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- FIRE FROM THE SKY
-
- by "One Who Knows"
-
- PART 20:
-
- LT. COL. JAMES "BO" GRITZ AND JONESTOWN
-
- The officer in charge of all U.S. Army Special Forces for Latin America at
- the time of the Jonestown holocaust was Lt. Col. James "Bo" Gritz. Gritz
- was the original soldier after which the movie character "Rambo" was
- patterned. Gritz was the most decorated soldier to come out of the Vietnam
- war.
-
- The Guyana massacre was carried out by Bo Gritz' men (along with British
- SAS troops). *Flatland* (#10) magazine, in an interview with Gritz, asked
- him:
-
- Question: You trained Special Forces that went into Jonestown? What was the
- precise nature of the operation?
-
- "I don't know precisely because it was a compartmentalized operation. The
- only thing that I do know for certain is what the Sergeant I quote coming
- out of Jonestown, he was insistent because he was disgusted, on writing
- this book. He was, without compromise, going to call it *All the Niggers
- Are Dead.* I asked him, 'Why would you want to entitle anything such an
- offensive way?' 'It doesn't make a difference what your color, your creed,
- your sex,' he said, 'when you are treated the way they were, that's what
- you are; you're a nigger, you're nothing else.' I think that those soldiers
- saw things that affected them and made them very angry. I've seen other
- things like that in combat where there have been abuses. I wrote about one
- of them in my book where the Captain tortured the young severely and the
- young Sergeant put on a swastika and said, "If I'm going to act like a Nazi
- I'm going to look like one.' I think that the same kind of negative impact
- occurred in Jonestown."
-
- Gritz has more about Jonestown in his autobiography, *Called to Serve.*
- Perhaps you simply cannot believe what I am telling you. Will you believe
- it if told to you by the Green Beret officer in charge of the men who did
- the killing? He admits that the information was "compartmentalized" and it
- was not until later that he learned what his men were actually doing. The
- following information is from pages 584-587 of his book:
-
- "The true story of the Jonestown camp in Guyana has been brought to light
- through an extensive investigation conducted by John Judge, from
- Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., and other dedicated researchers and
- investigators. The truth, which was thoroughly suppressed by the American
- media, is that it was actually a slave-labor camp run by Jones with the
- assistance of the CIA. Most of the information which follows is from John
- Judge's summary of the investigation, supplemented with information
- provided by Special Forces teams I had earlier trained and commanded, who
- were sent in to 'clean up the remains of Jonestown.'
-
- "Most of the black and Hispanic poor people and social activists who became
- the inmates of the camp were brought there either by force or coercion, or
- lured under false pretenses, where extensive experiments of drug-induced
- mind control were performed on them. Even before they were moved to Guyana,
- reports of beatings, kidnappings, sexual abuse and mysterious deaths had
- leaked out to the press about the earlier Peoples' Temple in Ukiah,
- California.
-
- "Jim Jones had a very interesting past which was overlooked by the media:
- During the time his friend Dan Mitrione was teaching torture techniques to
- the Brazilian and Argentineans, Jones was also sent to Brazil where his
- house, transportation and groceries were provided to him by the U.S.
- Embassy, and he frequently traveled to Belo Horizonte, the CIA headquarters
- in Brazil.
-
- "Jones had been contacted in Ukiah by 'Christian missionaries' from World
- Vision (World Vision is a CIA controlled front operation), an evangelical
- order which had performed espionage work for the CIA in Southeast Asia.
- Most of Jones' top lieutenants were from wealthy, educated backgrounds,
- many with connections to the military or intelligence agencies. These were
- the people who were involved in setting up the bank accounts, complex legal
- transactions and financial agreements which put people under the control of
- the Peoples' Temple.
-
- "Some of Jones' Lieutenants were: Dr. Lawrence Layton was chief of Chemical
- and Biological Warfare Research at Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah for many
- years and later worked as Director of Missile and Satellite Development at
- the Navy Propellant Division at Indian Head, Maryland. His wife, Lisa, was
- the daughter of Hugo Phillips, who had represented the huge Nazi
- manufacturing cartel, I.G. Farben, as a stockbroker. Their daughter,
- Debbie, met and married George Philip Blakey, whose parents had extensive
- stock holdings in Solve Drugs, a division of I.G. Farben.
-
- "Blakey was reputed to be training mercenaries in Jonestown who were sent
- to work with CIA-backed UNITA forces in Angola. Terri Buford's father,
- Admiral Charles T. Buford, worked with Naval Intelligence. Marie Katsaris'
- father was minister with the Greek Orthodox Church, thought to be a conduit
- of CIA funding, and she claimed she had proof he was a CIA agent. The
- 'official survivors' were represented upon their return to the U.S. by
- Joseph Blatchford, an attorney who had been named in a prior scandal
- involving CIA infiltration of the Peace Corps.
-
- "The people who were taken from San Francisco to begin their 'new life' in
- Guyana were bussed to Florida and arrived in Guyana bound and gagged, where
- they were forced to work 16 hours or more daily, and were fed on minimum
- rations. As more and more rumors began to filter back to the United States
- of druggings, beatings, torture, sexual humiliations and coercion at the
- Guyana site, Congressman Leo Ryan decided to go to Guyana and verify the
- situation for himself.
