1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:29,960 Revealed in upcoming episodes of this program are the contents of a recently unearthed 2 00:00:29,960 --> 00:00:35,960 repository classified by the secret government, the Phenomenon Archives. 3 00:00:59,960 --> 00:01:28,960 The identities of many cultures and nations grew out of the passions of radical religious 4 00:01:28,960 --> 00:01:35,960 leaders, names like Moses, Muhammad, and Jesus of Nazareth among them. Though the lives of 5 00:01:35,960 --> 00:01:41,960 these revered radicals often ended in personal martyrdom, in some cases the headcount far exceeded 6 00:01:41,960 --> 00:01:46,960 expectations. Back in their day, any one of us might have been among them. 7 00:01:58,960 --> 00:02:14,960 Described as everything from patriotic to eccentric and from visionary to insane, cult leaders have led 8 00:02:14,960 --> 00:02:31,960 their flock down on a myriad of pathways with an occasionally tragic destination. Back to the time of the 9 00:02:31,960 --> 00:02:38,960 ancient, mass suicide has been misunderstood and what is misunderstood is so often deemed misguided, 10 00:02:38,960 --> 00:02:42,960 threatening, or evil by those in the mainstream. 11 00:02:42,960 --> 00:02:50,960 Martyrdom is not a wanted or desired choice among those who are martyred. That's the whole point. 12 00:02:50,960 --> 00:02:55,960 Curiously, chances are good that the religion practiced in your home or the one your friends 13 00:02:55,960 --> 00:03:04,960 observe or your neighbors create was at one time labeled heresy. Its followers vilify as zealots or madmen. 14 00:03:04,960 --> 00:03:13,960 Suicide is separating from the kingdom of God. When the kingdom of God has reached out and offered life to you, 15 00:03:13,960 --> 00:03:20,960 that is suicide. So to us it would be suicide to not leave. 16 00:03:20,960 --> 00:03:28,960 Those brave souls who stood for their beliefs early on, the great martyrs labeled fanatics without whom the great causes would never 17 00:03:28,960 --> 00:03:36,960 have been won. What were they fighting for? Looking, asking for, the desire for which drove them to such dramatic 18 00:03:36,960 --> 00:03:38,960 and unbefitting ends. 19 00:03:38,960 --> 00:03:49,960 I doubt that I would have ever followed a person like Jim Jones and I don't know whether I would follow a Moses if he came along today. 20 00:03:49,960 --> 00:04:01,960 Jim at one time knew God and he chose to go his own way as opposed to God's way and this is where it brought him. 21 00:04:01,960 --> 00:04:14,960 When the roll is called a gonder, when the roll is called a gonder I'll be there. 22 00:04:15,960 --> 00:04:28,960 We are all survivors. We have lived through shock and pain, anguish and grief, anger and resentment, guilt and shame. 23 00:04:28,960 --> 00:04:38,960 Tears still burn in our eyes as the water of the sea. The icons of Jonestown, the branched avidians and Heaven's gates. 24 00:04:38,960 --> 00:04:50,960 Our bodies lying prone in a jungle clearing, the inferno of Laco, the eyes of Applewhite and the uniform bodies of his followers. 25 00:04:50,960 --> 00:05:04,960 The people called them weirdos, coops, crazies and zombies. We see faces. We know their mannerisms. They were not icons nor abstractions to us. 26 00:05:05,960 --> 00:05:12,960 Perhaps only those facing mass suicide can fully comprehend the power and emotion of such a decision. 27 00:05:12,960 --> 00:05:19,960 Perhaps they alone are qualified to judge the worthiness of the cause for which they choose to die. 28 00:05:19,960 --> 00:05:30,960 In 73 A.D. one such group considers their options whereupon this community of Jewish zealots decides that they have only one way out. 29 00:05:31,960 --> 00:05:48,960 Masada was invaded by a foreign army and that foreign government was looking to take the people of that nation, prisoner and to torture them and to bring their will upon those people. 30 00:05:48,960 --> 00:05:57,960 The Romans had built a barricade and they were bringing it up next to the side of the mountain and they were going to invade Masada. 31 00:05:58,960 --> 00:06:03,960 They were finally going to penetrate this fortress. 32 00:06:03,960 --> 00:06:16,960 These zealots, super-legious people who know full well that it is against the law to commit suicide, they were afraid that they were going to be taken captive and that they were going to be tortured 33 00:06:16,960 --> 00:06:25,960 and that they were going to be paraded around in Rome in front of the people and that they were going to be forced to commit idolatry, idol worship. 34 00:06:26,960 --> 00:06:36,960 Nearly 1,000 die on that tragic day, carving out an historic moment of defiant heroism that has survived these 2,000 years. 35 00:06:39,960 --> 00:06:49,960 On November 17, 1978, in an obscure equatorial nation of South America, 900 members of the people's temple perish by their own hand. 36 00:06:50,960 --> 00:07:03,960 Many of us recall the sorrowful days which followed this tragedy, but most do not understand what could motivate this many independent souls to willingly seal their own fate by drinking a cyanide-laced punch. 37 00:07:03,960 --> 00:07:10,960 America was in what I would call both an idealistic and a rebellious phase at the same time. 38 00:07:10,960 --> 00:07:21,960 The Vietnam War, racism, economic disparity was very much the focus of what the 60s were about. 39 00:07:22,960 --> 00:07:39,960 The people's temple, according to Jones' lexicon of ideas, fit into all of these images, especially of bringing together desperate and sometimes desperate elements of American society. 40 00:07:41,960 --> 00:07:50,960 Like America's first outpost of solitude, Jamestown, Jones' town was named for its revered leader, the Reverend Jim Jones. 