Jonestown Query

[bks]

Here's the email correspondence I had with David Parker Wise. Earliest emails at the bottom.

I have to say, I'm still not 100% clear on the operation he's describing. Please suggest any questions for future contacts, as I'd like to keep the line of communication open with him:

**********

Re: jonestown query
Thursday, June 18, 2009 7:42 PM
From: "hopetek@juno.com" <hopetek@juno.com>
To: bksacks@yahoo.com

By incident I am talking about the mass suicide. Jim had people getting up on stage voting for the mass suicide. Some of the same people that have gone on TV acting like it was all "murder" are on transcripts voting for mass suicide over the mic....when given a clear choice they voted for the suicide over going to the Soviet Union. It was hard for me to get out of the church. Of course I was a Pastor. I refused to participate in any wrong doing. Others were being made to participate in wrong doing right in front of me. It no doubt got harder and harder to get out of the church but many of the people who stayed could have gotten out over and over if they chose. People stuck around and participated in wrong doing that I was against. Also a sociopath does most of their wrong doing through others. These same people that were the hands and feet for Jim then are acting like victims now. But still......It was a mass suicide.  
After the suicide a team of CIA were preceded by Green Berets who had instructions to turn over the bodies and make sure there were no explosives and mop up survivors. The CIA did not have long there and that is why in a hurry they left a tape that was clearly made "after" the suicides.
Is it so unreasonable to come in with orders to "mop up" survivors since a Congressman had just been murdered along with American newsmen? On the other hand consider the allegation that brought the Congressman was that people were being held against their will so one would think that "survivors" waiving their hands for help would not be shot down. Still, Green Berets may not be wrong for refusing to take any risks. Remember suicide bombers may have been posturing as defectors as far as they were concerned. If you notice,Jim Jones had created what he was afraid of; soldiers coming in killing Temple members. But what was the real reason for the orders to "Mop up" survivors? 
Huff was not the decorated soldier he pretended to be. He came forward onto the news posturing as a representative of the Green Berets and telling a story of mass murder that led into right wing conspiracy theory propaganda such as stories that people had been taken to Guyana gagged and bound, kept drugged up and in the end chased down and shot in the jungle...and forcibly injected between their shoulder blades.
Of course they were injected between their shoulder blades but there was no "forceably" to it. The people were dead, and the injections were not carried out by Annie Moore and others. Rather, they were carried out on corpses by the CIA. Witnesses of the mass suicide that got away are proof this has to be the case. And when looked at through this lense you can see now that it was important to the CIA that there were no witnesses. Thus the orders to mop up were likely not because the CIA or the soldiers were afraid of bombs or guns, or because they were afraid to trust survivors. Instead they were about to rewrite history and they did not want anyone alive to tell a different story. Soon, however, it was too late. Survivors who had watched the suicide taking place appeared on the scene and Mootoo and others had to reverse their stories to fit the tales by the witnesses and the "death tape" which surfaced later.
You are welcome to share my conversations with anyone. I like forums but am not currently participating in any.
Dave
 
On Thu, 18 Jun 2009 15:23:49 -0700 (PDT) Bryan Sacks <bksacks@yahoo.com> writes:
Certainly, Dave. Please feel free to share with Mac. I've read Mac's work and am impressed with the range of work that appears on the site. I had lunch this week with Robert Helms, who spoke very highly of him.

May I share our conversation among discussants on a forum where there is interest in these matters?

I know this is all very familiar to you, but I still am unclear. You write "Right after the incident he made fraudulent statements as part of a campaign to make it look like mass murder. "

By "incident" you mean, the Green Berets shooting of survivors? And by "make it look like mass murder", you mean make it appear that Jones and his henchmen killed the Temple members? Just want to be clear.

Other questions: About how many people are we talking about that were killed by the Green Berets after the poisoning?

Also,to Mac: have you come to the same conclusions about the "mop-up" effort? Or do you dispute the Green Beret story told by Huff and Grist? 

