John Roberts called Leo Ryan, killed at Jonestown, a "publicity hound"

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

Thursday, September 1, 2005; Posted: 1:20 p.m. EDT (17:20 GMT)



WASHINGTON (AP) -- Supreme Court nominee John Roberts took shots at Congress while a Reagan administration lawyer, saying in documents released Wednesday that a congressman killed in connection with cult leader Jim Jones' massacre could be viewed as a "publicity hound" and that what Congress does best is "nothing."

Those two documents were among 420 Roberts papers released by the National Archives that originally had been withheld from Congress for privacy and security reasons. The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library re-reviewed the papers and released them a week before Roberts' confirmation hearing after blacking out much material for privacy and national security reasons.

Congress voted to give California Rep. Leo Ryan, a Democrat, a Congressional Gold Medal after he was killed near the Jonestown commune in Guyana in 1978. Ryan had gone to Guyana to investigate whether cult leader Jones was holding people against their will.

Some cult members chose to leave with Ryan but the party was ambushed; Ryan and four others were killed. Jones ordered a mass suicide, and more than 900 members of the People's Temple cult committed mass suicide by drinking cyanide-laced punch while others were shot by guards loyal to Jones. Roberts told Fielding in a November 18, 1983, memo he was not certain he would have voted to give Ryan a congressional medal. "The distinction of his service in the House is certainly subject to debate, and his actions leading to his murder can be viewed as those of a publicity hound," Roberts said.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/09/01/roberts.documents.ap/

[Wetzelbill]

1. what a piece of

shit this guy is. I'm so sick of these clowns. Honestly. It just gets worse.

[BlueIris]

6. You read my mind, Wb.

Grrrrrrr.

[autorank]

2. Time to say NO, time to shut this fucker's rubber stamp down...

Our Senate Democrats had better grow a spine. I already see a challenge to LIEberman and maybe Clinton. The insulated millionaires boys club doesn't know the new deal--we don't trust any authority now, none. They are all on the line. Stand up or get out.

[Lars39]

3. He has that zealot face,doesn't he?

Wonder if he hangs with The Family.

[madrchsod]

4. he is every rich little prick in the world

all rolled up into a little ball of shit. he was groomed from childhood to serve the elite of this country.

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

7. Kind of ends the mystery as to why Bush picked him, eh?

I've seen that footage of Ryan getting mowed down on that airstrip.

There are easier ways to make the papers. He was trying to help.

I'm glad that the true colors of Roberts are being revealed, but also disgusted by what I'm seeing.

[Hidden Stillness]

5. Vicious; Horrible

Wow! This is totally shocking--no wonder they don't want you to know about this horrible bastard. I remember the Jonestown massacre, the murders of Representative Leo Ryan and others, the hundreds of ordered deaths of cult members at the compound; it was awful.

Leo Ryan had gotten many letters, smuggled out of the compound in Guyana, from people being held in this cult against their will, and with messages that it was getting more weird, that Jim Jones getting more threatening all the time, and that something was going to happen soon. As the Representative of these constituents, Ryan went down, talked to people, and was actually leaving to return to the States to make a report and conduct further investigations, and also start arranging to fly people back up here, who wanted to get out--when suddenly on the runway as they were boarding their plane, they were ambushed and shot hundreds of times, and it was caught on camera.

This was an incredibly brave act of a true public servant responding to desperate people who needed help, and being intelligent and competent enough to have actually arranged the rescue of many people brave enough to declare themselves publicly, when Ryan's group asked who wanted to leave. Then, like that, it was over, and they were murdered. I am baffled at this disgusting opinion, but it seems the entire neo-con cult has been showing itself suddenly extremely vicious this past several days. I can't understand it; I don't want to understand it.

[AzDar]

8. KICK!!! Don't want this to get overlooked (so much SHIT,so little time)