-
- "Ryan had challenged the CIA's overseas operations before, as a member of
- the House Committee responsible for oversight on intelligence. He was
- co-author of the controversial Hughes-Ryan Amendment, which would have
- required advance CIA disclosure to the congressional committees of all
- planned covert operations. The amendment would be defeated shortly after
- his death in Jonestown.
-
- "With Ryan on the way to Jonestown, the secrecy surrounding the camp would
- be broken and desperate measures would need to be taken to keep the truth
- from escaping, much less the inmates. In a futile attempt to test their
- conditioning methods, the leaders at Jonestown apparently tried to
- implement an actual suicide drill, but it was obviously ignored. Official
- stories first numbered the victims at 408, but later revised the toll
- upward to 913. It was claimed that some 505 bodies had been covered by
- those of the first 408 who had fallen directly on top of them, confusing
- those who had been counting from aerial photographs. - a blatant and
- ridiculous attempt at cover-up.
-
- "However, the first reports were true - 408 had died, and 700 fled to the
- jungle where British Black Watch troops and American Special Forces were
- conducting 'training exercises.' Of the 700, 505 who had been deliberately
- shot in the jungle were added to the count of those who had supposedly
- committed suicide by drinking cyanide-laced Kool Aid.
-
- "The truth is that nearly 400 inmates were forced to die by injection,
- according to the Chief Guyanese medical examiner, Dr. Mootoo, who arrived
- at Jonestown within hours of the massacre. He found needle marks on the
- left shoulder blades of 80-90% of the victims, and the others had been shot
- or strangled.
-
- "As Chief Medical Examiner, Mootoo's testimony to the Guyanese Grand Jury
- led to their conclusion that all but three of the people who had died at
- Jonestown were murdered by 'persons unknown.' Several pictures show the
- gunshot wounds on the bodies as well. The U.S. Army spokesman, Lt. Col.
- Schuler, told the press, 'No autopsies are needed. The cause of death is
- not an issue here,' and the forensic doctors who later performed the
- autopsies at Dover, Delaware, were never made aware of Dr. Mootoo's
- findings.
-
- "Guyanese troops discovered a large cache of drugs, enough to control the
- entire population of Georgetown, Guyana (pop. 200,000), for over a year.
- One footlocker contained 11,000 doses of Thorazine, a dangerous
- tranquilizer, and others such as sodium pentothal (truth serum), chloral
- hydrate (a hypnotic), demerol, Thallium (confuses thinking), haliopareael
- and Largatil (powerful tranquilizers) and many others. It was very evident
- that Jonestown was a tightly-run concentration camp, complete with medical
- and psychiatric experimentation.
-
- "Direct orders to cover up the cause of death came from the top levels of
- the American Government. Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter's national
- security advisor, authorized Robert Pastor to order Lt. Col. Gordon Sumner
- to strip the bodies of the medical bracelets they had been forced to wear
- for identification. Pastor later served as Deputy Director of the CIA.
-
- "One of the Special Forces sergeants assigned to the Jonestown massacre was
- so outraged about what he had witnessed that he had decided to describe
- the events in a book. While the Secrecy Act prevented him from detailing
- all that went on, SFC Inman carefully hid the entire story within his
- title: *All The Niggers Are Dead!* When I asked that he explain the
- crudeness of so naming his report, he replied, 'Sir, that's what they were.
- Both blacks and whites were niggers; that's what any slave is; that's what
- they were. That was our final radio message when the job we were assigned
- was finished.' I could tell by his bitterness that the government had no
- fear that the book would ever be printed. He just needed someone to vent
- his anger on.
-
- "Guyanese Prime Minister Forbes Burnham rose to power as the result of a
- CIA-inspired coup against the recalcitrant Guyanese leader Cheddi Jagan.
- Richard Dwyer, a CIA agent working as Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S.
- Embassy in Guyana, was shown to have been at the scene at the time of the
- massacre and at the airport strip, where he failed to order Guyanese
- troops, armed with machine guns, to defend Ryan and his staff.
-
- "Chief Consular Officer Richard McCoy, who was described as 'close to [Jim]
- Jones,' worked for military intelligence and was 'on loan' from the Defense
- Department at the time of the massacre. Dan Webber, who was sent to the
- Jonestown site the day after, was also named as a CIA agent.
-
- "U.S. Ambassador John Burke, who had served in the CIA since 1963 and had
- worked with Dwyer in Thailand, according to Philip Agee, tried to stop
- Ryan's investigation. The State Department concealed all reports of
- violations at Jonestown from Congressman Leo Ryan, while the Embassy
- regularly provided Jones with copies of all congressional inquiries under
- the Freedom of Information Act.
-
- "According to current reports, Jonestown has been 're-populated' with over
- 1,000 Laotion Hmong people who grew opium and served under General Vang Pao
- during our 'secret war' in Laos and Cambodia. According to these reports,
- World Vision was also attempting to move the population from the island of
- Dominica to Jonestown.
-
- "In addition to the already mentioned torture camp, Colonia Dignidad,
- another is reported to be located at Pisgua, Chile. Inside Guyana itself is
- another 'religious community,' named Hilltown, also operated under iron
- discipline, with 8,000 blacks from Guyana and the U.S. They were allowed to
- clear the Jonestown site of shoes and weapons, both of which are in short
- supply in Guyana. It may only be a matter of time before another Jonestown
- is exposed. It is sad to know that what started out to be an information
- gathering organization has turned into an instrument of the dragon."
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