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FEDERAL: BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION. RYMUR. (JONESTOWN). BUFILE NUMBER : 89-4286-881 (BULKY). NEWSPAPER CLIPPINGS. VOLUME 2 ...
Ryan Shooting II Section 166
1. Reporters- Charles Krause
2. Ron Javers
3. Tim Reiterman
4. Slain Newsmen
Charles Krause
November 20, 1978, Los Angeles Times, Ryan Sensed Cultists Would Attack, by Charles Krause,
November 22, 1978, Los Angeles Times, At First, Everything Seemed So Alive, by Charles Krause,
November 22, 1978, Washington Post, Before the Horror, by Charles Krause,
December 5, 1978, Washington Post, page C1, Jonestown Revisited: The Final Horror; Jonestown's Final Horror,
December 15, 1978, Washington Post, Chart Found in Jonestown Details Structure of Cult, by Charles A. Krause,
December 23, 1978, Washington Post, Guyanese Panel Rules All but 2 Were Murdered, by Charles A. Krause, diigo,
December 23, 1978, Washington Post, Some Cult Ex-Members Suspicious of 'Defector', by Paul Grabowica, Special to The Washington Post, diigo,
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December 5, 1978, Washington Post, page C1, Jonestown Revisited: The Final Horror; Jonestown's Final Horror,
The accompanying articles are excerpted from the new paperback book, "Guyana Massacre: The Eyewitness Account," by Washington Post correspondent Krause, who survived the attack that killed Rep. Leo J. Ryan and four others at the Port Kaituma airstrip, and Post editors Stern and Harwood. The Stern-Harwood article is based on reporting from Georgetown by Post correspondent Leonard Downie Jr.
SECTION: Outlook; C1 LENGTH: 2079 words
FROM THE AIR, Jonestown looked as if someone had scattered colored paper around the central pavilion -- as if there had been a celebration, a party, that the Rev. Jim Jones had uncharacteristically allowed his followers to enjoy -- without forcing them to clean up.
Those were my first thoughts as I returned to Jonestown on Monday, Nov. 20, just 48 hours after I had left for what I thought then would surely be the last time.
Now, I was on my way back, by helicopter, to view a sight that would transfix a world inured to war and violence and death. The absolute horror of what lay below, the madness and desperation of the man who ordered it all and the almost banal way he caused them to die -- a potion of grape drink, cyanide and tranquilizers -- was almost beyond comprehension.
There on the ground, as we hovered overhead, were the grisly remains of Jones' last great act of madness. There on the ground were the men, women and children, white and black, well educated and untutored, who had believed blindly in the man they called "Father."
There on the ground were the bodies, already beginning to decompose in the tropical heat, of those who had followed Jones to the wilderness. The bodies of those who had, many of them voluntarily, carried out Jones' last twisted vision, the victims of what Father called "revolutionary suicide" and had code-named "White Night."
As the first reporter allowed into Jonestown to view the carnage, my job demanded that I bring back a detailed account of what had happened and try to find words to describe the horror that I saw.
Because I was a survivor of the Port Kaituma massacre, there were personal reasons for going back as well. I was hoping not to find the bodies of some of the people I had grown found of during my short stay at Jonestown, people like Sarah and Richard Tropp, whose unselfish and rational reasons for wanting to create a better world in the rain forests of Guyana had touched me.
And, quite truthfully, I was also going back to see for myself that Jim Jones and the henchmen he had sent to kill me and the others in Rep. Leo J. Ryan's party were among the dead. I particularly wanted to find the body of Tom Kice Sr., the tall, gray haired man with a crew cut, whose mean, demented expression I will never forget as he crossed the airstrip to kill us, and the body of Stanley Gieg, the young, blond-haired fellow who was driving the tractor when the shooting began.
AS I APPROACHED the radio shack near the pavilion, I saw the bodies close up for the first time. There must have been 40 or 50 of them there on the neat lawn in front of the communications center that had been Jonestown's link to Georgetown, San Francisco and the outside world.
I only recognized one of the bodies, that of a jovial, heavyset white woman who had served me coffee and cheese sandwiches two days before. She had introduced me to her daughter, a pretty girl with long brown hair, and we had laughed together about something I can no longer remember.
