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the SLA's intentionally fear-inspiring logo, a seven-headed cobra. No doubt it was also Westbrook and his fellow CIA psy- war specialists who helped program De Freeze for his starring role as "Public Enemy Number One" for the year 1974. the SLA's intentionally fear-inspiring logo, a seven-headed Relations CIA Oversight Committee, and a very prominent posi- cobra.” No doubt it was also Westbrook and his fellow CIA psy- _fion on the CIA's list of enemies. war specialists who helped program De Freeze for his starring role “..during the course of his investigation, he uncovered evidence as "Public Enemy Number One" for the year 1974. to support the contention that the CIA had sponsored several cults that practised mind control on their members. The cults were not Black Operations—White Nights @ matter of national security but experiments in the control of peo- We have already seen that suspicions of CIA involvement in ple for power and profit—a clear violation of hwnan rights. Ryan Jonestown were raised soon after the dubious circumstances sur- set out to expose these CIA cults in what might have be compared rounding deaths of the 912 men, women and children whose bod- _to a blind man kicking a crocodile. The agency did not cooperate ies were recovered. Even before the massacre, however, suspi- with Ryan's demand for information, for if they had, they would cions that the CIA was using Jonestown as a base for mind-control have told him about Jim Jones, and they did not. and medical experimentation had led Californian Democrat “Ryan discovered that the CIA cults, like their business fronts, Senator Leo Ryan to investigate. By that time, Ryan had already —_ were difficult to identify and monitor, as they were designed to be « placed himself in an adversarial position with the CIA: financially self-sufficient. The agency could then account for “Though his style did not change between the Californian every dollar of their congressional budget without divulging their Assembly and the United States Congress, the subject of his inves- __ profit-making operations or the projects these operations helped tigations did. In California, Ryan had pursued a wide variety of to finance. : issues, but in Washington he would focus his work on one main “The first cult Ryan investigated was the Unification Church, topic: the domestic operations of the Central Intelligence Agency. whose leader, the Reverend Sung Myung Moon, was alleged to His interest in the CIA became the dominant factor in Ryan's life have strong ties with the CIA in Korea. Ryan lacked hard evi- and his death in Guyana. "Congressman Ryan's concern over the CIA's domestic spy operations was legitimate and well- founded. It had been reported that there were more intelligence agents illegally operating in | ue Tl KC SF y | ‘@) DO NOT Ryan's San Mateo County and the adjacent Santa Clara County than in all other parts of the S. ™ : REMI TRI .? If II ; TAST a : United States combined, Washington, DC includ- Rist Hives wen . ed By ARE CONDEAANED "It was not until years later, when such activi- ties were under threat of exposure, that the CIA persuaded Ronald Reagan to amend their char- ter to sanction what they had been doing for years. But at the time, the CIA was illegally operating in California. “It suffices to say that by 1972, when Leo Ryan was first elected to Congress, the CIA operations in his home district were massive, illegal, threat- ening, and very much out of control. "Immediately upon arriving in Washington, as if it were the primary reason he had campaigned for Congress, Ryan drafted an amendment intended to stop, or at least control, the CIA's illegal operations in Silicon Valley and else- where within the United States. The Hughes- Ryan Amendment to the National Assistance Act would be the only major piece of legislation Ryan would introduce in his six years in Congress. The amendment transferred responsi- bility for overseeing the CIA from the Armed Forces Committee, which often turned a blind eye to the agency's activities, to the International Relations Committee of both houses of Congress. "The CIA fought Congressman Ryan tooth and nail (or more aptly, cloak and dagger) and would have successfully defeated the legislation if it were not for Ryan’s impeccable timing. He introduced the legislation at the height of the Watergate scandal when the public was shocked to learn of the crimes of Howard Hunt and other agency operatives in the United States. Despite the agency's strong objections, the Hughes-Ryan Amendment passed into law, earning Leo Ryan two distinctions: a seat on the International Prophetic sign above Jim Jones' 'throne' at Jonestown, Guyana, NEXUS ¢ 31 DECEMBER 1994 - JANUARY 1995