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'Officials T

hink Most A

ccounted For

Missing C

ultists in Doubt

By L

eonard Dow

nie Jr. W

ashiniton Post Pond= SIT

T10*

GE

OR

GE

TO

WN

, Guyana, N

ov. 23—U

S. o

fficials su

perv

ising

the a

irlift of th

e b

odies' of th

e 400 Am

ericans w

ho d

ied in

Jon

estown

have raised

dou

bts h

ere abou

t w

hether there really were 300 to 400 m

ore Jonestow

n residents who disappeared into

-the su

rroun

din

g rain forest.

-Under'pressure from

reporters, who ask-

ed w

hy U

S. m

ilitary aircraft and

person

-n

el were n

ot b

eing u

sed , to

help

the

' Gu

yana D

efense F

orce sear& th

e den

se forest for m

issing. Am

ericans, a spokesman

• said

the- U

.S. m

ilitary

perso

nn

el here

dou

bted

there w

ere man

y missin

g peop

le to fin

d.

U.S. "T

he evalu

ation' th

at we h

ave mad

e,"

S A

rmy M

aj. Rich

ard H

eimlin

g told

reporters, "

is simp

ly that th

ere were n

ot m

any m

ore peop

le in Jon

estown

at the

time of th

e suicid

e. "W

e cannot find hard evidence that peo-

ple d

id go

, off Into th

e jun

gle, more th

an

what have already returned. T

his is not to say that there aren't m

ore out there some-

wh

ere, bu

t if there are, th

ey are a long

way from

Jonestow

n."

. F

our hundred and-nine bodies have been

found in the Jonestown agricultural -com

-m

un

ity in rem

ote north

western

Gu

yana,

..the victims of the m

ass. suicide-murder-led

' by P

eoples T

emp

le cult lead

er the R

ev. Jim

Jones last Saturday. Three, including

Jones, d

ied of gu

nsh

ot wou

nd

s,- and

the

rest took p

oison.

.. . -

By late this afternoon, 177 of the-bodies,

including one tentatively identified hi; -Jim

Jones, h

ad b

een b

rough

t by h

elicopter

from Jon

estown

. to 'Ilmeh

ri intern

ational

airport here, and many, had been transfer-

red to military cargo planes for bransporta.

tion to th

e U.S

. Air F

orce base h

t Dover,

Del.

. In

add

ition to 409

' known dead, w

hich in

clud

es abou

t eight G

uyan

ese child

ren

living in

Jonestow

n, 32 oth

er •Jonestow

n

residen

ts wh

o escaped

on S

aturd

ay are 'here in G

eorgetown: Som

e of them slipped

out of th

e comm

un

e early Satu

rday an

d

others fled into the surrounding forest late th

at afternoon

wh

en Jon

estown

security

guard

s began

roun

din

g peop

le up

for the

ritual su

icide • th

at they h

ad reh

earsed

many tim

es. .. • ..

Oth

ers of th

e 32

surv

ivo

rs. ha

d left

Jonestow

n w

ith th

e fact-find

ing m

ission

of Rep. L

eo J. Ryan (D

,-OaliL

). on Saturday aftern

oon an

d su

rvived th

e amb

ush

by

• Jonestown gunm

en who killed R

yan, three new

smen and. one of the Jonestow

n defec-tors on

a nearb

y airstrip.

There are also. 46 m

ore. Peoples. T

emple

mem

bers u

nd

er hou

se hired

insid

e the

cult's headquarters -house. here in George- .

town.

• .

• O

ne cu

lt mem

ber, S

haron

Am

os, and

h

er three . ch

ildren

were fou

nd

in th

e Se,e G

UY

AN

A, AZ, C

ot 1

stack of coffins for contains retool" of

GUYANA, From Al t;Georgetown house with their throats •

slashed after the Jonestown mass sui cide- Saturday night.

That makes a total of just under 500 ::ePoples Temple Church members in ,̀Guyana who have been accounted for. TIie Mystery that Guyanese and U.S.