Now I saw the mother's body near the radio shack. She was still wearing the gaily flowered long dress she had worn the last time I saw her alive. She was, like most of the others, lying on her stomach, a clot of dried blood stuck in her right nostril. My God, I thought. Why?
I stared at the clumps of bodies in front of the communications center. I couldn't bring myself to leave them. I noticed that many of them had died with their arms around each other, men and women, white and black, young and old. Little babies were lying on the ground, too. Near their mothers and fathers. Dead.
Finally, I turned back toward the main pavilion and noticed the dogs that lay dead on the sidewalk. The dogs, I thought. What had they done?
Then I realized that Jones had meant to leave nothing, not even the animals, to bear witness to the final horror. There were to be no survivors. Even the dogs and Mr. Muggs, Jonestown's pet chimpanzee, had their place in the long white night into which the Peoples Temple had been ordered by the mad Mr. Jones.
THE HEAT and the stench were overpowering. There was nothing to drink because Jones had ordered the community water supply contaminated with poson. The Guyanese soldiers who guarded Jonestown said that a cache of soft drinks had been found. But they decided, even though the bottles hadn't been opened, that it would be risky to drink them. C.A. (Skip) Roberts, the a
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Jonestown
Rep. Leo Ryan and several members of the group accompanying him on a fact-finding mission to Jonestown, in the South American country of Guyana, were attacked and killed by followers of cult leader Jim Jones as they prepared to leave the region. By playing dead, The Post's Charles A. Krause survived the massacre and went on to file an exclusive, first-person account of the horrific mass suicide-murder that followed. His report appeared in The Post of Nov. 21, 1978. An excerpt:
By Charles A. Krause, Washington Post Foreign Service
JONESTOWN, Guyana- When the Rev. Jim Jones learned Saturday that Rep. Leo J. Ryan had been killed but that some members of the congressman's party had survived, Jones called his followers together and told them that the time had come to commit the mass suicide they had rehearsed several times before.
"They started with the babies," administering a potion of Kool-aid mixed with cyanide, Odell Rhodes recalled yesterday when I revisited Jonestown to view the horrifying sight of 409 bodies-men, women and children, most of them grouped around the altar where Jones himself lay dead.
Rhodes is the only known survivor of Jonestown who witnessed a part of the suicide rite before managing to escape. He was helping Guyanese authorities identify the dead yesterday.
Most of those who drank the deadly potion served to them by a Jonestown doctor, Lawrence Schact, and by nurses, did so willingly, Rhodes said. Mothers would often give the cyanide to their own children before taking it themselves, he said.
But others who tried to escape were turned back by armed guards who ringed the central pavilion where the rite was carried out, Rhodes said. They were then forced to drink the poisoned Kool-aid and shortly after the mass killings began, Rhodes said, "it just got all out of order. Babies were screaming, children were screaming and there was mass confusion."
It took about five minutes for the liquid to take its final effect. Young and old, black and white, grouped themselves, usually near family members, often with their arms around each other, waiting for the cyanide to kill them.
They would go into convulsions, their eyes would roll upward, they would gasp for breath and then fall dead, Rhodes said.
All the while, Jones was talking to them, urging them on, explaining that they would "meet in another place." Near the end, Rhodes said, Jones began chanting, "mother, mother, mother"-an apparent reference to his wife who lay dead not far from the altar.
Yesterday, a stilled Jonestown looked much as it must have moments after the mass suicide ended two days earlier. The bodies were where they had fallen, the half-empty vat of cyanide-laced Kool-aid was still on a table near the altar in the open air pavilion. The faces of the dead bore the anguished expressions of their terrible deaths.
More than 390 of the bodies were grouped around the altar, many of them arm-in-arm. They were so thickly bunched together that it was impossible to see the ground beneath them.
Even the dogs that lived in Jonestown had been poisoned and now lay dead on sidewalks near the pavilion. The Peoples Temple's pet chimpanzee, Mr. Muggs, had been shot dead.