41 00:07:50,960 --> 00:08:00,960 Ironically, the members of this congregation die alone on foreign soil, just as the pioneers of Jamestown did hundreds of years before them. 42 00:08:01,960 --> 00:08:15,960 Emanating from a hilltop outside San Diego, California, the stench of 39 corpses tells of another mass suicide, that of the infamous religious community, Heaven's Gate. 43 00:08:16,960 --> 00:08:26,960 Standing firmly behind the convictions of their cult leader, Doe, they believe that they will ascend to the next level of consciousness through a rendezvous with celestial travelers. 44 00:08:26,960 --> 00:08:30,960 The catalyst for this transition is swift and permanent. 45 00:08:30,960 --> 00:08:35,960 Fina Barbatole, mixed in applesauce or pudding, washed down with vodka. 46 00:08:37,960 --> 00:08:44,960 Despite the differing times and beliefs, each of these communities share something more than the commonality of suicide. 47 00:08:44,960 --> 00:08:50,960 Each group believes so deeply in their cause that they are willing to lay down their lives in its name. 48 00:08:51,960 --> 00:08:57,960 What drives them to these uncertain ends, or perhaps more importantly, who leads them? 49 00:08:59,960 --> 00:09:08,960 People view me in a myriad of ways. Some people see me as the representative of the I am, as Jehovah Jara. 50 00:09:08,960 --> 00:09:15,960 Some people see a great deal of God in my body. They see Christ in me, a hope of glory. 51 00:09:21,960 --> 00:09:36,960 And Doe, some called my partnership T and Doe. That's not my name, but that's how I'm referred to on planet Earth. 52 00:09:36,960 --> 00:09:46,960 Even more puzzling is the story of Heaven's Gate, where Marshall Appelmaier or Doe spoke of ascending to the next level of spiritual awareness. 53 00:09:46,960 --> 00:09:55,960 Now listen to this. Doe claimed that an alien ship traveling in the tail of a passing comet would help the membership reach this common goal. 54 00:09:55,960 --> 00:10:04,960 One catch line. To get to the next level, they would have to leave their vehicles behind. We're talking about their bodies. 55 00:10:05,960 --> 00:10:11,960 Doe began his career as a well-liked music professor at the University of Alabama. 56 00:10:11,960 --> 00:10:16,960 Struggling with his sexual identity, he ends his marriage and leaves his two children. 57 00:10:16,960 --> 00:10:21,960 Later, while looking for a partner in his spiritual journey, he meets Bonnie Nettles. 58 00:10:21,960 --> 00:10:31,960 Although Bonnie is a spiritualist, and Doe a seminary trained Christian, the platonic pairing is exactly what the confirmed celibate Doe is looking for. 59 00:10:31,960 --> 00:10:39,960 Claiming to have the mind of Jesus, Doe spends over a decade of his life posing as a savior for those who have lost their way. 60 00:10:39,960 --> 00:10:46,960 He and his partner Bonnie, known in the community as T, enroll hundreds of men and women over the years. 61 00:10:46,960 --> 00:10:54,960 I've been talking to my students that are sitting in front of me about talking to you. 62 00:10:55,960 --> 00:11:02,960 And let me say that our mission here at this time is about to come to a close. 63 00:11:02,960 --> 00:11:06,960 I think they took a very literal approach to reading the Bible. 64 00:11:06,960 --> 00:11:11,960 And especially when they read the Gospels and the parables of Jesus, 65 00:11:11,960 --> 00:11:17,960 Nettles and Applewhite identify themselves as the two witnesses mentioned in the Book of Revelation. 66 00:11:18,960 --> 00:11:27,960 We know from the recorded account of Masada that the Jewish leader Eliezer Ben-Yair was both committed and persuasive. 67 00:11:27,960 --> 00:11:35,960 On the eve of the final Roman onslaught with capture of certainty, Eliezer made the following appeal. 68 00:11:35,960 --> 00:11:41,960 Quote, we can still choose to die as free men, together with our loved ones. 69 00:11:41,960 --> 00:11:48,960 This is one thing our enemies cannot prevent, no matter how much they desire to capture us alive. 70 00:11:48,960 --> 00:11:54,960 Let us show them that we would rather die in freedom than live in slavery. 71 00:11:54,960 --> 00:11:56,960 Unquote. 72 00:11:56,960 --> 00:11:59,960 Powerful leaders often inspire new hope. 73 00:11:59,960 --> 00:12:06,960 By erasing any links with the past, Reverend Jones was successful in minimizing dissent amongst his followers. 74 00:12:06,960 --> 00:12:12,960 Their disappointment and life waning in the light of their leader's vision for a bright new tomorrow. 75 00:12:12,960 --> 00:12:17,960 No pastor ever asked me to come to the temple for a while, I was in the church, so I went back. 76 00:12:17,960 --> 00:12:21,960 And he even offered me to sit down in the seat where he was sitting at the table to eat. 77 00:12:21,960 --> 00:12:23,960 He said, you can have my seat. 78 00:12:23,960 --> 00:12:29,960 We have not every level of society, all sorts of economic income straightened, 79 00:12:29,960 --> 00:12:33,960 professionally down to the ordinary field worker, field labor. 80 00:12:33,960 --> 00:12:37,960 Really, it's beautiful to see that all these divisions have been broken down. 81 00:12:37,960 --> 00:12:40,960 We don't recognize these kind of leaders in our group. 82 00:12:40,960 --> 00:12:44,960 Just a warm fellowship and acceptance of all people. 83 00:12:44,960 --> 00:12:50,960 I wondered, what's bringing these people together? What do they have in common? 84 00:12:50,960 --> 00:12:57,960 And then Jim Jones came out and I soon had my answer, because I saw someone who manifested the greatest love I had ever seen. 85 00:12:58,960 --> 00:13:02,960 Jones Charisma was a parent at a young age. 86 00:13:02,960 --> 00:13:07,960 He played church with his childhood friends, offering sermons over dead animals. 