',officials are now trying to solve is 'show many more there were and where 'they are now.

Correspondents and lawyers who !ivent into Jonestown with Ryan and toured its housing and :attended a mass meeting of its residents said they saw about 800 people there, although they did not count them. ; ;G uyana and U.S. military' perionnal sound 789 passports in a trunk in Jonestown. Residents had been told they did not ,need to carry passports there and should turn them over to

-Jonestown leaders. This apparently was one of many measures taken to *sap residents from leaving Jones-

ose paisports were turned over td us. EmbassY officials here,

are: counting them again and sparing them to the lists of known estown dead and survivors. uestiens have been raised about ather there was,e live pertain. in estown for each passport; 'especial,

;.since so . .many older. people... bad brought....sthere by Jones 1*d SOli4;SOOliritt, s.cks co 1514t. • ad no!. OrMa on, on Whether-

graves Itiokr.", been tcund In

',nether there are of our, tra of Jeiteitown, somewhere in the forest "relnathe the big Mystery:', James Ward from the State De-

ment's Office of llmergenat

4

32 seivilceine;iif of the for: "within a day or two of the mass tide. No More haye appeared dim*

tjtV the last two days, according to 10 and Guyanese officials.

bassy officials saidtiiei were •f '' g to see that the survivors are

and fed and receive assistance turning to the United Stites. Al.

ttioligh a few of the survivors are in Is, nearly :20 are staying, at their est, in a large, sectind-floor room

ii the central jail under police protec-

, • tha( they wire led into the , forest to

town. guiads . or ward ,t)iroUgh the feria, Wyer Maxi Lane,' who went to Jonestown, with Ryan and escaped into the f st when the mass suicide: roundup told :reporters later • . '644e-hear screaming and shootnig In the .forest , , •

Another theory; one offered by '`home Guyanese authorities; is that a number of Jonestown -residents who lived in buildings,. on its periphery scattered into the forest when Jones auminoned,them for the mass suicide.

In the rain forest-they may not have -survived exPosure, dampness, poison. Ous anakes oar numerous jaguars. ,

Ohe Guyana'Defense Force solider asked'. by C. reporter 'touring Jones-to

a he, and the other soldiers were

wWe 'search of the forest an-: d that.T.he reporter must be jok-.

944 in thefarest, looking fOlfaittne pie traveling recently along the and asking if the Indiena• have seen • . any9ne. 4

!gel Helmling told reporters, "U people go off in the jungle Ehey leave trails, they leave evidence. These have not been found. Thete are some exist, ing trails in the area and these trails to the best of my, knowledge and belief have been covered, and people have not been found." '

Meanwhile, the military spokesman

- v are still afraid 6.0 will., be "If you Went -15: feet in :there," the by cult g, said, ou would be, so lost we . ne theory Abe' Peo who, taaV find you

Igap be liaising from Jonestown is at the Guyanese troops appar-

here made clear that/their. first. Orbs'. ity is M use the aircarn and personnel

'herb to move the deccuni?°°' ing bodies out of Amadei/a as quickly as Pondble.

"I don't think the Priorities are nee esearlty baciniani," James Ward sad.

fact' remaina, that. 400 deceased people in this sites demands a certain immediate action., This does

main that'. there is no concern for fact ;remains we haFe

to fry'in addition to darching for sur-vivori to try identify which people

survivors."

U.S. Air :John L Moeda

ide- altatotill the b ed: les had . been transported to ' the trotted Stites the aircraft and 200

' 17.S. military perionnel here might be Utied for a wider Search of the rain

ft of bodies gun

The airli tete yes th 01.911V11 today. ::

lights putting the hodY. bagti: in Jonestown,

44/430 ."Super' Jolly .Aveli ui-

,37A, helico ,thoin trod imie

tarystolv.n'to

the rate the airlift

be

of:Joneelientenditaltno were :men arrested by the Gumniese

The two min, Mike Prokes, 22, from Modesto, Calif., and Tim Carter, 28, of • itiahO,have been held by Police under suspicion of having some con, nection with violence in Jonestown lmeaddpf the guns and large sums of Money they were reportedly carrying'

' ;When arrested.