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December 15, 1978, Washington Post, Chart Found in Jonestown Details Structure of Cult, by Charles A. Krause,
JONESTOWN, Guyana, Dec. 14 — Guyanese and U.S. investigators who supposedly combed Jonestown in the days after the mass suicide-murder here overlooked until today a Peoples Temple organization chart that may prove to be of key importance to criminal investigations now under way in both countries.
The chart, which has on it the names of those Peoples Temple members who served in, top positions at the time of the Nov. 18 suicide-murder, was found here this afternoon.
The chart was in the same place—at the side of the central pavilion where more than 900 of the Rev. Jim Jones' followers later died of cyanide poisoning—as when Rep. Leo J. Ryan and his party entered Jonestown Nov. 17.
The chart was considered important by members of the Jonestown hierarchy, who stopped me from copying the names on the chart that night. Guyanese police prevented reporters who found the chart today from copying the names once the police realized the potential value of the information.
In addition to providing a picture of how Jonestown was organized, the chart contains the names of persons who had top positions at Jonestown —at least several of whom, including Jones' son Steve and Lee Ingram, were outside Jonestown at the time of the mass suicide-murder.
Guyanese authorities have yet to release Steve Jones, Ingram and more than 20 other Peoples Temple members who were either here in Georgetown when the mass suicide ritual was occurring at Jonestown, or who managed to leave. The rest died of the cyanide potion except Jones and one his mistresses, who died of bullet wounds.
Police here are known to be investigating the possibility that at least some of those Peoples Temple members still alive may have engaged in criminal activity before or during the death ritual
In addition, a federal grand jury in San Francisco is now hearing evidence in an effort to determine whether a conspiracy existed that led Ryan's death shortly after he left Jonestown on Nov. 18.
The federal grand Jury in California is also looking into reports that the Rev. Jones drew up a "hit list" of Peoples Temple enemies that some of his top lieutenants and most loyal followers might intend to implement in the United States.
Guyanese police said the organization chart found today will be entered into evidence as part of an inquest now being held to determine the causes of death of those at Jonestown. Once this hearing is concluded, death certificates for the more than 900 dead Peoples Temple members can be issued in the United States.
A U.S. diplomat who was at Jonestown today when the chart was found said that the embassy in Guyana will probably request the chart—or at least the information contained on it —for use by the FBI and the San Francisco grand jury.
The Guyanese government inquest, in its second day, is being held in Matthews Ridge, a small settlement about 35 miles from Jonestown. The only testimony heard at today's session was from Odell Rhodes, who witnessed about 20 minutes of the suicide-murder rite before volunteering to find a stethoscope and then hiding, escaping death.
Rhodes testified that he and several others he knew about had expressed a desire to leave Jonestown during the months preceding Ryan's visit. Rhodes said that anyone who wanted to leave was punished, either by being given extra work or by being beaten. Rhodes testified that all mail into and out of Jonestown was censored by a four-member committee and that, beginning last September, five armed guards patrolled the Jonestown commune every night to prevent defection.
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December 23, 1978, Washington Post, Guyanese Panel Rules All but 2 Were Murdered, by Charles A. Krause, diigo,
MATTHEWS RIDGE, Guyana, Dec. 22 — A coroner's jury ruled here to day that all but two of the more than 900 persons who died at Jonestown Nov. 13 were murdered because they were coerced into taking poison by cult leader Jim Jones and his henchmen.
The jury's rejection of the notion that his followers committed mass suicide by drinking the poison voluntarily was based on its conclusion that "Jim Jones masterminded the situated," According to the jury's foreman, Albert Graham.
"The man made people believe he was a god," Graham said of Jones, "and naturally they moved to his command."
After some confusion, the jury, composed of five laborers from this mining outpost about 35 miles from Jonestown in remote northwestern Guyana, also ruled that Jones was murdered by "some person or persons unknown."
The jury first announced that it had decided that Jones had committed suicide, apparently basing its conclusion on testimony by Dr. Leslie Mootoo, a pathologist, that Jones was shot from very close range in the "suicide area" of the brain, above and slightly behind his ear.
But Magistrate Haroon Bacchus shouted at the jurors, asking them, "What evidence do you have to support suicide?"
