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20 years later, scholars request secret Jonestown documentsBy KATHERINE PFLEGER © St. Petersburg Times, published November 19, 1998 On Nov. 18, 1978, on orders from the Rev. Jim Jones, 912 members of his Peoples Temple committed suicide or were murdered, along with Rep. Leo Ryan of California, who was investigating the group. Twenty-two academics now want the House International Relations Committee to help remove the secrecy surrounding that day. "It's a way to prevent scholars or family members from being able to piece together things," Mary Maaga, author of Hearing the Voices of Jonestown, said at a news conference. A pastor at a United Methodist Church in Sergeantsville, N.J., Maaga has spent six years investigating Jones and his religious movement. She thinks the classified information contains reports from at least eight federal agencies, including the FBI, CIA and IRS, that had monitored the commune for years. Maaga and other scholars say the CIA's claim that releasing the documents could threaten national security no longer holds up. Moreover, marginalized religions, such as Scientology, want the information to continue their own investigations into the tragedy. CIA spokeswoman Anya Guilsher couldn't confirm that the agency had the documents or how many there are. But she said, if they do exist, the request is not unprecedented.
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ASHINGTON -- Marking the 20th anniversary of the Jonestown tragedy, a group of academics asked Congress on Wednesday to declassify as many as 5,000 pages of documents containing potentially revealing details about what happened at the Guyana commune.
