From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
|
This article is within the scope of multiple WikiProjects.
Click [show] for further details |
|
|
 To-do list for Leo Ryan: |
edit · history · watch · refresh |
|
Here are some tasks you can do:
- Requests:
- Free image photos of trip to Jonestown.
- Free image photo of grave (gravestone reads "Congressional Gold Medal", will look nice).
- Copyedit:
Could always use more copy editing, but in this case moreso improvement of overall diction of article.
- Expand:
- Expand upon political activities in California pre-Election to Congress.
- Specifically, Ryan Act of 1970...
- Add subsection with link to main article: Leo J. Ryan Federal Building
- Expand upon political activities as Congressman: Committees served on, role, legislation, voting record...
|
|
[edit] State Department Characterization
With regard to the sentence "According to the San Francisco Chronicle, while investigating the events, the United States Department of State 'repeatedly stonewalled Ryan's attempts to find out what was going on in Jonestown', and told him that 'everything was fine.'" I realize that author Mark Simon characterized it this way in short conclusory fashion in 1998, but it's not really accurate. What really happened is that State briefed Ryan on pretty much everything they knew, which was limited, and explained that international and U.S. law prevented the U.S. government from doing much more in Guyana than surface inquiries regarding potential social security check coercion, customs and immigration issues. An argument could be made that the State Department didn't vigorously interview enough people before (they did interview 75 Jonestown members in 1978), but they didn't really stonewall Ryan. Also, McCoy, Dwyer and Burke didn't tell Ryan "everything was fine" (regardless of Simon's characterization), but instead said that they didn't have any indication from visits and interviews that people were being held against their will. I would delete that sourced sentence and include another explaining what actually happened. Mosedschurte (talk) 06:06, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
- If you could find a different secondary WP:V/WP:RS source, and present that, then we could discuss it, but I would be opposed to deleting the current sourced info. Cirt (talk) 06:10, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
-
-
- Frankly, every source (Reiterman, the House Report, the documents themselves, etc.) doesn't characterize it the way Simon did. This would be a far more accurate (and from much more credible sources) paragraph: Mosedschurte (talk)
-
-
- In 1978, officials from the United States Embassy in Guyana interviewed Temple Social Security recipients on multiple occasions to try to determine whether they were being held against their will.[1] None of the 75 people the Embassy interviewed stated that they were being held against their will, were forced to sign over welfare checks or wanted to leave Jonestown.[2] Citing the Privacy Act and its legal inability to enforce laws in Guyana, the State Department had taken what it stated to be a "middle ground" between the Temple and those pushing for a more aggressive investigation than that which it was already doing.[3] Ryan argued that the State Department was being overly cautious in ints interpretation of the Privacy Act and guarded its files on individual Temple members too closely.[4] The State Department briefed Ryan's aides before the trip to Guyana, and briefed both Ryan and his aides in Georgetown, but never briefed Ryan on the circumstances surrounding a defecting Temple member or Jones' declining health on the State Department's last visit.[5] Mosedschurte (talk) 08:48, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
- Well I would certainly give more weight to Reiterman than Simon, in this case. Cirt (talk) 08:54, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
