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| Links to Other Ham Radio Transcripts |
| The following links will redirect you to tape transcripts prepared for the Alternative Considerations of Jonestown and People Temple website. They have been listed with permission. Unless otherwise noted, Fielding McGehee, III authrored all transcripts, notes, and summaries of tapes listed here. The tapes that these transcripts were taken from have yet to be cross-referenced completely with the current lot of FCC tapes being reviewed. These particular tapes were part of the 900+ tapes taken from Jonetown following the November 18th tragedy. |
| Tape Q016 Transcript prepared by Fielding M. McGehee, III. Transcriber's note: This tape consists of ham radio traffic between Jonestown and Peoples Temple members in other locations, probably in San Francisco. This is much distortion in the tape, due to edits made by the recorder, the competing radio voices, and the fact that it was apparently recorded off the air by a third person who rarely speaks and who never identifies himself. As a result, about one-third of the tape is either incomprehensible or random sentences out of context. Because of the distance between intelligible portions of the tape, I have included only the exchanges I could understand, with notations of gaps marked with ellipses [...]. The FBI summary includes a marginal note that the tape was supplied to the agency by an unnamed source, whom the FBI describes as "confidential." The only clear voice, then, is probably that of the confidential source. Tape Q054 Transcript prepared by Fielding M. McGehee, III. This tape was one of the 53 tapes initially withheld from disclosure. This tape, which was was initially withheld from disclosure, includes some discussion of supplies which the Jonestown project needed, questions about concerns raised by relatives in the US, and a conversation about a play or skit to be performed in Jonestown. The majority of this rather short tape is a conversation which is essentially incomprehensible. The exchanges between people on the radio mention names which are unfamiliar and which may be in code. Even with the names deciphered through the Peoples Temple phrase book � as presented in the FBI Summary below � the conversation is out of context and does not scan well. As with other radio transmissions between Jonestown and the US, the speakers give the call letters of the shortwave on numerous occasions, yet they are interrupted by people who want to know who's on the frequency and what they're doing. Also as with other tapes with radio transmissions, the clearest voice is that of the person doing the recording, a person who was apparently not a member of Peoples Temple or the Jonestown community. Tape Q630 Transcript prepared by Fielding M. McGehee, III. (Ed. note: The following paragraph was recorded three times, with slight variations each time. Parts of each version was rendered unintelligible, since it was recorded in Jonestown at the receiving end of a radio transmission, and there was much static and many competing voices. The speaker is unknown � it sounded like Josh Brown in one identification � and Harriet Tropp received the transmission.) Tape Q678 Transcript prepared by Fielding M. McGehee, III. The tape consists of two phone calls, a snippet of conversation between Jones and an unidentified male which is too short for contextual reference, and a long meeting between Jim Jones, several Temple leaders, and Ben Bowers, the holder of the Temple�s ham radio license. Q806 Transcript prepared by Fielding M. McGehee, III. Recorded in San Francisco at the receiving end of this radio transmission from Guyana, this short tape is devoted to Maria Katsaris asking that her father, Steven Katsaris, not try to visit her or the Jonestown community. Ms. Katsaris accused her father of racism, support of the Greek colonels� dictatorship, and of molesting her as a child. The tape was made during a period in which the Temple was trying to counter the public relations and media campaign launched against it by the Concerned Relatives, of whom Steven Katsaris was an important leader. Due to Maria Katsaris leadership role in the Temple, this battle between soothing and exacerbating the estranged relationship became as crucial as it was personal. |