Strongest Poison

by Mark Lane

Book Overview

Nearly one thousand members of the Peoples Temple settlement in Jonestown, Guyana, died in a massacre in November 1978. The deaths followed the killing of United States Congressman Leo Ryan and other... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 080153206X
• ISBN13: 9780801532061
• Release Date: November 1979
• Publisher: Dutton Books
• Length: 494 Pages
• Weight: 2.16 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A Brilliant Other Look at Jonestown, Jim Jones, and the People's Temple!

It has been three months since the thirtieth anniversary of the Jonestown massacre, event, or mass suicide as it had been defined in the past. Mark Lane was one of Jones' attorneys and is better known for his conspiracy theories. I have read a lot of other books on Jones and Jonestown. Lane shows the side of Jonestown that Jones wanted him to see and yet Lane could see past the obvious into the problems of Jonestown. I do believe the Guyanese and American governments should have had a more active role in watching the Jonestown settlement. Lane writes about how Jones was becoming more desperate as the jungle farming wasn't working out. So according to Buford and sources, Jones admitted that socialism had failed and would send his followers back to the states where he feared for their safety, backlash, and lives. Ironic, since Jones was drugged up most of the time and dying as well. Was suicide the final solution? It didn't have to be but Jones had brainwashed his followers down to then jungle where they worked tirelessly, exhaustively, and hungered for better food and living conditions. Some of the stories were more likely coerced by the leaders of Jonestown. Of course, there was plenty of illegal activities going on since of course, Jones was the final judge and jury. His most devoted army of soldiers were armed with firearms on that fateful sun-drenched day in the jungle where they all gathered to the pavillion to die together. Of course, they were murdered by JOnes' final orders. There were always dissenters who were the first to take the poison as was a practiced in the past and documented by Deborah Blakey who defected six month earlier and verified by Terri Buford who was second in command next to Jones. Jones was holding John Victor Stoen hostage while his parents who were former members, Timothy (assistant district attorney in San Francisco and Jones' former legal eagle) and his mother Grace who defected earlier. Jones held John Victor's life along with hundreds of others. With the fifteen defectors with Ryan, Jones had felt defeated and lost. He should have walked away quietly and died but he didn't. He called his followers most of whom knew what white nights were all about to the pavilion. 267 children and infants were among the dead. They were murdered by JOnes' orders. His wife, Marcie, who had stayed and endured an abusive marriage had tried to stop her husband but it was useless. He had held Marcie hostage longer than anybody else in an abusive, humiliating marriage by threatening to kill their own children if she ever left him. Jones was a paranoid, maniacal, diabolical monster on the same path of destruction as Hitler was to Germany. Still, I am sure Lane believes that more could have done to stop the madness in Jonestown but what's done is done. The dead have been buried and long forgotten but not by those who remember them. We can't keep blaming the governments for failing to stop such disasters. From the shooting at Port Kaitum

Excel! Conspiracy or not? You may judge...

I liked this book very much. The way I choose to praise it is to write down the text on its front and back flaps. I think it will help the reader to know if this book is what he/she is looking for: "When approximately one thousand Americans died in a massacre on 18 November 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, and 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 an 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. "Now, for the first time, in a powerful, incisive account, Mark Lane carefully and seriously addresses the questions that the State Department and intelligence agencies hoped would never be asked: * Was there a government conspiracy against the Peoples Temple and its 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, one of the country's most gifted lawyers and investigative reporters, offers the first authoritative, eyewitness account of the Jonestown tragedy, and reveals what really happened during those last months, weeks, and days precipitating the massacre. Mark Lane makes use of hard facts and exclusive information givem to him by his client Terri Bufford - who ranked second to Jones before leaving the Peoples Temple a few weeks prior to the murders - concerning to 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 clariry, The Strongest Poison tells far more about American] than some of its bureaucrats, agencies, and accommodating journalists want the American people to know. "Mark Lane is one of the most proficient and controversial lawyers in the United States. His book about the Kennedy assassination, Rush to Judgement, although officially denounced and initially accepted for publication abroad, went on to become a major