Gratefully,
Bryan

--- On Thu, 6/18/09, hopetek@juno.com <hopetek@juno.com> wrote:

From: hopetek@juno.com <hopetek@juno.com>
Subject: Re: jonestown query
To: bksacks@yahoo.com
Cc: fieldingmcgehee@yahoo.com
Date: Thursday, June 18, 2009, 3:27 PM

 
I was looking into things, trying to discover what the truth was. I looked up Huff using confidential methods and found him in a remote location. I Got statements from his former wife and family. I got copies of his military records, his birth certificate, social, participation in the School of the Americas, etc. Right after the incident he made fraudulent statements as part of a campaign to make it look like mass murder. In a way it was, but not the way they wanted to make it look. The radical right, the CIA, etc., did not want "revolutionary suicide" to be a successful form of political protest. They generated pictures of stacked bodies with bullet and crossbow wounds and showed the families and others as part of psychological counseling that they offered the families of the soldiers who went in there. At that early stage they were selling the notion of mass bullet wounds and cross bow wounds which real witnesses did not actually see.
 It was the cold war. This was a group talking of leaving the states and immigrating to Russia in political opposition to "Capitalism". Unfortunately Jim had become a dictator in his own right, but the CIA did not want him to be recieved by the public and they did not want the Left to win through this anti-war, anti-right protest group. For years after the suicides the event was presented as a mass murder by disinformation specialists. This depiction was undone by witnesses that surfaced.  Survivors and tape recordings betrayed their stories that people were chased down and shot and stories that everyone was injected in the back with syringes, yet the bodies were injected between the shoulder blades, which had to happen after the fact. There are reasons which I can go into where Huff's family was motivated to expose him. I know I need to  publish a book but havent sought an agent or publisher yet. With your permission, professor, I am going to forward a cc to Mac in case he wants to join in the discussion.
 
dave
 
On Thu, 18 Jun 2009 08:34:57 -0700 (PDT) Bryan Sacks <bksacks@yahoo.com> writes:
Dave,

I really appreciate the reply, as I know it can't be easy to discuss. I hope we can continue the dialogue, since it's a very important subject. Your reply provokes a few questions:

1. How did you come into contact with Huff, Hooker or any of the special forces-types in the first place? I would have thought their mission would be top secret, and thus it would be very tough to get in contact with them.

2. You write:

"Right after the tragedy Huff's family, who no longer even like him and have no reason to lie, along with the wives of other soldiers, were all shown slides of stacked bodies with bullet and crossbow wounds that actually did not happen. There was a concerted effort to make it look like mass murder at that time."

The bullet and crossbow wounds that you write "did not happen": what does that mean? Were these wounds fabricated? Did the Guyanese coroner see these bodies you are referring to? The official story has it that it was a mass suicide, and to my knowledge no one was said to die of crossbow wounds.  The "concerted effort to make it look like mass murder" was an effort by whom, and directed at whom? Are you saying an effort by the government directed at the families? 

Thanks for any clarification you can offer.

Bryan

--- On Thu, 6/18/09, hopetek@juno.com <hopetek@juno.com> wrote:

From: hopetek@juno.com <hopetek@juno.com>
Subject: Re: jonestown query
To: bksacks@yahoo.com
Date: Thursday, June 18, 2009, 9:19 AM

Oh yea, Roger's comments on the site. Sorry.
Here is what happened. I interviewed Hooker and Huff as well. I have not posted the paperwork exposing Huff or the interview. I am going to try to do more this year. I have been absorbed trying to show cars running on water and such.
Right after the tragedy Huff's family, who no longer even like him and have no reason to lie, along with the wives of other soldiers, were all shown slides of stacked bodies with bullet and crossbow wounds that actually did not happen. There was a concerted effort to make it look like mass murder at that time. Huff was actually a fraud trained at the School of Americas and used to introduce the notion of mass murder. I will try to make time to put more information up this year. I have just had a terrible time getting any website help.
 
