Fielding McGehee and his wife Rebecca Moore are studying Jim Jones’ sermons for clues to what really happened when 900 members of the People’s Temple committed suicide in their commune in Guyana in 1978. They are working their way through a thousand tapes that the FBI recovered in Jonestown. The couple have been compiling an archive of anything to do with the tragedy ever since it happened. Moore’s two sisters were members of the temple.
Within a few weeks, Moore and McGehee filed their first FOIA request with the CIA, seeking any information about Peoples Temple. Initially, they were blown off: A rep asked why they’d believe the agency knew anything. “Give me a break,” McGehee told the rep. “You have 900 Americans who’ve renounced the U.S. very publicly, went to a Third World country with a socialist society, and took millions of dollars with them.” Common sense broke the agency’s poker face. “He said, ‘Well, I guess when you put it that way.’”
Thus began the largest collection of documents relating to Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple. As the CIA and FBI finished their investigation over the next few years, they began releasing documents, essentially straight to McGehee and Moore’s mailbox. McGehee estimates they’ve filed nearly 300 FOIA requests, in addition to multiple lawsuits—one of which remains active—to build the collection they maintain as the Jonestown Institute. It includes census records from the Peoples Temple, sermons, letters, critical writings by concerned relatives, government documents tracking the organization, and yes, all those tapes.
McGehee says there’s enough material to keep him busy the rest of his life, and then some. Read about McGehee and Moore’s work at The Kernel. And read the information they’ve put online at Alternative Considerations of Jonestown & Peoples Temple.