Bacchus told the jurors that Mootoo had stated that the gun was found 20 Yards away from Jones' body, and that was inconsistent with a finding of suicide. What the jurors did not know was that the first police officials who reached Jonestown after the mass killings had told reporters that the gun was found no more than five or ten feet from Jones' body on the podium of Jonestown's central pavillion.
In any event, the jurors filed back out, deliberated for 10 more minutes and returned to announce that "some person or persons unknown is clearly responsible for the death of James Warren Jones."
Magistrate Bacchus and the jurors agreed that two of Jones' mistresses, Anne Elizabeth Moore and Maria Katsaris, were the only ones to have committed
See GUYANA, A12, Col. 4
GUYANA, From A1
suicide of their free will. Moore fired a shot into her own head and Katsaris swallowed poison, evidence showed.
The jury's finding that the rest were, in effect. victims of murder was not based, however, on unconfirmed news reports of the past week that many of those found dead at Jonestown had apparently been killed by poison injected into them by the Jonestown medical staff after they refused to drink the poison.
The only evidence introduced during the 10-day inquest that indicated that anyone might have been injected with the cyanide poison came from Dr. Mootoo, who is the Guyanese government's official pathologist.
In a letter that was introduced to augment his oral testimony, Mootoo said "several" of the 39 bodies he had examined on the ground in Jonestown had needle marks on their arms. He drew no conclusions from this finding in his letter.
Other officials have said privately that these victims could have chosen to be injected rather than drink the poison because it is difficult to hold a person still enough for an injection if the person is resisting violently.
It is also possible that the needle marks could have been made by injections prior to the "white night," of death. Some Jonestown survivors have told of injections of tranquilizers that were given to troublemakers and old people.
Today's ruling has the practical effect of clearing the way for authorities in the United States to issue death certificates for the 914 bodies airlifted by the U.S. military from Jonestown to Dover.
The coroner's jury found that cyanide poisoning was responsible for the deaths of all but three of those who died inside Jonestown. Besides the gunshot deaths of Jones and Moore, another unidentified victim found in the Jonestown psychiatric ward in a pool of blood may have been killed by a bullet rather than poison.
A Guyanese police official testified today that neither he nor U.S. authorities are certain about how that mail died. The jury left the cause of his death open.
The jurors deliberated a total of 17 minutes before reaching their findings, which were clearly influenced by Magistrate Bacchus. At times, he berated the jurors and made strong suggestions to them of what he thought happened during the final hours at Jonestown. Jury foreman Graham expressed displeasure both with Bacchus and his own jury's findings after the inquest ended. Asked about testimony by Odell Rhodes, one of the Jonestown survivors, that at the beginning, at least, many Peoples Temple members seemed to take the poison voluntarily, Graham said: "I was not there, so how will I ever know?"
But Graham went on to explain the jurors had reasoned that even if some of those who lived at the agricultural commune drank the poison of grape drink, cyanide and tranquilizers, "they were under the influence of Jones at the time." Since Jones Clearly ordered the deaths and armed guards were there to enforce his order, the jurors reasoned, he was criminally responsible.
To some extent, the debate over whether members of the Peoples Temple committed suicide or were murdered depends on how suicide and murder are defined. The hundreds of children who died at Jonestown were clearly murdered, whether or not their mothers gave them their poison, because they did not have the mental ability to choose to live or to die.
According to Rhodes and Stanley Clayton, another survivor who witnessed much of the killing before he escaped, others made no move to drink the poison and were escorted to their deaths by the armed guards.
Most did not actively protest, but neither did they choose death willingly, Rhodes and Clayton said.
But a large number of those who died did so according to both of the living witnesses without having to be forced in any way. Jones exhorted them "to die with dignity," and they approached the vat of poison without further persuasion.
The jurors concluded that this Jones, who convinced them that enemies of the Peoples Temple were set to destroy it—especiallY after Rep. Leo J. Ryan and four others were killed by gunmen sent from Jonestown. These Peoples Temple members may well have believed they would be tortured and killed as Jones had told them, and so chose poison instead.
