The Jonestown Carnage

The Jonestown Carnage: a CIA Crime is a book published by Progress Publishers, USSR. S.F.Alinin, B.G.Antonov and A.N.Itskov jointly authored the book in Russian, which was later translated into English by Nadeshda Burova and Sergei Chulaki. Published in 1987, the book gives a version of the Jonestown cult death different from the one given by the U.S. media and government.

The book claims that "the official version about 'the suicide of the religious fanatics' in Jonestown, which was skillfully circulated in the mass media, was contrived by the US administration as a cover-up for a monstrous act of predetermined murder of several hundred American dissidents by the US special services." (Page 5-6).

The San Francisco Bay Guardian on Peoples Temple
On March 31, 1977 The San Francisco Bay Guardian carried an article on Peoples Temple. Written by its journalist Bob Levering, the article describes the life in Peoples Temple in San Francisco before most of its members shifted their base to Guyana. Jonestown Carnage quotes extensively from the article. Extracts from the article as quoted by the book (The sub-headings do not form part of the article):

On Peoples Temple
The biggest religion story these days is the phenomenon of Peoples Temple…that has been in San Francisco less than five years but has already become the largest single Protestant congregation in the state (more than 20000 members)…publishing… the monthly Peoples Forum (they distribute between 600,000 and 1,000,000 copies to every neighborhood in San Francisco)…The church…has a free meals program…It conducts a massive human service program including…its own medical and legal clinics, a home for mentally disabled children and four nursing homes…

...The leader of this rather unusual church is the Rev. Jim Jones, who was recently appointed to the SF Housing Commission by Mayor Moscone…

On Peoples Forum, Temple's Journal
A quick look at a recent issue of People Forum indicates the wide variety of concerns his church addresses: there’s a lead story on Laura Allende: Woman of Courage, about a recent visit to the church by the slain Chilean president’s sister; an Open Letter to Local Nazis, condemning these abominable racists; a long editorial about the link between unemployment and crime, saying people must face up to some of the vicious inequities and injustice in our social order…

On Peoples Temple's Church Service
A church service at Peoples Temple…is hard to forget…the mood in the church when [Jim] arrived (he prefers to be called Jim rather than Rev. Mr. Jones or Pastor Jones)…reminded me of a United Farm Workers rally…The congregation was perhaps 75% black…all ages and races were well represented in the crowd of some 3,000 people.

On various programs of Peoples Temple
''These are some of the …Peoples Temple programs:


 * A clinic in the San Francisco …
 * A physical therapy facility…for senior and handicapped persons…
 * A drug rehabilitation program…that claims to have rehabilitated 300 former drug addicts…
 * A legal aid program…
 * Four nursing homes for seniors…
 * Contribution for…the Telegraph Hill Medical Clinic, the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union), the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People)…the United Farm Workers…

''Peoples Temple resembles a social movement more than a normal church. And the church service I saw, likewise, resembled a Civil Rights rally with Martin Luther King in the South during the early Sixties…''

On Jim Jones' sermon
Soon after Jones arrived the congregation sang the old movement standards O, Freedom and We Shall Overcome.''

Jones’ message is that people should subordinate their personal desires in the service of their fellow human beings for the greater good of humanity.

…He saw apathy as one of the major reasons why the CIA got away with giving money to support the despotic regimes in Iran and Chile and why the American criminal justice system punishes poor defendants severely and let off the rich ones.

''He then personalized how he thinks people should fight against these injustices. I am in this battle and I may be shot or put in jail, he said. Then he pointed out that many of this country’s working poor are proceeding with materialistic illusions…"I have guilt to know that my taxes have gone to the Shah of Iran or to Chile."''

…He has made his share of enemies for the political stands he has taken and has received more than his share of threats from local Nazis and other right-wingers.

Temple's plan to sue the US government
Citing October 4, 1978 issue of San Francisco Examiner, the book says that shortly before the massacre, the People's Temple leaders in Guyana threw down a challenge to the US administration and that they were going to file a multi-million dollar suit against the US government within 90 days. The book says, "the People's Temple charged that federal agencies, among them the CIA, the FBI and the Postal Service, at the Federal Government's instigation, conspired to destroy the Jonestown community, which even the American press called a unique experiment in socialist lifestyle."(Page 6)

The people from the Temple were frequently in touch with the Soviet Embassy in Georgetown, capital of Guyana. In their first visit on a December day in 1977 to the Soviet Embassy, the members of Peoples Temple briefed the Soviet Consul, Fyodor M. Timofeyev. They told him then that "the members of the Jonestown community were all US citizens who had fled their home country for political reasons and that they were now engaged in settling up a socialist agricultural and medical cooperative in Guyana." (Page 8)