Dave
 
 
On Wed, 17 Jun 2009 07:50:32 -0700 (PDT) Bryan Sacks <thismessage:/mc/compose?to=bksacks@yahoo.com> writes:
David,

I found them on your website (jonestownlegacy) under the questions and answers section. 

http://www.jonestownlegacy.com/qna.htm

Thanks again, Bryan



--- On Wed, 6/17/09, hopetek@juno.com <hopetek@juno.com> wrote:

From: hopetek@juno.com <hopetek@juno.com>
Subject: Re: jonestown query
To: bksacks@yahoo.com
Date: Wednesday, June 17, 2009, 8:41 AM

Thank you for the query. Would you link me to Roger Stacy's comments and then after I read his comments I will be more informed and I will discuss the topic with you better.
 
sincerely,
Dave
 


ITuesday, June 16, 2009 2:02 PM
From: "Bryan Sacks" <bksacks@yahoo.com>
To: hopetek@juno.com

Important correction and apology
David,

I misstated something in my previous query. It wasn't you who claimed the 16 Green Berets committed suicide. You recounted being told that this was the story told about these men, but that psychologists dispute that suicide would likely follow an event like they were involved in, if I understoof correctly.

I am sorry for misstating your position.

Regards,
Bryan

 
 
On Tue, 16 Jun 2009 12:56:24 -0700 (PDT) Bryan Sacks <bksacks@yahoo.com> writes:
David,

I am a teacher at a Philadelphia university, and I've taken an interest in the Peoples Temple and the events at Jonestown in November, 1978. I recently came across your articles on the subject. Thank you for your eloquence and concern for telling as complete a story as your experience allows.

I want to ask you about one controversial aspect of your story: you write that you have spoken to military men who were deployed to Jonestown in the aftermath of the suicides and murders. This, obviously, is not acknowledged in official versions of the Jonestown story. Yet you name these people (one was called "Scott Hooker", I believe, not his real name, but one which would identify him to his fellow secret operatives). Another was a man named Huff.

You further claim that 16 of the men who took part in this operation later committed suicide. I saw that Roger Stacy disputed your claims to this effect, and became intrigued to know more about this.

Can you offer any further detail about this aspect of the events in Jonestown? Is Charles Huff still alive, and approachable on the subject? What would you suggest to someone who was interested in confirming this facet of the story?

Best Regards,
Bryan Sacks

[Fat Lady Singing]

Here's the email correspondence I had with David Parker Wise. Earliest emails at the bottom.

I have to say, I'm still not 100% clear on the operation he's describing. Please suggest any questions for future contacts, as I'd like to keep the line of communication open with him:

Thanks so much for taking the time and trouble to first contact Wise and then to share his responses with us. This is why I love RI so much.

Anyway... here's what I'm picking up from Wise -- my interpretation, if you will.

It's important to him that we understand that most of the people at Jonestown actually chose to commit suicide, rather than having been coerced. The view most people have of Jonestown is that while some drank the Kool-Aid willingly, the majority were forced at gunpoint to drink -- forced by Jones' most zealous supporters or, for the conspiracy-minded, by the military or government. I think Wise is saying that this view is false, and that it has been propagated by the CIA through various disinformation techniques.

I think Wise believes the CIA has propagated this story of mass murder to the point of even hinting that the CIA itself was involved. But why? I think Wise is saying that it was to discredit Liberation theology, the radical Left in general, and mass suicide as an effective means of social protest. In addition, I'm guessing that Wise still supports at least some of the spirit of Liberation theology, so that might help explain where he's coming from.

At any rate, I think this is a particularly relevant passage:

In 1978 it was the CIA's job to represent the Radical Right in the destruction of the Radical Left.... After leaving the United States, Jones was attempting to transform his followers from the peace and love of Jesus to the by-any-means-necessary and change-only-comes-out-of-the-barrel-of-a-gun philosophies of more violent leaders such as Mao Tse-Tung and Malcolm X. Ironically, Peoples Temple had been founded as a passivist and humanitarian group that denounced violence, dictatorship and totalitarian government. But over the years, Jones' drug-induced psychosis mounted. He became very passive-aggressive and was dreaming and scheming in his war against the Right Wing, capitalism and the CIA - just as the CIA schemed to demonize both him and Liberation Theology.

We know this: On that day the Radical Right enjoyed the destruction of the Radical Left. In his megalomaniacal desire to go down in history, Jim Jones did the work for them. He did not realize he was doing the Radical Right a favor. He actually believed that this ridiculous plan would be seen internationally as a meaningful and virtuous protest. In Buddhist societies, both individual and group suicides have been seen as effective protests, but it simply did not work in American society.