87 00:13:07,960 --> 00:13:13,960 He frightened them with visions of sinners burning in hell and even beat them with a stick as punishment. 88 00:13:13,960 --> 00:13:16,960 Strangely, they always returned. 89 00:13:16,960 --> 00:13:22,960 During the early years, Jim Jones laid the foundation for the support he would require later. 90 00:13:22,960 --> 00:13:30,960 The young preacher's efforts to promote interracial harmony earned him the directorship of the Indianapolis Human Rights Commission in 1961. 91 00:13:30,960 --> 00:13:37,960 There, his church set up soup kitchens and distributed free groceries and clothing throughout the early 1960s. 92 00:13:37,960 --> 00:13:41,960 Once in California, Jones taught sixth grade. 93 00:13:41,960 --> 00:13:45,960 He was appointed foreman of the Mendocino Grand Jury. 94 00:13:45,960 --> 00:13:52,960 Later, he became chairman of the San Francisco Housing Authority, where he managed a community outreach program. 95 00:13:52,960 --> 00:13:54,960 Later. 96 00:13:54,960 --> 00:13:56,960 Good job. 97 00:13:58,960 --> 00:14:03,960 Hello, I'm Reverend Jim Jones of People's Temple Christian Church. 98 00:14:03,960 --> 00:14:11,960 San Francisco and with me are the district attorney, Joseph Freitas, Sheriff Hungy Stowe, and State Assemblyman Willie Brown. 99 00:14:11,960 --> 00:14:21,960 His efforts drew the support of political figures, from First Lady Rosalind Carter to State Assemblyman Willie Brown, who would later become San Francisco's mayor. 100 00:14:21,960 --> 00:14:27,960 You have managed to make the many persons associated with People's Temple part of a family. 101 00:14:27,960 --> 00:14:29,960 If you're in need of health care, you get health care. 102 00:14:29,960 --> 00:14:32,960 If you're in need of legal assistance of some sort, you get that. 103 00:14:32,960 --> 00:14:34,960 If you're in need of transportation, you get that. 104 00:14:34,960 --> 00:14:46,960 And People's Temple somehow has bridged the gap between the expectations of human beings and the ability of those human beings to achieve and enjoy those expectations. 105 00:14:46,960 --> 00:14:48,960 Wonderful. 106 00:14:48,960 --> 00:14:53,960 Never shall forget what he's done for me. 107 00:14:53,960 --> 00:14:56,960 There was the very rich and the very poor. 108 00:14:56,960 --> 00:15:00,960 People who couldn't read or write to those who had doctorate degrees from college. 109 00:15:00,960 --> 00:15:08,960 I was a news bureau chief and correspondent for the CBS television affiliate in Sacramento when I first visited People's Temple. 110 00:15:08,960 --> 00:15:18,960 I came to do a news feature on Jim Jones and ended up quitting my job and joining him, even though I was highly paid and had the freedom to choose my own stories. 111 00:15:18,960 --> 00:15:28,960 I'm really grateful because without this church, without our pastor Jim Jones that teach me the right way, I would not be in college right now. 112 00:15:28,960 --> 00:15:35,960 I wouldn't be having a wonderful, leading a life like I am because of Pastor Jim Jones. 113 00:15:35,960 --> 00:15:39,960 And how many of you in here have been healed of arthritis, cancer? 114 00:15:39,960 --> 00:15:41,960 How many of you in here? 115 00:15:41,960 --> 00:15:44,960 That's right. So many of you. We all, I'm grateful. 116 00:15:44,960 --> 00:15:46,960 I know everyone else is here. 117 00:15:46,960 --> 00:15:49,960 Thank you very much. Thank you. 118 00:15:49,960 --> 00:15:59,960 The word cult is in this century used to describe crackpots and phonetics. 119 00:15:59,960 --> 00:16:06,960 So negative is the association with this word that it's mentioned evokes feelings of fear and moral depravity. 120 00:16:06,960 --> 00:16:14,960 How do we separate cults from legitimate religious groups and still take into account that the cult of today may be the pop religion of tomorrow? 121 00:16:14,960 --> 00:16:22,960 I mean Madonna is studying Kabbalah and Tom Cruise like Scientology. Go figure. 122 00:16:22,960 --> 00:16:29,960 While mainstream society considers the beliefs of these groups at best eccentric and at worst contemptible, 123 00:16:29,960 --> 00:16:36,960 nearly every major religion wore the trappings of cultism prior to becoming entrenched as a legitimate denomination. 124 00:16:36,960 --> 00:16:42,960 The United States was settled by dissenters fleeing the religious establishment of European culture. 125 00:16:42,960 --> 00:16:47,960 William Penn, who had been threatened with the death penalty for spreading his Quaker teachings in England, 126 00:16:47,960 --> 00:16:56,960 was cast out by the powers that be in New England, finally establishing a refuge for his followers in Pennsylvania. 127 00:16:56,960 --> 00:17:04,960 In the next century, Mormon prophet Joseph Smith and his polygamous followers were persecuted and finally forced out of New York. 128 00:17:04,960 --> 00:17:11,960 Though their founder was martyred en route, the members of the Church of Latter-day Saints traveled thousands of miles on foot 129 00:17:11,960 --> 00:17:14,960 before settling in their long sought after home of Utah. 130 00:17:14,960 --> 00:17:22,960 There they became so firmly entrenched that members of what was once considered a cult are now routinely elected to Congress. 131 00:17:22,960 --> 00:17:32,960 From the beginning, Jim Jones demands from his flock a type of loyalty that far exceeds even the most extreme of religious disciplines. 