Others believe that this group of persons simply took the poison because they believed in Jones and believed for political or religious reasons that those who lived at Jonestown, would, after death, "meet in another place," as they were told. Although a certain mass hysteria occurred at the time, it can be argued that these people chose to die voluntarily, in effect committing suicide.
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December 23, 1978, Washington Post, Some Cult Ex-Members Suspicious of 'Defector', by Paul Grabowica, Special to The Washington Post,
SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 22—Recent efforts by Terri Buford, one of the Rev. Jim Jones' former top aides, to blame others for alleged illegal activities by the Peoples Temple, may indicate that she is still loyal to the dead temple leader and is carrying out his orders to discredit defectors from the church, according to several temple ex-members.
The former church members claim that Jones had instructed his top aides to destroy the reputations of any "traitors" to the temple should anything happen to him or his congregation. At the top of his list of enemies, according to the ex-members, was former temple attorney Timothy Stoen, whom Buford is now blaming for most of the church's questionable activities.
Buford appeared Wednesday before a federal grand jury in San Francisco investigation the Peoples Temple and the murder of Rep. Leo J. Ryan (D-Calif.). At a 'news conference the next day Buford charged that Stoen was the central figure in many alleged church activities, including plans to poison the water supply in Washington, D.C., store weapons at Stoen's California home and set up the church's complicated overseas network of secret accounts.
Buford, accompanied at the news conference by her attorney, Mark Lane, claimed she had defected from the temple Oct. 27, and said her role in the temple's affairs was secondary to that of Stoen. She and Lane also charged that former temple attorney Charles Garry knew about the smuggling and stockpiling of weapons by the temple.
Buford's attempt to downplay her role in the temple, and particularly her attacks on Stoen, have lead several temple ex-members to say they fear she may still be wedded to Jones's philosophy.
A spokesman for the Berkeley-based Human Freedom Center (HFC), run by several temple ex-members, expressed extreme skepticism about her defection from the temples. "Just the way they (Buford and Lane) are attacking Tim Stoen, it's like a final salute to Jim Jones."
"It was pretty well known by the entire congregation that Tim Stoen was going to be slandered" by Jones' loyalists if the temple collapsed, the HFC spokesman added.
The temple ex-members are particularly distrustful of Buford because she sought out Mark Lane when she defected from the church in October. They point out that Lane at the time was one of the attorneys for the temple and subsequently went back to Guyana and conferred with Jones.
"The last place in the world she would have gone," says Patrick Hallinan, Stoen's attorney in San Francisco, "was to Mark Lane. . into the jaws of a possible trap."
Meanwhile, the federal grand jury impaneled in San Francisco is continuing its investigation into the temple's affairs. According to one source close to the inquiry, federal officials are viewing the statements made by all the former temple members thus far with extreme skepticism.
The U.S. attorney's office, according to this source, has no immediate plans to grant immunity to any of them, and recently turned down a request by Buford for immunity from prosecution.
The federal investigators are trying to obtain documents from Guyana in an effort to weigh the truth of the testimony of the temple ex-members. "There is certainly some truth in what they're saying about each other," the source explained. "But they're just not telling the whole truth, particularly about their own involvements."
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December 23, 1978, AP / Washington Post, 12 Jonestown Survivors Arrive in United Stales, diigo,
NEW YORK (AP)—A dozen members of the Peoples Temple who left Jonestown weeks, ago with Rep. Leo J. Ryan and survived an ambush that killed Ryan' and four others have finally arrived in the United States. The 12 arrived here from Guyana Thursday night and were questioned briefly by Secret Service and FBI agents before clearing customs.
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December 23, 1978, Washington Post, Guyanese Panel Rules All but 2 Were Murdered, by Charles A. Krause, diigo,
Washington Poet Foreign. Service
MATTHEWS RIDGE, Guyana, Dec. 22 — A coroner's jury ruled here to day that all but two of the more than 900' persons who died at Jonestown Nov. 13 were murdered heeause they were coerced into taking poison by cult leader Jim Jones and his henchmen.
The jury's rejection of the notion that his followers committed mass suicide by drinking the poison voluntarily was based on its conclusion that "Jim Jones masterminded the situated," According to the jury's foreman, Albert Graham.