(Personally, it bothers me that Wise conflates Mao and Malcolm X, but I take his point about Jones.) So I guess he's telling a sort of "wheels within wheels" story about Jonestown -- one that's not hard to imagine being close to the truth.

ETA: I think his point about the Green Berets is that they were staging a mass murder, not that they actually committed mass murder. I think.

[American Dream]

bks wrote:

When I told him I found Wise's article on that site (I had looked for it after bph posted it here), he explained that Moore and McGehee will let anyone associated with the PT write whatever they like there, whether or not it's 'conspiratorial'. They will not silence anyone directly associated with the Peoples' Temple. That counts for something with me, even though I find the anti-conspiracism foolish.

If Judge, Meiers and others are correct and Jonestown was indeed a CIA-linked mind control experiment in which the higher-ups were perpetrators who survived for that reason, then giving these same perpetrators "freedom" to spin endlessly against conspiracy and for the People's Temple as a pillar of the Left, means very, very little.

This should be fairly obvious, but nonetheless I think it's important to highlight this aspect in particular- that much of the narrative on Jonestown has been provided by people who are quite possibly agents of the Secret State...

[lupercal]

If Judge, Meiers and others are correct and Jonestown was indeed a CIA-linked mind control experiment in which the higher-ups were perpetrators who survived for that reason, then giving these same perpetrators "freedom" to spin endlessly against conspiracy and for the People's Temple as a pillar of the Left, means very, very little.

This should be fairly obvious, but nonetheless I think it's important to highlight this aspect in particular- that much of the narrative on Jonestown has been provided by people who are quite possibly agents of the Secret State...

I don't think it's obvious, but it's definitely worth pointing out. I got about as far as "Of course I was a Pastor" before I figured this guy has to be a spook.

Thanks BKS for bringing this material forward as I hadn't known much about Jonestown apart from the official accounts. Oddly enough the website run by survivors fits a pattern I've seen before where a catastrophe I strongly suspect was an intel operation has a semi-offical website devoted to it featuring "survivors" who insist that the official story is true.

[bks]

Have had further exchanges with Wise and the chief investigator at jonestown.sdsu.edu, Fielding McGehee.

I will post more correspondence soon.

[bks]

More correspondence. Line of communication remains open, it seems. Bottom emails are the earliest:

*****************************

Re: jonestown query
Saturday, June 20, 2009 1:39 PM
From: "hopetek@juno.com" <hopetek@juno.com>
To: bksacks@yahoo.com

Mac as I understand has been going through a lot of hard times lately including deaths in the family. Here is what I am willing to do:
If you are interested I will write an article for you guys that saves back some information which will be in the book but still tells a bunch of breakthrough specifics with either tape recorded interviews, confirmed quotes and or links to scanned documents which will show proofs that will get rid of arguments over credibility. As I said before, the credibility argument, or to reword it...discrediting me... actually comes from some corrupt survivors who do not want me to offer an entire "world" of exposing information which will make them out to have been liars over these thirty years.

Re: jonestown query
Saturday, June 20, 2009 1:27 PM
From: "Fielding McGehee" <fieldingmcgehee@yahoo.com>
To: "Bryan Sacks" <bksacks@yahoo.com>
Cc: hopetek@juno.com


Dear David and Bryan;

The conspiracy I was referring to was not the Green Berets going in afterwards. It was what David wrote earlier in this conversation:

"The radical right, the CIA, etc., did not want "revolutionary suicide" to be a successful form of political protest. They generated pictures of stacked bodies with bullet and crossbow wounds and showed the families and others as part of psychological counseling that they offered the families of the soldiers who went in there. At that early stage they were selling the notion of mass bullet wounds and cross bow wounds which real witnesses did not actually see."

In my view, a agency which "generated pictures" -- and doing so secretly, wouldn't you agree? -- and was "selling" a false notion is engaged in a conspiracy. None of the people engaged in this practice have come forward.