132 00:17:32,960 --> 00:17:47,960 Our daughter was beaten 75 times with a board and it was very difficult to justify that because every person was saying what a beautiful thing it was. 133 00:17:47,960 --> 00:17:57,960 And even Linda, who had been beaten, was saying, now I really feel like I understand the rules of the Church and Jim Jones helped me a lot. 134 00:17:57,960 --> 00:18:06,960 Say a mother has her child on her lap, a counselor will come over there and give her the works, make her child go to someone to a total stranger. 135 00:18:06,960 --> 00:18:17,960 And they said that it was making them independent and he didn't want family ties, he didn't want anybody to be anybody else's father except for him. 136 00:18:17,960 --> 00:18:28,960 He tried to have husbands and wives confront one another or in other words say something against the partner publicly so that the partner would have to defend their actions. 137 00:18:28,960 --> 00:18:34,960 Each member is expected to report in writing every moral or disciplinary transgression. 138 00:18:34,960 --> 00:18:38,960 Offenders are ridiculed publicly, sometimes stripped naked. 139 00:18:38,960 --> 00:18:49,960 Jones randomly dissolves marriages and appoints new partners, keeping the membership off balance as each competes for the approval of the man they call dad. 140 00:18:49,960 --> 00:18:56,960 Emphasis on organization and discipline is nowhere more apparent than in the routines of the zealot Jews of Masada. 141 00:18:56,960 --> 00:19:04,960 Both the surviving text and the archaeology point to intelligent, strategic tasks leading up to the mass death. 142 00:19:04,960 --> 00:19:21,960 According to the writings of Josephus, a Jewish historian and war commander who defected to the Romans, in 73 AD while fending off a seven month siege from 15,000 soldiers of the Roman army, the faithful of Masada built a ritualistic bathing pool, 143 00:19:21,960 --> 00:19:26,960 kept up their study of holy scripture and even constructed a temple. 144 00:19:26,960 --> 00:19:33,960 Give up everything that you have of this world, get rid of it, give it to the poor, come and follow me. 145 00:19:33,960 --> 00:19:42,960 The Heavens Gate members practiced celibacy. Some went so far as to be castrated, anything to avoid distracting them from reaching salvation. 146 00:19:42,960 --> 00:19:49,960 The dead ranged in age from 26 to 72 and this was not a community of the simple minded. 147 00:19:49,960 --> 00:19:54,960 Doe had a penchant for bright young people with a knack for web design. 148 00:19:54,960 --> 00:20:00,960 They may have looked odd with their matching outfits and buzz cuts, but the work they produced received rave reviews. 149 00:20:00,960 --> 00:20:07,960 Their internet business, Hire Source, earned them enough to afford a mansion with a computer for every need. 150 00:20:07,960 --> 00:20:16,960 Now some people would join, they just wanted to get off this planet and there were some really funny stories about people who were laying out in the desert in a place like this one night saying, 151 00:20:16,960 --> 00:20:23,960 please pick me up in the next day one of our group would come by in a truck and say, here's what we're all about and they go, this is it. 152 00:20:23,960 --> 00:20:34,960 But the people who were just simply escapists didn't last very long because the pressures and the discipline was too much, don't you think? 153 00:20:34,960 --> 00:20:42,960 Yeah, at first there was the expectation of, we'll be out of here in a few months. That was their only goal, that was their only desire. 154 00:20:42,960 --> 00:20:49,960 After a few months came and went and it turned into a year or more and they still weren't seeing themselves leaving. 155 00:20:49,960 --> 00:20:57,960 There was a lot of discipline, they realized, well this is too difficult, I just basically wanted to take it out of here, but it was not a simple thing. 156 00:20:57,960 --> 00:21:02,960 I was so fascinated by this whole thing that I thought, I'm going to infiltrate this group. 157 00:21:02,960 --> 00:21:06,960 But I didn't really do it with the idea of a full blown research project. 158 00:21:06,960 --> 00:21:12,960 It was like, I want to get over to Oakland and I want to see what's going to happen because I don't think these people are going to be picked up by UFOs, 159 00:21:12,960 --> 00:21:16,960 but I want to be there and kind of get a sense of what's going on behind the headlines. 160 00:21:16,960 --> 00:21:22,960 But when I got to Oakland, I was so fascinated that I decided to keep on with it. 161 00:21:22,960 --> 00:21:36,960 I think the people that joined had a lot in common, for the most part spiritual seekers, young, unattached, no strong commitments to anything. 162 00:21:36,960 --> 00:21:38,960 They were like available for membership. 163 00:21:39,960 --> 00:21:44,960 Remember Rio said, you got to be sure you want to do this because this takes everything of you. 164 00:21:44,960 --> 00:21:49,960 We're not going to lie to you and say that, oh just come on, it's going to be easy. 165 00:21:49,960 --> 00:21:54,960 And they said, you don't need to bring any money, we can provide for you. 166 00:21:54,960 --> 00:21:56,960 There was never any coercion at all. 167 00:21:56,960 --> 00:22:01,960 It was prove it to them as opposed to them trying to prove it to us in a sense. 168 00:22:01,960 --> 00:22:06,960 We as human beings are looking for something in our own lives, something meaningful. 169 00:22:06,960 --> 00:22:09,960 And a lot of us get attached to cults. 170 00:22:36,960 --> 00:22:45,960 And that's an important point to me because people don't always join these things just because there's something empty or something dissatisfying or something missing. 171 00:22:45,960 --> 00:22:53,960 It may be because they just are looking for something more and they have a sense that there's more out there and they have the courage to go exploring for it. 172 00:22:53,960 --> 00:22:57,960 A person needs to find a balance in his life or in her life. 173 00:22:57,960 --> 00:23:03,960 That doesn't take them too far to the right or too far to the left. 174 00:23:03,960 --> 00:23:07,960 And that means trying not to be a zealot. 