A third surviving Jones lieutenant, Larry LaytOn, 32, from San Francisco, hat been formally charged in court here with five counts of murder, three counts of Attempted Minder and one count otslischerlihse a loaded- firearm in connection with the ambush of Ryan's party At the airstrip nod ,'gs Jonestown lad Saturday. .

rehigert- jrali.) and Mak* idelig

of thesbediea were as they- MY car I the.

' .1ond.twun. by :a team of

atisfaPedi sbir about a dozen of the dr-vied:a; lidiuding, as it tinned out tiro of lieUtenants who %We then.*re ft hrthe GuilneaSt Police Anaia Via ITS. *bilIfft offtclais is-

,- dated ly about a doien of the sure!. vorspliclucling, as it turned out, two

'IMPN "'Art

Assixdistod Press

helicopter and transfer them, right to metal shipping containers for yesterday's flight to the United States.

A Novel of the Absurd, THE WASHINGTON POST

Friday, November 24,1978

Tropical--.11:aokd :top By Leonard Downie Jr.

, Washington Post Foreign Service

GEORGETOWN, Guyana, Nov. 23— If only the horror of the bodies rot,

• ting under the hot sun in Jonestown could be blotted out, the other events of this extraordinary week here could be stitched together in the style of Evelyn Waugh or Graham Greene to form a novel of the absurd in the

, tropics. A remote, Kansas-sized nation of

less than a million inhabitants and only a dozen years of independence;

, whose name was seldom spelled right even by the few outsiders who knew it existed, suddenly becomes front-page news around the world.

Its languid capital, populated by less than 200,000 and run by exceed-ingly polite if somewhat deliberate civil servants, is inundated by an un-ending flood of foreign journalists, each of whom demands exclusive ac-cess' to everything and everyone with-out delay.

Its government, which retains the parliamentary trappings and tropic co-lonial buildings of its former British rulers but is run now by socialist lead-ers who want to be addressed as "comrade," is not quite certain how to handle all this because, in the words of one foreign diplomat here, "They are still trying to decide whether to have an open or closed society.".

Its small sector of private enter-prise—most industry and large stores are nationalized—is being infused with American and Guyanese dollars by the correspondents and U.S. mili-tary and civilian personnel crowding the hotels and restaurants, buying out its clothing stores and monopolizing most of its taxis.

The result has been a mixture of confusion and occasional remarkable cooperation, frustration and good hu-mor, tragedy and economic windfall, and the distant stench of death min-

_ gled with the warm love of life of the Guyanese people.

Guyana has been open to the world htis week as never before.

"Americans would never come here

otherwise," one cab driver said, per-haps forgetting the hundreds of Americans who had come and become part of the settlement in Jonestown.

This tropical country is nearly 90 percent covered by dense rain forest. Most of its people are , here along the Atlantic coast, where ocean breezes moderate the heat with frequent showers. It has no highway or rail link with its neighbors on three sides: Venezuela, Brazil and Suriname.

Guyana, located on the northern rim of South America, considers itself a Caribbean nation., Its best connec-tions by air are with Trinidad. Its pa-pers are filled with news from• the Caribbean islands. Its music is West Indian. Its socialist model, in rhetoric, is Cuba.

Only a little more than 40 percent of its population is black, descendants of Africans brought here by the Dutch and. British, but it is their political party, that has controlled the govern-ment since independence.

Half of Guyana's citizens are East Indians, who make up the bulk of its, merchant class but have largely been shut out of the top positions of power in the government of Prime Minister Forbes Burnham.1, The mix also in-cludes Chinese,' initigenoue 'Amerindi ans and some British-descended "white Guyanese" whp remained be-hind after independence in 1966.

The people and the government are proud of their country, which is un-are its basic crops and industry) but derdeveloped (sugar, rice and bauxite not desperately , impoverished. Its rela-tively few roads are filled with cars and bicycles. City dwellers are well dressed and healthy.

