Jonestown (partially found NBC news footage; 1978)

This article has been tagged as NSFL due to its disturbing subject matter.

---

Screenshot from NBC video of Jim Jones being interviewed by Don Harris.

Status: Partially Found

The Reverend Jim Jones (1931-1978) was an American cult leader/founder of the Peoples Temple of the Disciples of Christ, which is best remembered for the mass suicide/poisoning orchestrated by Jones at the Temple's communal compound in Guyana, on November 18th, 1978. Prior to this Jones was known for his advocacy for the Civil Rights Movement and his church's socialist leanings.

Background

Jones had originally established the Peoples Temple in his hometown of Indianapolis, Indiana in 1954, combining Christian theology with more modern communist/socialist ideals. In line with this, the Temple was funded largely via the savings and social assistance funds of its members. In the 1960's he moved the group to more congenial soil in San Francisco, California, where they flourished, largely thanks to Jones'efforts to cultivate local politicians and other powerful civic leaders. However, by the mid-1970's all Jones' connections could not hold off numerous investigations - not to mention media attention - for tax evasion and allegations of abuse from former Temple members.

In response the increasingly paranoid and isolated Jones began to lease land from the Guyanese government in 1974, encouraged by their willingness to take his money and ask no questions. In what was essentially a jungle clearing he set about building a utopian community grandly dubbed the Peoples Temple Agricultural Project, informally nicknamed Jonestown. He and the most devoted of his several-thousand-strong congregation would officially move there in 1977. By 1978, Jonestown had an estimated population of more than 900 people.

Lead-up to suicide

In November of 1978, US Congressman Leo Ryan had received several requests from former Temple members still in the States to investigate Jonestown, based on their concerns about conditions there spurred by relatives' letters home. It was said that Jones had become increasingly dictatorial, imposing harse punishments and- most worrying to Ryan - preventing anyine from leaving. As Jonestown's population were still technically US citizens, Ryan decided to personally lead a fact-finding mission into the Guyanese jungle along with several aides. National TV network NBC embedded several reporters and a camera crew on the mission, exchanging evidence-gathering for a potential expose.

The group was greeted cordially enough on their arrival in the afternoon of November 17th and everything initially seemed to be going well, with a full tour of the compound, chats with several apparently content and even cheerful inhabitants, and even a celebratory music concert held that evening at the settlement's main pavilion. As the day wore on, however, Ryan et al began to suspect something was seriously wrong with the increasingly awkward and rehearsed-sounding behavior of the residents. These suspicions were validated when several Peoples Temple members stepped forward and asked to leave, stating that they were indeed being held against their will in "a communist prison camp." Ryan willingly agreed to give them passage home.

Jones saw the group, including the several defectors, leave the next morning without apparent issue. However, back at the compound he was growing more and more outraged by what he saw as "betrayals" - and, more importantly, realizing that Congressman Ryan's investigation along with NBC News' report would spell serious trouble for not only Jonestown and the People's Temple, but himself. Ultimately he sent some of his most loyal lieutenants to the Port Kaituma airstrip, where they pulled up on ATVs and opened fire just as the Congressman and entourage were boarding their plane home. Ryan, three NBC staffers and one of the defecting Temple members were killed, and nine others were injured.

Back in Jonestown, Jones was already on the PA system warning his followers of their impending doom (albeit conveniently omitting that he was the cause) and commanding them to commit what he called "revolutionary suicide" as a statement to the world. This did not come as a great surprise to the Jamestown faithful, who had, it would emerge, been subject to their leader's paranoid rantings about their enemies closing in for some time.

Famously, the means of suicide was grape Flavor-Aid (popularly misremembered as Kool-Aid) prepared in large vats and spiked with potassium cyanide - a sure but not at all a pleasant way to die. Mothers poured the sweet concoction down their children's throats. It is unknown how many members had to be forced into drinking, but certainly Jones and his loyalists were guilty of several dozen such murders, if not more. In total, 918 men, women, and children lost their lives on November 18th, 1978. The tragedy was the largest loss of American civilian life in a deliberate act prior to the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Footage

In the aftermath, an audio tape purporting to capture Jonestown's final hours was claimed to have been found in the ruins by Guyanese authorities and was subsequently widely circulated. It was apparently made via Jones' private PA setup and consists largely of doomsday exhortations to his flock, interspersed with conversations with his lieutenants, all against a horrific backdrop of screams both of the dying and those realising it was not the peaceful death they had been promised. Despite some gaps and minor inconsistencies, this tape is in line with the few survivors' accounts of that day, and is generally accepted as authentic.

During Ryan's trip to Jonestown, NBC cameraman Bob Brown filmed the proceedings. It is known that Brown used an RCA TK-76 video camera connected to a Sony BVU-50 portable U-Matic video cassette recorder, operated by soundman Steven Sung. The portable version of the U-Matic format only allowed for up to 20 or 30 minutes of recording time per tape.

One hour of footage surfaced in 2014, showing scenes of Jonestown prior to the tragedy as well as others (not filmed by Brown, who was among those killed at the airstrip) of the Guyanese military's walk-through of the settlement afterwards. More footage is known to be in NBC's possession, including the few seconds of he shootings at Port Kaituma that Brown was able to capture before being hit, and an hour-long interview NBC correspondent Don Harris conducted with Jim Jones on the final day. NBC acknowledged within a few days of the massacre that it had thirteen hours of video from the entirety of the Ryan visit. How much footage in total was shot is unknown, and the whereabouts pf all of it remains a mystery. Pat Lynch, a producer for NBC, has said that she personally reviewed three hours' worth of tape from November 18th alone.

Availability

Fielding M. McGehee, research director at Alternative Considerations of Jonestown & Peoples Temple, submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the FBI for the NBC tapes that were turned over to them in the aftermath of the tragedy. However, his efforts only resulted in "no record" responses. NBC has declined to reveal how much Jonestown footage it may still have in its possession, though snippets appear periodically on the internet. Footage from the Port Kaituma shooting was shown in the 1981 documentary The Killing of America, and it later resurfaced from an unknown source some time circa 2013, taken at a low angle allegedly because it had been recorded after cameraman Bob Brown had been injured by a gunshot. The recording itself is incredibly damaged and only lasts seven seconds, but shows one man firing a bolt-action rifle while several other gunmen jump off the back of a truck.

Gallery

The currently available NBC archive footage of Jonestown.

Footage taken by Bob Brown (deceased) of the shooting at the Port Kaituma airstrip.