175 00:23:07,960 --> 00:23:15,960 I mean, did Columbus go explore for the new world because he was missing something in Spain or maybe he had a sense of a whole world that he had not yet seen. 176 00:23:15,960 --> 00:23:25,960 Today, unfortunately, we either believe in nothing or we believe so strongly that we've gone totally off the deep end. 177 00:23:26,960 --> 00:23:32,960 He told me things that no human being in an ordinary state of consciousness could possibly know. 178 00:23:32,960 --> 00:23:39,960 And even though I was a lawyer and even though I was skeptical, I had to be convinced because what's real is real that I could see, I could see. 179 00:23:39,960 --> 00:23:42,960 And then he told me about my back. 180 00:23:42,960 --> 00:23:45,960 And he told me about all the treatments I had and how they hadn't worked. 181 00:23:45,960 --> 00:23:50,960 And then he reached out his hand and he said, he said, he said, 182 00:23:50,960 --> 00:23:53,960 He said, in the name of Christ, you're healed. My pain was gone. 183 00:23:53,960 --> 00:23:56,960 And now a year and a half later, it's still gone. 184 00:23:56,960 --> 00:23:59,960 I praise God for that. 185 00:23:59,960 --> 00:24:02,960 How did he accomplish these miracle healings? 186 00:24:02,960 --> 00:24:10,960 Was this man, who some considered larger than life, who escorted and forced so many to their death, was he also capable of performing miracles? 187 00:24:10,960 --> 00:24:14,960 Like any commanding leader, Jim Jones had his revelatory moments. 188 00:24:14,960 --> 00:24:21,960 But to find out whether these were inspired by some power larger than himself, you'll have to stay tuned. 189 00:24:25,960 --> 00:24:28,960 I really believe there were some miracles. 190 00:24:28,960 --> 00:24:34,960 I think people could be in a psychological state and this can cripple them. 191 00:24:34,960 --> 00:24:38,960 But I don't think he had any power to heal. 192 00:24:38,960 --> 00:24:47,960 It was only the person themselves healed themselves through their faith in Jim Jones. 193 00:24:47,960 --> 00:24:51,960 Who will make Conley? 194 00:24:51,960 --> 00:24:53,960 I have a sensation about him. 195 00:24:53,960 --> 00:25:04,960 Jones had a whole cadre of leaders who worked under him and were constantly gathering all kinds of private and intimate data on their lives. 196 00:25:04,960 --> 00:25:10,960 And then they would put all of that material in files and all of those files were available to Jones. 197 00:25:10,960 --> 00:25:16,960 Did you once lose a loved one? I think the name of James. 198 00:25:16,960 --> 00:25:17,960 Yes, that's my brother. 199 00:25:17,960 --> 00:25:19,960 He was 14 years of age. 200 00:25:19,960 --> 00:25:30,960 In this, we really need to understand that when people are in great emotional and spiritual need, they can also be very vulnerable to manipulation. 201 00:25:30,960 --> 00:25:36,960 And someone asked him for what he had and he didn't want to give it. 202 00:25:36,960 --> 00:25:37,960 Yes, he did. 203 00:25:37,960 --> 00:25:40,960 And that person shot him today. 204 00:25:40,960 --> 00:25:41,960 Yes, he did. 205 00:25:41,960 --> 00:25:42,960 Yes, he did. 206 00:25:42,960 --> 00:25:45,960 I'm saying this to give you faith. 207 00:25:45,960 --> 00:25:50,960 Instead of saying to Jones when he revealed some secret saying, why are you spying on me? How do you know that? 208 00:25:50,960 --> 00:25:52,960 You have no right to say that in public. 209 00:25:52,960 --> 00:25:59,960 They were awestruck that he knew it because they saw it as a proof of his being able to see into their soul. 210 00:25:59,960 --> 00:26:02,960 Now, where's your painting? 211 00:26:02,960 --> 00:26:08,960 South Phoenix, he is the Lord! 212 00:26:08,960 --> 00:26:17,960 Those who have the knowledge of the inner workings of people's temple, such as the staged faith healings, have to seal their loyalty with false confessions of criminal acts. 213 00:26:17,960 --> 00:26:22,960 Their admissions range from conspiracy to child molestation. 214 00:26:22,960 --> 00:26:26,960 Jim Jones was not Hitler, but he was a leader. 215 00:26:26,960 --> 00:26:27,960 Look at my face. 216 00:26:27,960 --> 00:26:31,960 Who was interested in accomplishing something for his own ego. 217 00:26:31,960 --> 00:26:36,960 More than he was interested in the people who were following him, and that's true for many leaders of this world. 218 00:26:36,960 --> 00:26:37,960 Move forward. 219 00:26:37,960 --> 00:26:39,960 Move forward. 220 00:26:39,960 --> 00:26:40,960 Move forward. 221 00:26:40,960 --> 00:26:42,960 Move forward. 222 00:26:42,960 --> 00:26:48,960 Many in the congregation knew about and participated in Jones' staged miracles. 223 00:26:48,960 --> 00:26:54,960 Walk, walk, walk, risk it. Walk, walk, risk it. Walk, walk, risk it. 224 00:26:55,960 --> 00:27:00,960 Over time, these questionable practices make the community a subject of controversy. 225 00:27:00,960 --> 00:27:10,960 Jones, believing himself to be an undeserving target of oppression, claims that his family and congregation are being terrorized by an oppressive government. 226 00:27:10,960 --> 00:27:15,960 He searches for a place where his dream of a socialist utopia may blossom. 227 00:27:15,960 --> 00:27:22,960 At last, the people's temple is given some property in the small coastal country of Guiana, South America. 228 00:27:24,960 --> 00:27:31,960 Like the martyrs of Masada, Jones and his congregation seek refuge from the forces they believe are bent on their destruction. 