Except for a recent- epidemic of street muggings here, called "choke-and-robs," there is relatively little, vio-lence. The Guyanese were deeply shocked by the events at Jonestown last weekend.

At first they explained it to them-selves as something Americans did to Americans, but now questions are be-ing asked by opposition politicians and newspapers and others about _ whether the Guyanese government

•

Sometimes, the rep4rters' fruitra-tions are carried to noisy luncheon ta-

bles in hotel restaurants here, where

they are the most numerous perons-+ except for three days at the •Tovier Hotel in the heart of this eity. On

•

should not have done something about Jonestown long before this.

They are asking how dozens of guns, including automatic weapons, got into Jonestown; whether it is true that Jonestown was taking in and sending out goods by water via a

• nearby river to the sea without going

• through customs, or whether top offi-cials of the government were too friendly with Jonestown leader Jim Jones and looked the other way when stories of strange activities there reached diplomatic and political cir-

cles here. The toughest questions, however,

are now being asked by an increas-ingly insistent foreign press corps

here. Restrictions on access to Jonestown,

which can now be reached only by air, and on information coming from any-one but a few Guyanese government and U.S. Embassi spokesmen, the dif-

ficulties of using a limited telephone system that has been overwhelmed by the media, and the polite British-style brushoff that Guyanese officials give

reporters who push too far have be. gun to frustrate the press, and prod-

uce some conflict. A reporter for one major U.S. news-

paper angrily lectured an official of the Ministry of Information .,. about how wrong and.foolish it was that he had not been given the same access to the Jonestown scene and elsewhere that a reporter for a competing U.S.

• newspaper had.. Some reporters became particularly

strident at a press conference last,

night by U.S. military, U.S. embassy and Guyanese officials to report on the removal of bodies from Jonestown and the search for survivors.

Reporters who apparently believed that more should be 'done to hunt for survivors in the remote rain forest peppered the officials with combative questions that sometimes became lee•_

tures. •

"How can the United States send a fortune to recover dead bodies," one reporter asked, "and very little to go

after survivors in the Jungle?"

these deli*: the chilies., 'soccer in -Georgetown to play, Guyana a nit.: tinnal ,tea; occupied many of the

'Tewer's' rooms? and half the dining - .m021 fOrthree meals.a day.

Ant 'unlike the foreign journalists, the • Chinese soccer players were

barely noticed es they filed in noise-lessly, ate at two long tables and Ws-appeared again, never to be seen in the lobby or corridors of the hotel un- til

• they boarded their buses to leave.

On the, night they left, a small crow& gathered outside the hotel.

With the squad of big, rugged-lookidi

Chinese athletes boarding their buses, amid the foreign reporters dashing back and forth from the hotel to their taxis, there was much to watch in a city that has not known such excite-ment since independence day.

.64.4Nfitt.

Cam

era Press

. Water Street, a m

ain thoroughfare in Georgetow

n, reflects the leisurely pace of life before Guyana's capital w

as jarred by JonestOw

n killings.

::A, remote,, sized nation of leSS

thaa.. inhabitants o

4'49Fmn `llidepen

name was 'seldom spelled, right; even

by the'feW Outsiders who kiieW .it existed, suddenly ecOmea fronttage :news

and the-Warld.

By Judith Valente wasaingtea Post Stott Writer

For the past three daYS, the lives of Jack and Kathleen Griffin have been consumed by an endless series of phone calls.

Twice daily, the Herndon couple calla the State Department, asking each time if anyone there knows whether:the Griffin's nine cousins are alittOrc100,-

nine cousins, ranging in age froM4

tto.30, Were all members of the

Peonlis Temple cult, and had all fol-loWed leader Jim Jones to Jones- town, tuyana to build a • utopian so-das „arri commune the jungle. o es

y,,p0:#eople loilestewkt' perish din a mass murder-suicide; •

the riffins tried again, and ',another polite, :sympathetic. vole, Jtiing ffiein,, the Satne,frustrat%

triiy „,itsit for the names` iof the.