With that in mind, I stand by what I said before: It's not that I don't believe it, but I need something more than -- at this point -- thirdhand information who has offered allegations but no proof.

And I'm more than happy to consider another term that "conspiracy theorist." Any ideas?

Fielding M. McGehee III
The Jonestown Institute
3553 Eugene Place
San Diego, CA 92116
(619) 584-1841
http://jonestown.sdsu.edu/



Re: jonestown query
Saturday, June 20, 2009 10:44 AM
From: "Bryan Sacks" <bksacks@yahoo.com>
To: fieldingmcgehee@yahoo.com
Cc: hopetek@juno.com

Mac,

I appreciate the response. I was not aware of the discussion forum you mentioned, and will visit there soon.

I read Becky's long piece, as well as the others, as I am interested in the term 'conspiracy theory' both as a sociological phenomenon (I feel it's often deployed [intentionally or not] as a term of disqualification rather than a substantive descriptor of an actual set of claims/theory) and in the fate of compelling 'counternarratives': that is, points of view that run counter to deeply entrenched official stories, but which seem to have evidentiary merit yet garner little attention. Some would call them 'conspiracy theories', but again, I think it's become too loaded a term.

If I may get into specifics of this one issue, regarding the supposed secret presence of a special forces teams after the suicides and murders. You wrote:

"It's been thirty years. If there were something out there, someone would have broken by now. One of the Green Berets would have made a death bed confession, or gotten mad at his boss over something else and blown the whistle, or realized how much money is involved in a tell-all book, or found Jesus, or had an attack of conscience by now. Indeed, it strains credulity to believe the edifice of silence would have no cracks in it by now."

David contends the persons he spoke with are in fact military men who were present in the aftermath of Jonestown. Others have claimed to have talked to some of the same people. David is very specific:

"I interviewed a Green Beret who said they went in there and am going to use the information in a book. It is not a conspiracy if someone shoots a congressman and the military goes in. Did they show pictures of bodies with lots of crossbow and bullet holes and sell it this way to the families of people whose husbands were cleaning up the mess. Yes according to the families whose names I have and who attended these slide shows. Did Mootoo change his story from what it started out as, ie; with everyone having injections in the back? Yes."

So David claims he got in contact with these people, he names them in at least two cases and the information he presents is highly detailed. He appears to wish to keep the means by which he became acquainted with Charles Huff and Scott Hooker, which I can understand but which I obviously wish were not the case, since it would clearly bolster his claims.

How do you respond to David's contentions here?

Regards,
Bryan

Re: jonestown query
Friday, June 19, 2009 5:45 PM
From: "hopetek@juno.com" <hopetek@juno.com>
To: bksacks@yahoo.com
Cc: fieldingmcgehee@yahoo.com

I am responding to Mac's email.
I don't know what conspiracy anyone is talking about. I think very simply I am talking about what events took place. There was in fact a tape made after the deaths that was found in Jonestown. Someone was there. I interviewed a Green Beret who said they went in there and am going to use the information in a book. It is not a conspiracy if someone shoots a congressman and the military goes in. Did they show pictures of bodies with lots of crossbow and bullet holes and sell it this way to the families of people whose husbands were cleaning up the mess. Yes according to the families whose names I have and who attended these slide shows. Did Mootoo change his story from what it started out as, ie; with everyone having injections in the back? Yes.
Do I believe in the far out conspiracy theories of Laurie Effrain Kahalas. Absolutely not. Anyone can see on the film that civilians are shooting from the red tractor and trailer. Also, everyone interviewed by the FBI, including 13 year olds, identified church members.
However, I believe that information is just now beginning to come out for a variety of reasons and that for thirty years information was not available for a variety of reasons. An example of this is the somewhat recent release of the Stanley Nelson film which showed a human face on the church. This countered nearly thirty years of propaganda.
We cant call it conspiracy for the military to respond to the killing of a Congressman. You can call it conspiracy for the CIA or the Green Berets to try to tweek the news coverage if you like. I know that the Green Beret that I interviewed was very convincing and that they families that I interviewed offered me proofs.
I am sure that Mac is exhausted with the entire issue after thirty hard years boxing it out in the trenches. I on the other hand am a fresh voice. I have never even met with the survivors although invited. I am still trying to resolve the fact that some of these same survivors beat me up, slandered me, got me in trouble with the police falsely and threatened my life.....and are still slandering me in hopes that I do not expose some of their sadistic pasts.
However, I have a lot to say before I am through and I am just getting started. Explain why I would be just getting started after thirty years. I think  time is helping, not hurting, and some of the people I have talked to said that No one has ever talked to them. Much like when I checked out the claims of Jim Hougan's article. No one had even checked it out and it was blatantly, provedly false. This is a subject that has been proven to reveal more and more as time goes on. That is why I have not been in a hurry either.
Dave


