Male Speaker

From UFOs to ghost and psychic powers, history is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now, or learn the stuff they don’t want you to know.

Here are the facts. In 1955, a man named Jim Jones founded a religious organization called the Peoples Temple. Originally based in Indiana, the cult eventually moved to California. On the surface, their motives seemed well intentioned. Jones was heavily influenced by Communism, and he supported social inclusiveness and racial integration. Yet the temple’s actual operations were more sinister. Jones was making money hand over fist, and former church members allege the organization was riddled with abuse. As these stories hit the news, Jones’ sermons turned dark, paranoid, and apocalyptic.

When Jones moved to the cult’s rented land in Guyana, he encouraged his disciples to follow. Hundreds went. On November 18, 1978, over 900 members of the Peoples Temple voluntarily drank cyanide and died. At the landing strip in nearby Georgtown, Guyana, Congressman Leo Ryan of San Francisco was shot by Temple security guards, as he, several journalists and temple defectors attempted to leave Guyana. He is the only congressman in history to have died in the line of duty.

In the wake of this massive tragedy, the United States sought to understand exactly what had happened. How had one man convinced nearly 1000 people to poison themselves? Why didn’t the US government do something to stop it before it went too far?

Here’s where it gets crazy. Let’s start with Jim Jones. He believed that the CIA was trying to dismantle the Peoples Temple. But since his death, the conspiracy world has been consumed with the possibility that he was a CIA agent, working in the MK-ULTRA program, a CIA mind control project! Other cult leaders, such as David Koresh and Charles Manson were thought to be involved in similar experiments. To these conspiracists, the Jonestown compound was a failed experiment in mass indoctrination. According to this theory, the inhabitants of Jonestown were murdered when the experiment went awry, and the anti-CIA Congressman Leo Ryan was only icing on the cake.

Yet another theory goes further, alleging that the deaths at Jonestown were always intended. Though mainstream history tells us the cult has died of poison, contrary rumors persist, including allegations of death by gunshot.

Yet some conspiracists disagree, and argue that the CIA and FBI were never helping the Peoples Temple. In fact, these agencies wanted to destroy the temple because of its communist leanings and contact with the Soviets. Despite their differences, these theories share some common traits. First the discrepancy in the body count. Originally, the body count was over 400 people. But this gradually changed to more than 900 by the close of the investigation.

Then there’s Jones’ cryptic statement recorded shortly before his death, where he says, “Get the wire out of here,” often thought to refer to CIA agent Richard Dwyer, who was the Deputy Chief of Mission for the US Embassy in Guyana at the time. Here’s the most disturbing part, many Jonestown conspiracists believe that Congressman Ryan was executed by CIA agents pretending to be temple Security guards. Leo Ryan was one of the most vocal anti-CIA critics of his time. But being a critic of the CIA doesn’t mean that they assassinated him, does it?

So who’s correct about Jonestown? To mainstream historians, the tragedy at Jonestown is just that – a tragedy blown out of proportion by people with overactive imaginations in place of facts. But to conspiracy theorists, Jonestown was something more – a cover-up, an experiment, perhaps most disturbing, a practice run. And the most important question is not what happened at Jonestown, but what will happen next?