Tener).00 W46's c011ing.TheY say' 'wed t ow anything,' or else, they say i: ell contact you.' And I'll say, W

1. 'eil, who' has: has

ll the names (of the

dead), 'And they'll say, 'We don't knoW, We don't have them.'" Jack Griffin; Said. --' • '

Mrs. Griffin said her' aunt in Cali-lornia read in a paper there that the husband of one of her (cousins) was listed among' the dead. Still the Grif-

fins can get no information from the State Department.

"They're very polite when we call. They take the information (the names' of the Griffins' cousins). But they're not disseminating any information If 200 people were identified, like the newspapers said, then certainly they have some information by now," said Jack Griffin, a Navy captain stationed at the Bureau of Naval Personnel

Mrs. Griffin's cousin, Marlene Tel: ley Wheeler, who is about 10 years old

. now, was the first to join the People's' Temple church hi Ban •; Francisco. Wheeler had moved to San' Francisco , from the Long' Beach, Calif, area in

, ,the mid1960s, after. she and her three sisters and brothers lest both their

The People's' Temple . was just around the corner from .• where Wheeler lived. Griffin said members of the church probably struck her cousin as friendly and out-going. All five members of the orphaned famil,y eventually joined the church in the late 1960s Griffin said. "They had lost their parents and wanted to hold the family together," Mrs. Griffin said.

"They were looking for a church," she added.

When many members of the San ' Francisco branch of the People's Tem-ple moved to Guyana, Mrs. Griffins' cousins moved, too.

An 'Mint living in California coun-seled her young relatives not to join the People's. Temple because she found the mendiers "too pushy," Mrs Griffin said. •

The youths joined anyway, and do-nated $57,000 they had received from their dead father's fireman's fund to the church, the Griffins said yester-day..

A spokeswoman at the State Depart-- feat's special operations center set up to take inquiries from relatives of People'd Zeinple iceinbers, yesterday said, "If we don't have the names on our known survivors' list, we take the names and cable them to Guyana for poSsible identification."

Asked if they thought their , tives would return to the People's Temple headquarters in San Francisco, Jack Griffins-said, "My God;'no."

"We want them to know that there are relatives who care enough about them who will, until they get back on their feet, shelter them, and feed them," he added, •

QE2 Cruise Canceled Reuter.

LONDON, Nov. 23—A planned Cari-bbean cruise by the ,luxury, liner Queen Elizabeth II;-next month has been canceled because the ship is being repaired,. (the owners, Cunard, said today. The twoWeek cruise was 'dhe to leave BostOn Dec. &

The in frustration, they called a• newspaper yesterday to see if there had been any published reports of survivors. They had already sent their young daughter out to look for a'Cali-fornia newspaper, because an aunt from California had said one of the Griffins' cousins, a 33-year-old, bad been mentioned in an article as one of , the church members seen carrying a gun.

The Griffins, as the Washington-area branch of their family, have be-come the focal point of the family's efforts to 'obtain information about the relatives. And while the one big question remains unanswered—are their relatives dead or alive7—their waiting has become filled with other troubling questions. - •

The family is Catholic and woule like a Catholic burial for their rela-tives if they are dead. But Kathy Grif-fin says she is worried that the Catho-lic Church will refuse to bury her cousins because they are member of another church, and may have taken their own lives.

"I'll have to talk to a priest about it," said Kathy Griffin, who used to baby-sit for some of her cousins who are • now unaccounted for in Guyana. Five of the missing are her first cous-ins and four are second cousins, she

said. And, she says, although the family

is Upping against hope that their raiz, tives are alive, they are uncertain about how they will be able to pay the burial costs of nine family members all at once, if they are indeed among the dead.