Re: Jonestown query
Friday, June 19, 2009 11:37 AM
From: "Fielding McGehee" <fieldingmcgehee@yahoo.com>
To:hopetek@juno.com, "Bryan Sacks" <bksacks@yahoo.com>

Dear Bryan;

Thanks for including me in the discussion. I think you'll find, I may be the wrong guy to talk to.

Indeed, we should probably have an FAQ about, why are there so many conspiracy theories about JT?

We dance around the subject a couple of times, like at http://jonestown.sdsu.edu/AboutJonestow ... ycount.htm and http://jonestown.sdsu.edu/AboutJonestow ... 2comm.html. My wife Rebecca Moore -- the other manager of the site -- has an article on it at http://jonestown.sdsu.edu/AboutJonestow ... piracy.htm, but that may be too long for the drive-by visitor.

In any event, I tend to abide by Ockham's Razor, that the simplest explanation is the best. Put another way, while I'm open to the idea of Jonestown being rife with conspiracies, there would have to be evidence of their existence. I do not subscribe to the Donald Rumsfeld Fine School of Armed Intervention that the lack of evidence is evidence of a major conspiracy and proof of the deviousness of its perpetrators. For me, it's definitely a case of "Show me the money."

The fact that there **is** no money -- no credible evidence of a conspiracy -- yet, is more of a demonstration that it wasn't there. There would have been scores, if not hundreds, of people who were aware of the conspiracy as it was occuring, and the fact that not one -- not one!! -- has come forward with something tangible makes my belief ever stronger.

It's been thirty years. If there were something out there, someone would have broken by now. One of the Green Berets would have made a death bed confession, or gotten mad at his boss over something else and blown the whistle, or realized how much money is involved in a tell-all book, or found Jesus, or had an attack of conscience by now. Indeed, it strains credulity to believe the edifice of silence would have no cracks in it by now.

It's a long way of saying, I guess, what I said at the outset: I'm the wrong guy to talk to about conspiracies.

But you'll find plenty of chatter about it on Joey Dieckman's chatroom, which it sounds as though you're familiar with? If not, it's at http://q875.makeforum.org/.

Mac

Fielding M. McGehee III
The Jonestown Institute
3553 Eugene Place
San Diego, CA 92116
(619) 584-1841
http://jonestown.sdsu.edu/

[Fat Lady Singing]

More correspondence. Line of communication remains open, it seems.

Whoa! Thanks again bks for including us in this eye-opening conversation. I'm glad it's still relatively civil between the two other men, and I hope it continues that way. You should be commended for your diplomacy here.

As for a substitute term for "conspiracy theory" that isn't so loaded... well we've pondered that very problem here in many a thread. Are you, bks, going to suggest something? Just wondering what it might be...

[bks]

FLS: It's something I should have given more thought to by now. I suppose I'd like to abandon the term altogether and use nothing, or else where a term is needed, call them 'counternarratives'. Because that's really what they are: narratives that counter the official line.

If there is no official narrative formed yet, "false flag" or "complicity" theories works for me. Something that actually describes the content of the claim being put forward in a meaningful way. Conspiracy theory just doesn't.

And yet, I'm guilty of using it all the time.

[Fat Lady Singing]

FLS: It's something I should have given more thought to by now. I suppose I'd like to abandon the term altogether and use nothing, or else where a term is needed, call them 'counternarratives'. Because that's really what they are: narratives that counter the official line.