229 00:27:31,960 --> 00:27:42,960 After severing all societal ties, they set to the work of establishing a model society, conceived in liberty and dedicated to social justice and equality. 230 00:27:42,960 --> 00:27:52,960 In order to create a farming community in which everybody would be free and treated equally, was part of their dream. 231 00:27:52,960 --> 00:28:01,960 And so they had found in the leadership of Jim Jones a way towards some kind of emotional and spiritual salvation. 232 00:28:01,960 --> 00:28:08,960 Bower, rice, black-eyed peas, more peas. 233 00:28:08,960 --> 00:28:14,960 They have different containers around the place. Couldn't go through all the tremendous inventory. They built up Kool-Aid. 234 00:28:15,960 --> 00:28:19,960 Once in Guiana, Jones' ability to govern quickly degenerates. 235 00:28:19,960 --> 00:28:25,960 He grows addicted to barbiturates, which helped dull his sufferings from syphilis and diabetes. 236 00:28:25,960 --> 00:28:29,960 The drugs feed his growing paranoid delusions. 237 00:28:44,960 --> 00:28:54,960 I got a hell of a weapons to fight. I got my claws. I got purposes. I got guns. I got dynamite. I got hell off the fight. I'll fight. I'll fight. 238 00:28:54,960 --> 00:29:03,960 Hell off there. Hell off there. There is he. Let the night roll with him. We'll kill him if they come. We'll kill him if they come. 239 00:29:03,960 --> 00:29:17,960 The suicide drills were a regular routine for the inhabitants of Jonestown, a show of allegiance to the community against the evil overseer, the U.S. government. 240 00:29:17,960 --> 00:29:27,960 These fears, no matter how misguided, may have been as real to the inhabitants of Jonestown as the 15,000 Romans were to the people of Massada. 241 00:29:27,960 --> 00:29:38,960 Who was at war with Jim Jones and Jonestown? What helicopters were bombing them? What army was at their doorstep invading them? Where was the threat? 242 00:29:40,960 --> 00:29:49,960 Change must come through the barrel of a gun, said Mao Zedong. This place would be a paradise tomorrow if every department had a supervisor with a submachine gun. 243 00:29:49,960 --> 00:30:04,960 In Jonestown, the People's Temple had moved to Guyana in order to establish an Eden, which for them had to be found outside the United States in a place where they could quote, begin again. 244 00:30:04,960 --> 00:30:15,960 Many of them were people whose lives had not been fulfilling in America and had not been fulfilling in the normal structure of American society. 245 00:30:16,960 --> 00:30:31,960 People's Temple was a Christian congregation, a sanctioned member of a mainstream Christian organization. The congregation of Jim Jones came to be known as a cult only after the death knell in Jonestown echoed around the world. 246 00:30:31,960 --> 00:30:42,960 In Roman times, when the Empire sought to maintain social stability by suppressing organized resistance, the Massada Jews who stood in defiance were considered seditious and anti-government. 247 00:30:43,960 --> 00:30:52,960 In the 70s, those in power considered People's Temple a collection of anti-establishment revolutionaries, a danger to both society and themselves. 248 00:30:53,960 --> 00:31:03,960 Rather than coexist with these attitudes, Jones and his community choose to face the oppression of unsurpassed equatorial heat in the jungle-intumed country of Guyana. 249 00:31:03,960 --> 00:31:13,960 I wish I can be glad for you guys, everybody over there, they come here in the promised land, I really do like it. It's fun over here, it's really good. 250 00:31:14,960 --> 00:31:23,960 And as you can see, we got a lot of houses built over here and we're really working hard. 251 00:31:24,960 --> 00:31:33,960 In the aftermath, the people who die in Guyana are painted as victims of a drug-crazed paranoid control freak. 252 00:31:34,960 --> 00:31:41,960 While the allegations against Jim Jones are factual, the disturbing truth remains that many of the inhabitants went to their deaths willingly. 253 00:31:42,960 --> 00:31:45,960 Some as a statement against the establishment that hounded them. 254 00:31:46,960 --> 00:31:56,960 And though nearly two millennia divide the occurrence at Massada from the mass-suicided Jonestown, the motivation for each seems remarkably similar. 255 00:31:57,960 --> 00:32:02,960 We must not dehumanize them, we must not trivialize them, we must not see them simply as victims. 256 00:32:03,960 --> 00:32:15,960 Otherwise their deaths in fact do become meaningless, they become irrelevant subtexts to some social aberration that produces these kinds of groups. 257 00:32:16,960 --> 00:32:30,960 That's not true. Jonestown, Heaven's Gate and other such phenomena in modern society tell us about modern society, tell us about who we are and how we are living. 258 00:32:31,960 --> 00:32:36,960 So we need to remember those who died because they've left us a lesson. 259 00:32:37,960 --> 00:32:42,960 History provides us with its own romantic conclusions around the martyrdom at Massada. 260 00:32:43,960 --> 00:32:46,960 The site has been assigned enormous historic and religious significance. 261 00:32:47,960 --> 00:32:50,960 It is today one of the most frequently visited sites in the Holy Land. 262 00:32:51,960 --> 00:33:06,960 By contrast, Jonestown has been reclaimed by the jungle and little more than a plaque in a lonely Oakland cemetery stands to commemorate the many Americans who died tragically, horribly, in this lonely outpost of solitude they tried to make their home. 263 00:33:07,960 --> 00:33:21,960 Unforgiven by an embarrassed nation these many years but remembered by their families as crusaders who dared try to create a better world, the ironic legacy of the residents of Jonestown rests in their pioneering ideals. 