Meanwhile, the waiting goes on. "It's terrible. One minute myself they're all dead; The nest say maybe they escaped in die .jun-, gle:s ;

te.s Arrive ►erAir Base •

By Alice Bonner a .eew.tOtnnotc... .

att. ,a ..Forty • Victims of the

wane. maar -.'W ireriTflow.'here ladari tia; 'Brat shtiannilt IA bodies hall attuned to the Unit . • ed States from :,lonestriri. :obi" last Saturday's

An Air. Force C141-arge•,plann.carrYing Tamable : in Plastic bags inside. aluminum containers stacked three deep on a loadaw, • pelint, 'landed at Dover

• . Air _Force Base short*, Wan was the trinof; a seriee,:wmested to bring the 408 dead

,••

Peegggp-,tootak„1.egor the Beli. Jim Janet tie 0,60Ciiii10.44jek.ftaiir.H.1*leitninint; the • cardtar_14,Vurn& "•:- •• •

The .bitlinir-end-Wldte aircraft 'tatted • to a stop -near the base operations center. Air•ForCe chaplain Paul Wragg prayed briefly into a microphone..

• • Dolieneof reporters and cameras recorded the event • behind. a rope .50 Yards Away. . • . .

"We:••ask thybleating on the crew. Sad those • whose work it is. to handle these

,remains give

s'■ 'un Strength and tindatstanding that all, things might' ;ffitt:41inderne,•!.

" IWO* • :

••ilbe.-liodiel Iht• 07 nt tidal

*Y.St:State stiehltiOEV 00 of the '40Amiliiin tents** sontintd

of . the Initittlin ',Diver • was Chosen.. itir . thek otjhelylictiang •Titef.:$00r:their- lives ;:gatiwaley. 0atainontd. laiadvdrille. • • .ineedof

"

IMPA

K

taWR

M

PTI.W?

After predaw

n flight from-G

ayana to Dover A

iiForce B

ase with bodies 'of 40,victim

s, brief prayer

ft

AR

RIV

AL

,. From

Al

sot and

killed

Rep

. Leo S

. Ryan

&

four otheR; w

ho were on a fact-

Hiding m

ission at the grouP's jungle

sillement and had departed w

ith sev-eral-defecting m

embers.

-:`,0ht our judgment this w

as the best fat:pity. T

he people here have had the eX

perience in dealing with this kind

4.41tutation, this m

any ,caqualties," etin

tined

Maj. B

righam

' Sh

uler, a

sito*esman for the P

entagon., Most of

the Guyana ' victim

s were 'from

Cali-

fernia. Shuler said that although Oak-

_ Imad A

ir Forne Base has "a sim

ilar fa-ditty, the D

over mortuary is the larg-

ea of its kind on the East C

oast. .4'oday's w

as- the beginning of the largest delivery to' D

over since March

11117, when 327 of the victim

s of a col-Ilion betw

een two 747 jetliners at the

Tenerife airport in the C

anary Islands w

ere brought here. !-rsB

uilt in 1989 to handle remains of

Ain

erican m

ilitary person

nel an

d

their family m

embers from

Europe,

,*e facility also processed a number

cit Vietnam

war casualties.

.4iA team

of experts in radiology and dbnistry from

the Arm

ed Forces Insti-tu

te of Path

ology at Walter R

eed

Allay M

edical Center w

ill sadist the nine-m

ember base M

orturary staff in p

tocessing an

d id

entifyin

g the. re-

main

s, accordin

g to Maj. R

obert

Gloom

, information officer at D

over. rthe bodies w

ill be cleaned and em-

. bahaed, then wrapped in w

hite sheets, p

lastic bags an

d a

third human-re-

Mains container before being released

tO'next of kin for burial, G

room said.

Identification of the bodies, badly de-ccjm

posed after lying for days in the ttlpical sun, w

ill be based on photo-graPha, physical descriptions, m

edical and dental charts, and as a last resort,

. ,

sight recognition by relatives, Shuler said

' H

owever; th

e bod

ies are already ,

"u

nrecogn

izable,"

accordin

g to a, - spokesm

an for the State Departm

ent's i G

uyana task force. "At this point get-

ting them into bags is the m

ain prior-ity," spokesm

an Jeff Dietrich said to-

day.

