Conspiracy: History’s Greatest Plots, Collusions and Cover-Ups (27 page)

Just fifty members of the Peoples' Temple moved to Jonestown at first but by late 1978 the population had risen to over 1,000. In the early days it seemed that this was a genuinely Utopian story. Here was an interracial community living in harmony and supporting itself by agriculture. Gradually, though, reports began to leak out that all was not as it seemed. An article in the San Francisco Examiner on 13 November 1977 related the story of one Bob Houston whose father believed that he had been murdered when he had attempted to leave the Temple. Claims started to emerge that people were being held against their will at Jonestown. A local congressman, Leo Ryan, became interested in this story, all the more so when, in June 1978, he heard the testimony of Debbie Blakey, a defector from the community, who claimed that Jim Jones had led the population in rehearsals for a mass suicide.

Ryan decided that he had to investigate these alarming claims. On 14 November 1978, he flew out to Guyana along with his staff, a number of journalists and some concerned relatives. After some resistance from Jones and his aides, Ryan was finally allowed to visit on the evening of Friday 17th. Jones made sure that the community put on a show of unity but during the visit messages were passed to Ryan and the other visitors from people in the community who were anxious to leave.

Ryan told Jones that some people wanted to leave and he appeared to be happy for them to go. On the next day Ryan led a party of around twenty defectors to the nearby airstrip of Port Kaituma. Two light aircraft were to meet them and take them back to the Guyanese capital of Georgetown.

C
AMERAMAN FILMED HIS OWN MURDER
On reaching the airstrip, however, one of the apparent defectors, thought to have been planted by Jones, turned a gun on his fellow members and shot and killed two of them. Then a truck and a tractor belonging to the Temple arrived and several armed gunmen opened fire. Ryan was shot dead, along with another defector and three journalists, including cameraman Robert Brown, who captured most of the awful events on film before being shot himself.

Meanwhile, back at the Jonestown compound, Jones had been tipped him over the edge by the defections, even though he had initially appeared to take the news calmly. He called a meeting of the entire population and told them that these desertions marked the end of their Utopia and that the only thing to do was commit suicide. The meeting was recorded on tape and, amazingly enough, it is clear that most of those present agreed with Jones. Some members suggested that the children should be allowed to live but Jones overruled them and vats of poisoned soft drinks were brought out. The children were given their doses first: the poison was squirted into the mouths of the babies using syringes. The adults watched them die, then killed themselves.

Some did try to escape but they were faced with armed guards who shot at them. Many were killed, but over a hundred managed to escape into the jungle. Jim Jones himself died from a bullet in the head while sitting in his chair. It was presumably suicide. When outside helpers finally arrived they were greeted by a scene of unimaginable horror. Some 913 dead bodies lay there, many of them in orderly rows.

M
IND CONTROL AND THE
CIA
So was this simply an epidemic of madness – a classic story of a religious cult that had run out of control – or was there a hidden agenda behind the slaughter? It was not long before the first conspiracy theories appeared. The initial focus of suspicion, as is so often the case, was the CIA. Could Jonestown have been the site of a secret CIA mind-control programme that had just gone a bit too far? After all, the Jonestown settlement started up just as the CIA's notorious MKULTRA mind control programme was officially closed down. Could it have been revived illegally at Jonestown? The reason for the mass suicide, according to this theory, was that Leo Ryan had discovered the CIA's involvement during his visit and the mass suicide was staged to cover it up.

If that sounds breathtakingly cynical, it is nothing compared with the variant on this theory. This suggests that Leo Ryan was already on a CIA hit-list because of his sponsorship of the Hughes–Ryan Amendment which, if passed, would have required that the CIA report its planned covert missions to Congress for approval. According to this theory the real point of the events in Guyana was the murder of Leo Ryan – the mass suicide was simply staged in order to detract attention from this. However suspicious one might be of the CIA's involvement in covert activities though, the suggestion that they would be capable of murdering over 900 people in order to cover up the killing of a single man rather beggars belief.

