk to all these people and do an oral history of what they remember of this early man, because if everything I've read never even mentioned Hamilton, Ohio, and apparently he was there right before he went to an Indian apolis. Thank you very much, Cheryl Cox. Let's go now to John Vincent from Tulsa, Oklahoma, Mr. Vincent. Hello there. How are you? Just fine. Thank you. Listen, I was listening to your commentary on the John's Towns incident. And I find it in treating because, first of all, when a public personality, such as a

minister or spiritual leader, makes such promises as this minister did or this person did, it affects particularly the black people. I'm black. All the black in particular needs being met, full-comapixed income and promises of security. I'm not having to desire or want for food. Those kind of promises have a lot to do to people being a little gullible. And I find that for my listening, Mr. Jones did make a number of promises that people readily accepted. And then he was like, I'm from a Pentecostal church and I'm yet in a word church, a Pentecostal church. And I find that what has happened here, the music as the young lady was singing sounded very much like gospel music that you would hear in many churches. It had that that full-type touch. And yet the lyrics were different. I think his speaking was certainly full of force and bigger excitement. And that

was something that the folk had fallen on. Could you have followed him to Jones Town? I did not go. No. I say could you. Would I have? Could you have? I'd doubt if I would have. I noticed the early days. See, there are many movements that are imitate the full gospel or Pentecostal movement. And there are many people that promise healings. And yet they always associate the healing to themselves. I did it. And I think from that early tape, I could hear him alluding to the fact that he was the one that did a lot of healing. Bertomey Grovesner is shaking your head negatively over here. How? Oh, I was just shaking my head. I was thinking about what you said about the music. And it's true. It was gospel music. I think that the people, I was just agreeing with you really. I was shaking my head. But it was in, I was hearing the the music of the tapes. Let me ask you, Bertomey, this is a good occasion to ask you,

how do you explain personally the consistent theme throughout the discourse of Jones Town on the third world and their identity with the third world? Well, you say, I think that I don't think you can separate color race out of this this tragedy. Because this is what the black community talks about, we understand all that, we understand all of that. And that's why, I mean, I'm just looking at this and he said, you know, rather than surrender to capitalists and fascists and the enemy, I mean, it's political. And the black community talks about that all the time. So they felt he was talking to, I mean, keep saying the same thing. Oh, but he was talking to what they needed to hear, to the hope of the the future with them. And I think that these people went into into the white night. I agree with that. Let's go to a call from Washington DC and Michael Wishert, Mr. Wishert. Yes, good evening. I was interested in why

Jim Jones made the tapes in the first place. I'm interested because if I might make a large, large parallel, Nixon also made tapes of Watergate. And it seems to me that recording yourself on tape is doing this posterity. Jonathan Smith, what about that? Why did he leave behind all these tapes? Well, I think it's quite clear from what we've heard. This was a historical event. Indeed, it was, in his words, the greatest historical event the world had ever seen. I don't think it's a good parallel to Nixon. Nixon, I don't think ever intended the tapes to be. So rapidly public, this man did. What you were getting was the gospel preached. What you were getting was being in on, in his view, the single most important moment in human history. What does it say that he wanted posterity?

No, so much about that moment. Because I take it, there was a message for us. That's the language as he used it of revolutionary suicide. We're not just committing suicide. We're committing revolutionary suicide. To bring about what? To bring about, I think, in a vision, a vision that he had of racial equality. We have to understand in that sense, Jones is a very particular American figure going after a very particular American problem. It wasn't immortality. It wasn't a lot of other things. It was to solve the question of racism. The last gesture was a gesture designed to bring that about. Oh, I just don't agree with that at all. Robert Lichten, what you disagree. I do disagree because surely he stood for racial equality and his group was built around that. But when you listen to those tapes and read the material, he humiliated blacks as well as whites.

There was a wild demagogic element here that was hell-bent for immortality. You can't leave out that part of the equation. He was no pure seeker of racial equality. He was a much more complex figure than that. There is a dimension here too of technology that we're leaving out and is not easy to understand. But I think that the mass suicide, the 913 people instead of five or ten, has something to do with technology and the way in which it was used and the way in which the group was organized and carried and technologically managed. I think there is something in common with Nixon. They're very different obviously, but there was some tinge of a quest for immortalizing one's words in Nixon as well in leaving those tapes, even though the two men are very different in other ways. Our last call, Dr. Lichten, we have just a few minutes left. Our last call is from Stephen Fagan of Silver Spring, Maryland. Mr. Fagan, briefly. I had two concerns that were only

briefly touched by the tapes. The first one was the murderous doctor. I was confused for several years as to how he got mixed up with Jones. But apparently he was a junkie or something and Jones supposedly cured him or something. Do you have any further information on how a doctor could wind up like a Nazi doctor killing thousands of people? Maybe I could say. The information you have about the doctor. It just happens that I've been studying Nazi doctors in the last few years and I was very struck by the fact that it was none other than the doctor and the group who mixed the poison. It's part of the whole tragedy. Apparently, I don't know so much about it, but apparently he was drawn out of a kind of idealism to the group as many people were and he had been some kind of addict and had been cured with Jones' help. And he was another one of the idealistic members of the group. But it's also true, and this is another dimension that's important to look at here in elsewhere. Doctors often are called upon and lend themselves to doing dirty work in the way of killing or suppressing. And it has to do

with doctor's relationship, I think, to the whole shamanistic, magical, omnipotent tradition. And this man certainly got into that in the mixing of the poison and distributing it, and lots of other concerns. Somebody on your panel mentioned that I noticed it also in the tapes. The great contempt he had for his followers saying that so-and-so couldn't even pronounce socialism and so-and-so couldn't do this and so-and-so couldn't do that, berating them for their lack of education and everything else. But yet within the group, there were people I felt who were using the group for ulterior motive, such as the woman attorney who was not ramping but being very tedious in her presentation. Your question is to find out how many people-your question our time is really going. And my question is, who were these people and what has happened to them? For example, that- Jonathan Smith, did she die or did she leave and is now behind something else? Jonathan Smith? No, I have no idea. I guess there'll always be mysteries about

Jonestown that will plague us as long as our curiosity can be aroused. I thought in reading Georgetown at the other night of Jonestown when he talked about the numb prodigality of our acquaintance with horror being a radical human defeat. Thank to all of you for listening, thanks to our guest, Bertomey Grossner, Robert J. Lichten, Jonathan Smith, and thanks to our production staff for National Public Radio's program, our director, Joe McLeanow, our production assistants, Nina Ellis, Coddy Simon, Steve Sullivan, and Donna Limerick, Joanne Wallace, our technical assistance, Jude Franco in Bob Knock. This program was produced by Chris Koch and Deborah Amos, executive producer Barbara Cohen, and our funds are provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting by you. I'm Bill Moyers. This is NPR National Public Radio.