After W

ragg's praYer this m

orning, volunteer A

ir Force ,pail bearers in

green fatigues carded 13 containers from

the p

lane to five w

aiting vans. T

he grim procession, led by an A

ir F

orce car, then drove slowly the half-

mile to the single-story cem

ent mortu-

ary wh

ich w

as dosvd

to reporters.

Tw

enty-seven other containers, identi-

fled on

the ou

tside b

y "sh

ipp

ing

numbers," w

ere hau

led in

two large

trailers to save limp, Shuler said.

-A p

lan to tran

sport th

e bod

ies in

five flights, 81 to a plane, went aw

ry w

hen the heat and humidity' of G

uya-n

a's tropical forest h

amp

ered th

e w

ork of military crew

s removing-them

!rota tbe Jonestow

n settlement.

is !mid, left,heforeD141 is unloaded. Then, crewmen carry off

A"'Veil' strange kind of .Stion. les it great human tragedy and Yet they (the victims) don't fit into any usual categories," James Potter of the Dovei chapter of the American Red-Croissaid.

The Red Cross and Mr Force chap-loins and legal representatives today

, staffed at information center for rels.

By. John MoDonnoh-:Tho Waohlhoton Pat containers for transport to mortuary.

tives of the victims, who are not. al-lowed on the base. The center had received only six tele& phone inquiries from relatives by late this afternoon, Sgt. Juno Carlo said. The calls came from I.os Angeles, Boston, Louisiana and downtown Do. ver, among other Places, Carlo said.

iw

Lane Sensed. Ttouble fists' Camp

Internal *.e4enue Service and the Social Secdrity Administration, to destroy the'sorfaliat Peoples Tem-ple `commune" in Guyana's rain

Last week, Laiie 'was. intent upon demonstrating to Ryan and nine loUrindisti who 'accompanied the congreasinan to Jonestown that it ivae,:.for the most Parc;ex-aptly *hat its eUppOrters 'claimed: an unusual, interracial socialist , community where more than 800 ,7 of Jones' followers were living Peacefully, receiving all the food, medical attention and liberty' they needed. _. •

But this Week; after Ryan and four others were killed in a hail

' of. bidlete fired. Jonestown gunmen and afte Jones, led 408 of hit RillOwert in a hi= suicide-Murder that atimned much of the world, Lane adMitted he knew far more aboht the:real conditions at Jonestown than he was 'ready or willing to acknowledge before

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the violent tragedy occurred last week-ned.

For example, Lane says now that he knew strong depressants and tranquilizers were used to keep the people at Jonestown against their will. He also knew that al-leged practice suicide drills had in fact takon place.

Lane also says be was warned before-hand that the grilled cheese sandwiches served on Saturday by the Peoples Tem-ple to Ryan and others in his party may have been laced with tranquilizers or other drugs.

Butinstead 'of warning anyone of that possibility, Lane said later that he simply did not eat the sandwiches.

"I brought along some cough drops, which have a lot of sugar in them," Lane said. "I sure as hell wasn't going to eat the cheese sandwiches."

Lane claims now that he warned Ryan, before the congressman and his party left here for Jonestown, that Jones was sick and that the visit could have explosive consequences. But given the adversary relationship between Lane and the con-gressman, who thought Lane was trying to stall or prevent the trip, the warning, if it was made, was apparently dismissed.

Lane did not tell anyone else who travel-ed with Ryan that Jones was unstable and that Jonestown was in many ways a pris-

By Charles ‘A, Krause vrannstai lost sonars arms.

GEORGETOWN, Guyana—Mark Lane;, the well-knoWn conspiracy lawyer who, represented.r the Peo- ples Temple ...and the Rev. Jim Joneak line* .a great deal more than :be ,willing , to let on

the eitilosive situation at Joneetere:and-felt something was very wimarg there lime:before Rep. Lep '3„, Ilyih ,:<D7catti;?, irriveck-Nov; 17.