264 00:33:22,960 --> 00:33:29,960 The people who came to settle the American continent did come generally as a result of religious persecution. 265 00:33:29,960 --> 00:33:39,960 They had great hopes in opening the wilderness that they would give birth to a settlement in which true individual and personal freedom would reign. 266 00:33:40,960 --> 00:33:54,960 There is no doubt that for the people who went to Jonestown it took great courage, it took great fortitude, it took great sacrifice, it took a great desire to craft a new life and a new community in a wilderness. 267 00:33:54,960 --> 00:33:58,960 I think for that the people who did that need to be respected and honored. 268 00:33:58,960 --> 00:34:03,960 I want, was love. 269 00:34:03,960 --> 00:34:05,960 Take my life from us. 270 00:34:05,960 --> 00:34:07,960 We lay it down, we got tired. 271 00:34:07,960 --> 00:34:15,960 We're in the West Coast Eye, we can interact with revolutionary suicide protesting the conditions of an inhumane world. 272 00:34:15,960 --> 00:34:20,960 I see. 273 00:34:21,960 --> 00:34:28,960 To this day, enduring family members and Jonestown survivors alike have few negative things to say about Jim Jones. 274 00:34:28,960 --> 00:34:32,960 Those people were looking for a better life. They were looking for the rainbow. 275 00:34:32,960 --> 00:34:44,960 They were looking for people living together in Jim Jones. Put that out there and show that people will go because people are looking for that peace, that transquirre there within oneself. 276 00:34:44,960 --> 00:34:51,960 Somebody offered somebody some hope. A person came along and offered people without hope hope. 277 00:34:57,960 --> 00:35:13,960 One of the most interesting phenomena of the modern cult deaths, group deaths at Jonestown, at Heaven's Gate and at others, is that either those who were survivors tend not to in public have anything negative. 278 00:35:13,960 --> 00:35:16,960 To say about the experience itself. 279 00:35:21,960 --> 00:35:39,960 Many people still need to justify why they were there. They have to live with the enormous emotional impact of the deaths and the willingness of their friends or family members to take their lives or to take the lives of others. 280 00:35:39,960 --> 00:35:45,960 Likewise, Heaven's Gate members continue to extol the virtues of their leader, Do. 281 00:35:45,960 --> 00:35:52,960 I know who Do is. I can't deny it. I feel like I can't deny it even if I wanted to. 282 00:35:52,960 --> 00:35:58,960 You know, I was only in the class three months and it's been three years since I've been out now. 283 00:35:58,960 --> 00:36:03,960 You'd think that'd be plenty of time for me to be reprogrammed or deprogrammed or whatever it is they call it. 284 00:36:03,960 --> 00:36:10,960 But the whole time I was out, I never found anything that made sense the way that did. It's the truth for me. 285 00:36:10,960 --> 00:36:19,960 They died in shifts, leaving behind a videotape they'd made to express their excitement over leaving for a sojourn with advanced aliens. 286 00:36:20,960 --> 00:36:32,960 I get this Federal Express package and it's addressed to me with the return address to me, from me. 287 00:36:32,960 --> 00:36:40,960 It was like I mailed it to myself, which I knew I didn't and I knew that the only people that would do that would be the class. 288 00:36:40,960 --> 00:36:48,960 And be that as it may, there would be nothing for them to send me unless it was to put it on the internet. 289 00:36:48,960 --> 00:36:52,960 And that told me right there that this was it. It was time to go. 290 00:37:03,960 --> 00:37:13,960 And they had their guide with them. They had no fear. We had no fear. What would we fear? What's to be afraid of? There's nothing to be afraid of. 291 00:37:13,960 --> 00:37:22,960 The issue is you're going to hear about our exit in the news about these individuals who committed suicide. 292 00:37:22,960 --> 00:37:32,960 We're going to tell you that those who write that kind of information are ignorant of the evolutionary level above humans. 293 00:37:32,960 --> 00:37:39,960 We're going on to something greater and better and that we hope that someday you will understand this and you might join us. 294 00:37:44,960 --> 00:37:50,960 Jonestown was obviously an experiment that went terribly wrong. 295 00:37:50,960 --> 00:37:57,960 But from outside the walls of Heaven's Gate, things look pretty bleak as well. 296 00:37:57,960 --> 00:38:06,960 Should we try to prevent incidents like these? And if we do, how will it affect our other personal freedoms? 297 00:38:07,960 --> 00:38:19,960 In our uniqueness, there is always a choice to condemn others for the road they choose to travel or to learn about the motives and intentions of those for whom we have no basis in understanding. 298 00:38:19,960 --> 00:38:29,960 I don't believe in suicide in any way, shape or form. Maybe if I had been at Masada, I would have done the same thing as they did. I don't know. How could anyone know it wasn't there? 299 00:38:29,960 --> 00:38:36,960 The answers to Jonestown, Masada and Heaven's Gate may never be fully understood. 300 00:38:36,960 --> 00:38:43,960 But when we look carefully, we discover that there is more to these stories than we may have first considered. 301 00:38:43,960 --> 00:38:50,960 Perhaps the current conflict faced by the Ua Indian tribe of Northern Columbia will help us further resolve our understanding. 302 00:38:50,960 --> 00:38:57,960 The Ua religion makes each tribal member personally responsible for the perpetual well-being of the planet. 303 00:38:59,960 --> 00:39:11,960 To us, the Earth is like our mother. We are the bodyguards of the sea and the Earth and the Sun and the Moon, because without the light, we're dead. 304 00:39:11,960 --> 00:39:17,960 Burrito Kuar is the son of a Huarhaya, an honored wise man of this centuries-old tribe. 