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."