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During an- airborne interview as he flew with the congressman and his party toward the reinote Agri-cultural commune lastweek, Lane said that "maybe 10 percent of the people at JoiiestoWn want to leave." •

on camp possibly on tne verge of being destroyed by its leader.

Lane says he knew Jones was serious about taking his followers to their deaths. He says he now believes Jones sketched out a plot that included having trained marksmen kill "enemies" of the Peoples Temple once the mass suicide-murder oc-curred.

Lane's knowledge beforehand of much of the reality of Jonestown and his willing-ness to talk about it only now—after -at least 414 people are dead—has infuriated at least one of the "concerned relatives" who was on the fateful fact-finding sion.

This relative, who salted- that bit name not be revealed because he, too, believes that some of Jones' followers will attempt to kill those they see as enemies of the Peoples Temple, said Lane's failure to disclose what he knew beforehand consti-tutes "complicity in the crime."

"I find it incredible," this relative said, "that what happened at Jonestown is being called a mass suicide. Babies and children whose mothers give them cyanide have not committed suicide. They have been murdered." He said Lane possibly could have prevented the tragedy had he spoken out.

Lane countered this accusation by saying that the concerned relatives knew far more about the real conditions at Jones-town than he did. When it was pointed out that it was the concerned relatives who tried to bring their fears and beliefs to public attention—while Jones and his attorneys tried to discredit them—Lane said that "if they [the concerned relatives] weren't crazy, they wouldn't have been

discredited." Lane also said it was his belief that

the FBI and the CIA had agents in the Jonestown complex and that the U.S.

, government was as much aware of the

situation there as he was. Asked for his evidence, Lane said: "I don't have proof but I have strong beliefs."

In justifying his silence about much of what he knew-beforehand, Lane has also said he believes that exposing the real situation would have done little good. It might, he now argues, have precipitated earlier a mass suicide-murder such as the one that occured after the Ryan visit.

"What could have been done?" Lane asked. "I believe that if the Marines had been called in, 90 perdent of the people at Jonestown would have fought to their deaths. It was a hard life, he [Jones] was a dictator but the people there didn't want to go back to the United States. They wanted to go to the Soviet Union."

Lane said he hoped before Ryan's visit that the congressman would have learned enough to publicize deficiencies at Jones-town and that Jones might have instituted "reforms."

Instead, the visit apparently triggered Jones to order trained marksmen to kill as many of those traveling with Ryan as the gunmen could before Jones ordered a real "white night," .his ode name for

the suicide-murder plan he had talked about -1-and faked—so many times before.

For Ms Part, Charles E. Garry, who

served as gene ral counsel. to the Peoples Temple, has continued to maintain that he thinks, even ifter last weekend's tra-gedy, that Jonestown was "a beautiful thing" and that Jones did not stop People who wanted to leave the remote commune.

Lane was brought in only recently to investigate the possibility of filing a con-spiracy suit against U.S. government agen-cies that Jones believed were, along With a number of California publications and former Temple members, hying to de-stroy both Jones and Jonestown.

alon with was Jonestown when Jones

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people to take the mixture of Kool-Aid and cyanide that killed them, managed to talk an armed guard to allow himself and Garry to escape.

They walked the five Zelles:1$9. Seal* Port Batton)* and were brought out of the area on Sunday. Lone is now back 'at his area on Sunday. Lane is how beet at his

Memphis, Tenn., home:'whern he has said he may write a book about his experienc. is is nos anttrely clear Whether Lane and

Garry are still lawyers. lor...the peoples Temple, which, disPito:: Ayoub' of last weekend, still-has' adherents

weekend, still has thousands In the San Francisco area as least agfi nwinbers now under

;here in Guyana. j

AssOotated Press

Mark Lane: refused to eat cheese sandwiches.

Lane did not tell I anyone else who

traveled with Ryan that Jones was

unstable and that Jonestown was in

many ways a prison camp .

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