In 1980, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence investigated the Jonestown mass suicide and announced that there was no evidence of CIA involvement there. This, of course, failed to satisfy the conspiracy theorists and their case has been helped by the fact that the United States Government has consistently refused to release any of the classified papers relating to the case.

Is it likely that the CIA really were involved in this appalling event? Probably not – or at least not in any instrumental role. The tape of the last speech made by Jones and the testimony of the survivors (many of whom still believe that Jonestown was at first a positive community) suggests that what happened at the end was after all a kind of collective madness, rather than a plot with any rational intention behind it. In some ways, the idea that the mass suicide happened for a purpose, rather than as a result of deranged behaviour on a grand scale, may be easier for us to accept – which is why conspiracy theories concerning the Jonestown Massacre continue to abound.

When John Lennon was murdered on 8 December 1980, the world reeled in shock. At the time of his death, Lennon was one of the most famous rock stars of all time and after a quiet period away from the public eye he was in the process of returning to the limelight with his first album in five years.

He was shot outside the Dakota Building, where he lived, by a young man named Mark Chapman who was obsessed by his hero and who had a history of mental illness. When Lennon arrived at the building that day with Yoko Ono, Chapman raised a gun and shot the star four times as he tried to run away. Lennon was rushed to hospital but died soon after his arrival. His death was mourned by thousands and he continues to be remembered by legions of fans.

The generally accepted view of the murder is that the mentally unstable Chapman acted alone, but there were also those who believed that Lennon was the victim of a conspiracy and that Chapman had in fact acted under orders from a higher authority.

"D
ANGEROUS EXTREMISTS"
During the late 1960s and the early 1970s, John Lennon had become unpopular with the United States Government because of his outspoken criticism of the Vietnam war, among other issues. In a period when the counterculture was at its height, Lennon was seen as one of the most influential figures of the day and he was regarded by the government as highly subversive. J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI noted on Lennon's file that "all extremists should be considered dangerous".

As a result of the antagonism that arose between the star and the United States authorities, Lennon was denied permanent residency in America and the administration was constantly looking for ways to deport him. By 1972, Lennon was known to be under surveillance and it was reported that he had spoken about fearing for his life and that of his family. He continued to be monitored by the FBI even when he retired from public life altogether, although less consistently.

Under the Carter administration, the authorities began to take less interest in the politically inactive Lennon, but when President Reagan was elected in 1980 all that changed. It so happened that Lennon emerged from his seclusion just as the new, right-wing administration was beginning to step up its anti-extremist tactics. To some, the fact that Lennon was murdered just a few months after he stepped into the limelight once more was highly significant.

H
ARD EVIDENCE
Although it is undoubtedly true that Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono were under suspicion from the United States administration for many years, there is a lack of hard evidence to link Mark Chapman to the FBI and the CIA. Several authors have suggested that government agencies brainwashed the insecure and mentally fragile Chapman, conducting "mind control" programmes on him that ordered him to murder John Lennon. However, while there is plenty of documented evidence of Lennon's battle with the United States authorities in the shape of FBI files, those who claim that the government went one step further than mere harassment and had the star shot, using Chapman as the assassin, have very little in the way of facts to back them up. While the accounts of Lennon's constant run-ins with the authorities make fascinating reading – for a time, he was friendly with many of the leading lights of the United States counterculture, such as Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman – it is difficult to see why the government would choose to resolve the conflict by having Lennon murdered. Even if they did, why and how they would have used Chapman to do the deed is another question.

M
IND CONTROL
Several commentators have speculated that Chapman was specifically programmed to kill on command. They point to "Project Bluebird" and "Project Artichoke", the CIA's attempts to investigate the possibilities of using scientific methods to control the behaviour of their agents. "Mind control" experiments were conducted using a number of methods including hypnosis and drugs. Chapman, it is alleged, became a pawn in this game, a "Manchurian Candidate" who was cold-bloodedly programmed to go out and shoot Lennon for the security services.