305 00:39:17,960 --> 00:39:24,960 These wise men of the tribe were considered no more than Satan-worshipping witch doctors by visiting missionaries. 306 00:39:25,960 --> 00:39:32,960 From the beginning, missionaries believed that the indigenous ceremonies were evil. 307 00:39:32,960 --> 00:39:37,960 Their reaction was hostile. 308 00:39:37,960 --> 00:39:48,960 For example, Ua elders recount the spoken stories of how the missionaries used to kidnap the tribe's children. 309 00:39:48,960 --> 00:39:53,960 In 1963, eight-year-old Burrito was himself kidnapped. 310 00:39:53,960 --> 00:40:04,960 In an effort to indoctrinate him to the ways of modern Columbia, priests gave him the Spanish name Roberto Cobarria and forced him to read and write Spanish. 311 00:40:04,960 --> 00:40:12,960 The name Roberto Afanor Cobarria was given to me by the white man. That's not my name. 312 00:40:12,960 --> 00:40:20,960 This terrifying childhood experience helped shape Cuar's attitudes towards the Riola, his people's name for invaders. 313 00:40:20,960 --> 00:40:24,960 Cuar became an active defender of his people's rights and territory. 314 00:40:24,960 --> 00:40:34,960 When Occidental Petroleum decided to drill for oil on Ua land in 1996, Burrito Cuar was ready to battle the North American poachers. 315 00:40:35,960 --> 00:40:44,960 My brother is the president of Occidental Petroleum. Why don't you let us take the oil you have in the United States and haul it to Columbia? 316 00:40:44,960 --> 00:40:47,960 Is that alright with you? I don't think so. 317 00:40:47,960 --> 00:40:59,960 Cuar came to Los Angeles to meet with Oxy executives. His presentation must have seemed unusual to the oilmen, but to him it was perfectly natural. He sang. 318 00:41:04,960 --> 00:41:09,960 Before there was the sun and the moon, there was God's law, and we will stay with Allah. 319 00:41:09,960 --> 00:41:19,960 The Ua, as a native people, live in a relationship to a land. From their perspective, they are born from the earth. 320 00:41:19,960 --> 00:41:31,960 And that if the earth is raped and it dies, they will die. And all of their descendants will die. And all of the earth will die. 321 00:41:31,960 --> 00:41:57,960 And so, being powerless as native peoples are, with nothing of value except their lives, the only way they can demonstrate their value for the earth is to be willing to give up the thing they value the most and that the world will value the most, which is their lives. 322 00:41:58,960 --> 00:42:18,960 We will not die at the hands of other people. It will contaminate our spirit. Our father will not receive us the way we should be received. So it is better if we make a suicide pact and kill ourselves. 323 00:42:19,960 --> 00:42:30,960 If the Northern invaders, Occidental Petroleum, go ahead with their plans to drill, 5,000 Ua will do as their ancestors did to keep the Spanish conquistadors from taking them as slaves. 324 00:42:30,960 --> 00:42:42,960 What the people of Masada did to keep from being taken by the Romans. And what the poor people of Jonestown did to escape their perceived persecutor, the U.S. government. They will commit mass suicide. 325 00:42:43,960 --> 00:43:10,960 I think there is a similarity in this. And that is their absolute commitment to their purpose. For the Ua, it's saving the land. For the people of People's Temple, it was the building of a new community and serving the leadership of Jim Jones. In that sense, they are true believers. 326 00:43:11,960 --> 00:43:29,960 None of us will be better off for this loss. But learning of the Ua conflict brings us closer to a kind of moral commitment we can embrace. Though history tends to uniformly romanticize or demonize tragedies like Masada and Jonestown, compassion can tip the scales to balance. 327 00:43:30,960 --> 00:43:47,960 We certainly have to have compassion and understanding for the people who died at Jonestown. What brought them to that state both was a spiritual quest and an emotional disaster. 328 00:43:48,960 --> 00:44:07,960 What may bring the Ua to that is profound mourning and a sense of the loss of all that's valuable in the world. In that all people who die in the face of hopelessness, that binds them in common, regardless of the cause. 329 00:44:07,960 --> 00:44:25,960 Recounting the lessons of history from the long neglected stories of tragedy and intrigue, these are the phenomenon archives, what you've never seen and what you're not supposed to know. I'm Dean Stockwell. Thanks for tuning in. 330 00:44:37,960 --> 00:44:39,960 Let's get down, let's get down. 331 00:45:07,960 --> 00:45:15,960 The Ua conflict is a series of events that are not only about the Ua conflict, but also about the Ua conflict. 332 00:45:15,960 --> 00:45:23,960 The Ua conflict is a series of events that are not only about the Ua conflict, but also about the Ua conflict. 333 00:45:23,960 --> 00:45:33,960 The Ua conflict is a series of events that are not only about the Ua conflict, but also about the Ua conflict. 334 00:45:33,960 --> 00:45:43,960 The Ua conflict is a series of events that are not only about the Ua conflict, but also about the Ua conflict. 335 00:45:43,960 --> 00:45:53,960 The Ua conflict is a series of events that are not only about the Ua conflict, but also about the Ua conflict. 336 00:45:53,960 --> 00:46:03,960 The Ua conflict is a series of events that are not only about the Ua conflict, but also about the Ua conflict. 337 00:46:03,960 --> 00:46:13,960 Ua conflict is a series of events that are not only about the Ua conflict, but also about the Ua conflict. 338 00:46:33,960 --> 00:46:35,960 Thank you.