"The man made people believe he was a god," Graham said of Jones, "and naturally they moved to his command." After some confusion, the jury,, composed of five laborers from this mining outpost about 35 miles from Jonestown in remote northwestern Guyana, also ruled that Jones was murdered by "some person or persons unknown." The jury first announced that it had decided that Jones had committed suicide, apparently basing its conclusion on testimony by Dr. Leslie Mootoo, a pathologist, that Jones was shot from very close range in the "suicide area" of the brain, above and slightly behind his ear.
But Magistrate Haroon Bacchus shouted at the jurors, asking them, "What evidence do you have to support suicide?"
Bacchus told the jurors that Mootoo had stated that the gun was found 20 Yards away from Jones' body, and that was inconsistent with a finding of suicide. What the jurors did not know was that the first police officials who reached Jonestown after the mass killings had told reporters that the gun was found no more than five or ten feet from Jones' body on the podium of Jonestown's central pavillion.
In any event, the jurors filed back out, deliberated for 10 more minutes and returned to announce that "some person or persons unknown is clearly responsible for the death of James Warren Jones."
Magistrate Bacchus and the jurors agreed that two of Jones' mistresses, Anne Elizabeth Moore and Maria Katsaris, were the only ones to have
See GUYANA, Al2, Col. 4
GUYANA, From Al
committed suicide of their free will. Moore fired a shot into her own head and Katsaris swallowed poison, evidence showed.
The jury's finding that the rest were, in effect. victims of murder was not based, however, on unconfirmed news reports of the past week that .many of those found dead at Jonestown had apparently been killed by poison injected into them by the Jonestown medical staff after they refused to drink the poison.
The only evidence introduced during the 10-day inquest that indicated that anyone might have been injected with the cyanide poison came from Dr. Mootoo, who is the Guyanese government's official pathologist.
In a letter that was introduced to augment his oral testimony, Mootoo said "several" of the 39 bodies he had examined on the ground in Jonestown had needle marks on their arms. He drewno conclusions from this finding in his letter.
. . Other officials have said privately that these victims could have chosen to be injected rather than drink the poison because it is difficult to hold a person still enough for an injection if the person is resisting violently.
It is also possible that the needle marks could have been made by injections prior to the "white night," of death. Some Jonestown survivors have told of injections of tranquilizers that were given to troublemakers and old people.
Today's ruling has the practical effect of clearing the way for authorities in the United States to issue death certificates for the 914 bodies airlifted by the U.S. military from Jonestown to Dover.
The coroner's jury found that cyanide poisoning was responsible for the deaths of all but three of those who died inside Jonestown. Besides the gunshot deaths of Jones and Moore, another unidentified victim found in the Jonestown psychiatric ward in a pool of blood may have been killed by a bullet rather than poison.
A Guyanese police official testified today that neither he nor U.S. authorities are certain about how that mail died. The jury left the cause of his death open.
The jurors deliberated a total of 17 minutes before reaching their findings, which were clearly influenced by Magistrate Bacchus. At times, he berated the jurors and made strong suggestions to them of what he thought happened during the final hours at Jonestown.
Jury foreman Graham expressed displeasure both with Bacchus and his own jury's findings after the inquest ended. Asked about testimony by Odell Rhodes, one of the Jonestown survivors, that at the beginning, at least, many Peoples Temple members seemed to take the poison voluntarily, Graham said: "I was not there, so how will I ever know?"
But Graham went on to explain the jurors had reasoned that even if some of those who lived at the agricultural commune drank the poison of grape drink, cyanide and tranquilizers, "they were under the influence of Jones at the time."
Since Jones Clearly ordered the deaths and armed guards were there to enforce his order, the jurors reasoned, he was criminally responsible.
To some extent, the debate over whether members of the Peoples Temple committed suicide or were murdered depends on how suicide and murder are defined. The hundreds of children who died at Jonestown were clearly murdered, whether or not their mothers gave them their poison, because they did not have the mental ability to choose to live or to die.
