Читать книгу This Is Not the Life I Ordered - Deborah Collins Stephens - Страница 16

“Nightmares. They still invade my sleep forty years later. The nightmares remind me that life is a precious resource to be used up, enjoyed, lived. I am Jackie Speier, and my nightmares take me back to a fateful November day in 1978. I was twenty-eight and getting ready to purchase my first home. I was legislative counsel to a US congressman and I had it all! I also had a strong premonition that the trip I was arranging to South America could be one from which I might not return. ‘Silly thoughts,’ my friend Katy assured me. ‘After all, you will be traveling with the press corps and a US congressman. What could possibly happen?’

“Holed up in a congressional office for hours at a time, I was reading State Department briefings on a religious community created by the Reverend Jim Jones. We were investigating numerous allegations from relatives that their family members were being held against their will in a jungle hideaway known as the People's Temple. As we reviewed taped interviews with defectors, I had an ominous feeling—a feeling I could not put out of my mind. One former member had told us that people were being forced to act out suicides in an exercise Jones called the White Night.

“Congressman Leo Ryan, my boss, had heard enough. He decided to see firsthand the plight of US citizens in Guyana. But even after the CIA and the State Department had cleared the trip for safety, I still had doubts.

“We flew into Guyana's capital, Georgetown, changed planes, and continued on to Port Kaituma—a remote airstrip deep in the South American jungle. A convoy of several trucks drove us to the Jonestown encampment. We entered a clearing in the jungle, where I saw an outdoor amphitheater surrounded by small cabins. You couldn't help but be impressed by the settlement. In less than two years, a community had been carved out of dense jungle. During our first and only night at the People's Temple, the members entertained us with music and singing. I remember looking into the eyes of Jim Jones—and I saw madness there. He was no longer the charismatic leader who had lured more than 900 people to a remote jungle commune; he was a man possessed.

“The congressman and I randomly selected people to interview to determine whether they were being held against their will. Many of the individuals were young—eighteen or nineteen years old—while others were senior citizens. One by one, each confirmed that they loved living in the People's Temple. It was almost as if they had been coached to answer our questions. As the night drew to a close, NBC news correspondent Don Harris walked off alone to smoke a cigarette. In the darkness, two people approached him and put notes into his hand. Harris gave the notes to me, and I held in my hands evidence of what I had sensed all along: These people were indeed being held against their will in this South American compound.

“Morning broke, and I interviewed the two people who had given Harris the notes saying they wanted to leave. Word of the opportunity to leave had gotten out, and more people started coming forward saying that they also wanted to leave. Then suddenly, a couple of men with guns appeared. Chaos ensued as more people approached us wanting to leave. Jim Jones started ranting and screaming. Larry Layton, one of Jones' closest assistants, said: ‘Don't get the wrong idea. We are all very happy here. You see the beauty of this special place.’ One hour later, Larry Layton had become one of the defectors, asking to escape the jungle compound.”