If there is no official narrative formed yet, "false flag" or "complicity" theories works for me. Something that actually describes the content of the claim being put forward in a meaningful way. Conspiracy theory just doesn't.

And yet, I'm guilty of using it all the time.

Oh, we all are. We're products of our culture, after all.

I hereby endorse "counternarratives," though -- it gets to the heart of the matter without implying any particular bias. I'm going to try using it in a sentence today!

[American Dream]

Fielding McGehee wrote:

while I'm open to the idea of Jonestown being rife with conspiracies, there would have to be evidence of their existence.

Seems odd that he would say this while casually proffering the idea that the CIA covertly mutilated the bodies so as to prevent Leftists from committing "revolutionary suicide".

I'm sure there's no evidence of any conspiracies at Jonestown to be found in places likeJohn Judge's article either...

[elfismiles]

I finally posted my footage of John Judge talking about Jonestown...

John Judge on Jonestown
http://www.blip.tv/file/2465052

"Discussion of the MLK Assassination leads to the Deep Politics, Conspiracy and Parapolitical covert-ops surrounding the Jonestown Murders."

... having problems with the footage playing though ... seems like all the footage isn't there.

Well it seems to be playing right at these links:

http://video.yahoo.com/watch/5730102/15009882

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fusea ... d=61848935

[bks]

Here is part of the result of my back-and-forth with David Parker Wise and Fielding McGehee, editor of jonestown.sdsu.edu

http://jonestown.sdsu.edu/AboutJonestow ... /Sacks.htm

The conclusion to the article follows:

In a democratic republic, the presumption [in matters of state secrecy] should be with the value of full disclosure at all times; the case for classification or secrecy should have to be made in each case in which its requested, with a very high threshold needing to be met. We have strayed so far from that commonsensical approach that when it is suggested on the record that the system of secret classification may be being used to cover up terrible crimes, the claim is likely to be met with rolling eyes and caustic dismissals, as if one has suggested a “reptilian agenda” or something. But perhaps we should not be surprised at this, since the same term – “conspiracy theory”– is used to describe both specific and often credible claims of government crime, as well as claims that the Freemasons have held secret control of world politics for centuries, or that Dick Cheney is a Lizard Person, and many other sorts of lurid nonsense.

Which is why we would do best to dispense with the term “conspiracy theory” altogether.

[elfismiles]

Here is part of the result of my back-and-forth with David Parker Wise and Fielding McGehee, editor of jonestown.sdsu.edu

http://jonestown.sdsu.edu/AboutJonestow ... /Sacks.htm

Thanks for this followup BKS.

[stefano]

Interesting bit on Jim Jones in Salon today, by David Talbot:

Jim Jones’ sinister grip on San Francisco: How the Peoples Temple cult leader ensnared Harvey Milk and other progressive icons

Political leaders, aware of Jones’s ability to deliver — or manufacture — votes, lined up to pay tribute to the preacher. He worked his way into the good graces of officials high and low — most of them Democrats, since that was the party in power in California and San Francisco in the mid-1970s. But Jones was also happy to exchange mutually complimentary correspondence with the offices of Ronald Reagan and statesman Henry Kissinger.
[...]
Privately, San Francisco political leaders expressed doubts about Jones and his strange church. One day a friend of Milk’s named Tory Hartmann dropped off some boxes of campaign brochures at Peoples Temple, so that Jones’s army could distribute them. Hartmann was immediately unnerved by the uptight, high-security atmosphere inside the temple, where sentries stood at attention outside each room, like the palace guards in the Wicked Witch’s castle. “This is a church?” Hartmann said to herself. Later, after she sped back to the Castro and told Milk about her bizarre experience, the naturally cheery politician turned deadly serious. “Make sure you’re always nice to the Peoples Temple,” he told her. “They’re weird and they’re dangerous, and you never want to be on their bad side.”

BTW mods an old link brainpanhandler has in this thread is broken - http://rigorousintuition.ca/board/viewtopic.php?t=21093

[The Consul]

How many votes could Jones deliver? How did he go about it? Were they enough to matter? What was the political force at work in The Temple? Perhaps Talbot has scratched and dug a bit more at this, because the story would deepen there.