The Strongest Poison
When approximately one thousand Americans died in a massacre on November 18, 1978 in a South American jungle thousands of miles from home, most of us wanted to know not only the causes of their deaths but also the circumstances that led these people to leave their native land. According to most government and media reports, an odd assortment of mesmerized sycophants followed their leader across land and sea, and when told by him to do so willingly laid down their lives in a act of eternal devotion. This was indeed the line that the United States government and the nation’s leading newspapers and television networks offered. The facts, however, reject this fanciful and self-serving notion.
In a powerful, incisive account, Mark Lane carefully and seriously addressed the questions that the State Department and intelligence agencies hoped would never be asked: Was there a government conspiracy against the Peoples Temple and it leader the Reverend Jim Jones? Could the United States government have prevented the mass murder at Jonestown? Was Congressman Leo Ryan, who died at the Port Kaituma airstrip, deliberately misled by the State Department? Why did the American Embassy in Guyana, which learned that Jones was apparently drugged and no longer capable of cogent thought, decline to share that information with Representative Ryan? Was any of the news media directly involved in a plan to disseminate false information so as to cover up the government’s role in Jonestown?
With meticulous detail and documenting evidence, Mark Lane offered the first authoritative, eyewitness account of the Jonestown tragedy and revealed what really happened during those last months, weeks, and days precipitating the massacre. Mark Lane made use of hard facts and exclusive information given to him by his client Terri Buford – who ranked second to Jones before leaving the Peoples Temple a few weeks prior to the murders – concerning Jim Jones, Tim Stoen and Charles Garry (the lawyers for the Peoples Temple) and government officials and agents directly involved with Jonestown. Also provided are last statements of Temple members and accounts given by their relatives and friends, medical examiners, and morticians.
Written with great insight, conviction and clarity, The Strongest Poison tells far more about America than some of its bureaucrats, agencies, and accommodating journalists want the American people to know.
Publication History
The Strongest Poison
Elsevier-Dutton, New York, 1980.
Published simultaneously in Canada by Prentice-Hall of Canada, LTD,
Scarborough, Ontario.
