Jonestown Welfare Checks

The Jonestown Banks
by John Judge, 1982

The assets of Jim Jones’ People’s Temple have yet to be fully accounted, but early research in the press and by independent investigators put the total between $26 million and $2 billion. Following the money leads down a twisted trail of international banks, dummy fronts, real estate investments and conflicting government reports. Various sources estimate a total of at least $17-$20 million in foreign investments, and property worth $2.5 million that passed through deed, sale and ownership from 1976 to 1979. Some $12 million dollars was deposited in mysterious accounts in Panama.

During the recent scandal involving the Vatican Bank, Bank Ambrosiana and deceased Italian financier Roberto Calvi, information surfaced indicating that some of the siphoned millions went to Panamanian

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Drinking the Kool-Aid

Jonestown survivors talk of concentration camp existence
By Robert James, The Stanford Daily, Volume 175, Issue 1, 29 January 1979

Two members of the Peoples Temple who escaped the Jonestown camp last November addressed a psychology class here last Tuesday. Both Diane Louie, 26, and Richard Clark, 42, made their first public presentation as part of Prof. Philip Zimbardo’s class, “The Human Connection.” Louie and Clark have been active members of the Temple for over six years, they said.

They fled the settlement into the Guyana jungle November 17, the day of the arrival of the late Rep. Leo Ryan (D-San Mateo). The following day, Ryan and his party were ambushed and the mass suicides occurred.

The speakers attributed psychic powers to the group’s leader, the Rev. Jim lones, including the ability to

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Jonestown Genocide

Jonestown: Population Zero
The Jonestown Massacre: CIA Mind Control Run Amok?

Excerpted from 50 Greatest Conspiracies of All Time
By Jonathan Vankin and John Whalen, Copyright © 1995

On November 18, 1978, in a cleared-out patch of Guyanese jungle, the Reverend Jim Jones ordered the 911 members of his flock to kill themselves by drinking a cyanide potion, and they did.

The cultists were brainwashed by the megalomaniac Jones, who had named their jungle village after himself and held them as virtual slaves, if not living zombies. Jones himself was found dead. He’d shot himself in the head, or someone else had shot him. Square-jaw, jet black hair and sunglasses, looking like a secret service agent on antipsychotic drugs, Jones takes his place alongside Charles Manson in America’s iconography of evil.

But was Jones really a lone madman as Americans are so often advised about their villains? Is it plausible that more than nine hundred people took their own lives willingly, simply because he told them to? Or is there another explanation?

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Jonestown Concentration Camp

The Untold Story of the Jonestown Massacre
by John Judge, 1985

You Know the Official Version

A fanatic religious leader in California led a multiracial community into the jungles of remote Guyana to establish a socialist utopia. The People’s Temple, his church, was in the heart of San Francisco and drew poor people, social activists, Blacks and Hispanics, young and old. The message was racial harmony and justice, and criticism of the hypocrisy of the world around his followers.[2]

The Temple rose in a vacuum of leadership at the end of an era. The political confrontations of the 60s were almost over, and religious cults and “personal transformation” were on the rise. Those who had preached a similar message on the political soap box were gone, burnt out, discredited, or dead. The counter-culture had apparently degenerated into drugs and violence. Charlie Manson was the only visible image of the period. Suddenly, religion seemed to offer a last hope.[3]

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