A listener note, this episode contains descriptions of violence and references to suicide, and may not be suitable for a younger audience.

It's September 15, 1978, in Washington, D.C.

Congressman Leo Ryan is sitting down with a group of officials from the U.S. State Department, for a meeting Ryan is hoping will provide some intelligence about Jim Jones and the People's Temple.

Ryan represents California's 11th District, which includes parts of the San Francisco Bay Area, and over the years he's earned a reputation as a political maverick whose compassionate and independent.

Ryan has also shown that he's willing to take dramatic measures to serve his constituents.

In 1970, he spent 10 days living in California's Folsom State Prison, trying to gather information about living conditions in the penitentiary.

Another time, Ryan went undercover and worked as a substitute teacher in order to better understand the problems in public schools.

Still, Ryan's upcoming fact-finding mission might be the most important one yet.

Recently, the Congressman has been hearing a lot of upsetting stories about Jim Jones and the People's Temple.

Ryan has been involved in California politics for years and used to be the mayor of South San Francisco.

So he's more than familiar with Jones and his politically progressive church, which has gained considerable influence across the state, especially among Ryan's own political party, the Democrats.

Many see Jones as a visionary, a utopian who's made real gains fighting for racial and economic justice.

But some of Jones's former followers have made disturbing accusations, saying Jones and his church are abusive and committing crimes.

Many of the allegations surfaced in a recent expose published by New West magazine.

After the story was published, Jones and about a thousand of his followers made a sudden exodus to Guyana, where Jones had set up a remote outpost of his church in a settlement called Jones Town.

The expose and the group's sudden departure from the United States were caused for alarm.

But Congressman Ryan grew even more concerned when he read a sworn affidavit from another temple defector, a woman named Deborah Layton, who said that in Guyana, Jim Jones has been running a terrifying exercise.

He calls white knight.

During these events, Jones declares a state of emergency in the settlement, telling his followers that their situation has become hopeless, and that their only option is to commit mass suicide by drinking poison.

According to Layton, the settlers in Jones Town follow Jones's orders, though the drink never turns out to be actual poison.

Layton's description of these events would have been enough in and of itself, but taken together with all the other mounting evidence about the people's temple, Congressman Ryan knew it was time to launch a more formal investigation.

So he began planning a trip to Jones Town to see what life was really like there.

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