According to Rhodes and Stanley Clayton, another survivor who witnessed much of the killing before he escaped, others made no move to drink the poison and were escorted to their deaths by the armed guards. Most did not actively protest, but neither did they choose death willingly,
Rhodes and Clayton said. But a large number of those who died did so according to both of the living witnesses without having to be forced in any way. Jones exhorted them "to die with dignity," and they approached the vat of poison without further persuasion.
The jurors concluded that this Jones, who convinced them that enemies of the Peoples Temple were set to destroy it—especiallY after Rep. Leo J. Ryan and four others were killed by gunmen sent from Jonestown. These Peoples Temple members may well have believed they would be tortured and killed as Jones had told them, and so chose poison instead.
Others believe that this group of persons simply took the poison because they believed in Jones and believed for political or religious reasons that those who lived at Jonestown, would, after death, "meet in another place," as they were told. Although a certain mass hysteria occurred at the time, it can be argued that these people chose to die voluntarily, in effect committing suicide.
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December 23, 1978, Washington Post / AP, 12 Jonestown Survivors Arrive in United Stales,
NEW YORK (AP)—A dozen members of the Peoples Temple who left Jonestown weeks, ago with Rep. Leo J. Ryan and survived an ambush that killed Ryan' and four others have finally arrived in the United States. The 12 arrived here from Guyana Thursday night and were questioned briefly by Secret Service and FBI agents before clearing custom&
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December 23, 1978, Washington Post, Some Cult Ex-Members Suspicious of 'Defector', by Paul Grabowica, Special to The Washington Post, diigo,
SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 22—Recent efforts by Terri Buford, one of the Rev. Jim Jones' former top aides, to blame others for alleged illegal activities by the Peoples Temple, may indicate that she is still loyal to the dead temple leader and is carrying out his orders to discredit defectors from the church, according to several temple ex-members.
The former church members claim that Jones had instructed his top aides to destroy the reputations of any "traitors" to the temple should anything happen to him or his congregation. At the top of his list of enemies, according to the ex-members, was former temple attorney Timothy Stoen, whom Buford is now blaming for most of the church's questionable activities.
Buford appeared Wednesday before a federal grand jury in San Francisco investigation the Peoples Temple and the murder of Rep. Leo J. Ryan (D-Calif.). At a 'news conference the next day Buford charged that Stoen was the central figure in many alleged church activities, including plans to poison the water supply in Washington, D.C., store weapons at Stoen's California home and set up the church's complicated overseas network of secret accounts.
Buford, accompanied at the news conference by her attorney, Mark Lane, claimed she had defected from the temple Oct. 27, and said her role in the temple's affairs was secondary to that of Stoen. She and Lane also charged that former temple attorney Charles Garry knew about the smuggling and stockpiling of weapons by the temple.
Buford's attempt to downplay her role in the temple, and particularly her attacks on Stoen, have lead several temple ex-members to say they fear she may still be wedded to Jones's philosophy.
A spokesman for the Berkeley-based Human Freedom Center (HFC), run by several temple ex-members, expressed extreme skepticism about her defection from the temples. "Just the way they (Buford and Lane) are attacking Tim Stoen, it's like a final salute to Jim Jones."
"It was pretty well known by the entire congregation that Tim Stoen was going to be slandered" by Jones' loyalists if the temple collapsed, the HFC spokesman added.
The temple ex-members are particularly distrustful of Buford because she sought out Mark Lane when she defected from the church in October. They point out that Lane at the time was one of the attorneys for the temple and subsequently went back to Guyana and conferred with Jones.
"The last place in the world she would have gone," says Patrick Hallinan, Stoen's attorney in San Francisco, "was to Mark Lane. . into the jaws of a possible trap."
Meanwhile, the federal grand jury impaneled in San Francisco is continuing its investigation into the temple's affairs. According to one source close to the inquiry, federal officials are viewing the statements made by all the former temple members thus far with extreme skepticism.
The U.S. attorney's office, according to this source, has no immediate plans to grant immunity to any of them, and recently turned down a request by Buford for immunity from prosecution.
The federal investigators are trying to obtain documents from Guyana in an effort to weigh the truth of the testimony of the temple ex-members. "There is certainly some truth in what they're saying about each other," the source explained. "But they're just not telling the whole truth, particularly about their own involvements."
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