Jim Jones, a Marxist
According to the book, a week after their first visit, the delegates of People's Temple including Jim Jones' wife, Marceline, visited the Soviet Embassy again. She handed over to the Consul a typewritten text of her husband's short biography, according to which Jim Jones was an atheist and a Marxist. But fearing a McCarthy style witch-hunt, he was in search for another vehicle to politicize working people, which ultimately resulted in the formation of People's Temple. In support of the claim that Jim Jones was a Marxist, the book reproduces a photocopy of a New York Times (undated) report with the headline: "Wife depicts Jones as Marxist". M

Temple's plan to migrate to Soviet Union
The authors quote extensively from letters written shortly before the massacre by the Richard Tropp, General Secretary of Peoples Temple, to the Soviet Ambassador to Guyana. In a letter dated 17 March 1978, Leonnora M. Perkins, a member of the Peoples Temple leadership group, informs that Jim Jones was an admirer of Soviet Union, was schooled in Marxist Leninist thought and expressed their desire to migrate to the Soviet Union to set up a community. The temple wanted to transfer their "endangered assets to a bank within the Soviet Union, where we can at least be assured that, should efforts to destroy our community succeed in one way or another, our hard-earned and carefully-husbanded resources would not be confiscated or otherwise expropriated by the enemies of the people, and used against their interests, but would be salvaged and bequeathed to that cause ... ... ... ... THE CAUSE OF THE PEOPLE, INTERNATIONAL SOCIALISM."

Citing the book, The Strongest Poison, written by Mark Lane and published by Hawthorn Books, New York in 1980, the book says that the US State Department was perfectly aware of the Temple's plans to resettle in the Soviet Union. The temple's office in Georgetown received several phone calls from the US Embassy about the reason for the visit of temple authorities to Soviet embassy.

Mass murder
The book claims that the following description is what happened in Jonestown on 18 November 1978 after the congressman and journalists had left the commune: "Genuine information to this effect was supplied by those few people who survived the massacre and escaped through jungles....

"At 19.30 Johnny Jones, Jim Jones' adopted son, who had shortly before gone to Port Kaituma to see off Ryan and the journalists, returned to Jonestown. The boy was all excited as he rushed into his father's house where all the leading members of the Temple were present. The news of the assassinations on the airstrip of Port Kaituma came as a shock....

''"A special force broke through to Jim Jones' house and killed him. After that mass extermination of people began. When the last shots were fired, there were still about 400 left alive, mostly women, children and old folk. They were assembled near the central pavilion and then were divided up into groups of 30 and taken under armed escort to different parts of the settlement.  Each group was told to line up so as to receive a "sedative", which was a mixture of tranquillisers and potassium cyanide.  The makers of this poisonous brew did not realize, however, that the tranquilizers did not delay the instantaneous lethal action of the cyanide. The "cocktail" took effect almost instantly.  Those who took it fell to the ground, their bodies contorted by convulsions, and died.  Now everybody understood the nature of the brew offered by the murderers.  Some people began to resist taking the poison. They were shot at point blank range. Others had poison poured into their mouths by force. Women were grabbed by the throat, their mouths opened with daggers. It was easier with the children. The murderers took them in their arms, pinched their noses and poured the poison down their throats. They also used ampule injectors. People were forced to lie on the ground with their faces down, and were then injected right through their clothes. Those who attempted to run away were killed on the spot with firearms."''

Assassination of Leo Ryan
The book alleges that the murder of the Congressman Leo Ryan was the result of a conspiracy hatched by various US agencies. The book claims that during his visit to the Temple, Leo Ryan formed an opinion favorable to the Peoples Temple and this went against the stand taken by US agencies, and that the alleged "mass suicide" was in fact a massacre, which the US agencies successfully covered up with the help of the media.

Covering Up Traces
Citing various sources (including Lab World, “a respected journal read by directors of laboratories and forensic pathologists throughout the US”) the books says that immediately after the massacre, efforts were made by US agencies to cover up the real facts. Thus, according to the book, no proper autopsy was conducted or toxicological samples collected which would have helped determine the cause of death. Summarizing the medical work done by the American military, the Lab World (issue dated March 1979) says: ''The contradictions, inconsistencies, and questionable truths related through these interviews leave many unanswered questions. In fact, the entire episode suggests government mismanagement or a cover-up of the true facts. The statements given by various government officials lend fuel to accusations made by people like Mark Lane, who served as legal counsel for Jones’ Peoples Temple. Lane proclaimed that a U.S. conspiracy existed to destroy the cult and its leader. The totally unprofessional and questionable handling of the bodies and the failure to establish cause and manner of death do not dispute Lane’s charges. Unfortunately, his claims are strengthened because there are so few facts about what actually happened. It is regrettable that professional medical personnel failed to do what the newest member fresh from college of a clinical medical laboratory would have known to do.''