Dr. Preston Jones: Robert Staats, where were you based in November 1978?
Robert Staats: I was based at Fort Dixon, New Jersey, which is right next to McGuire Air Force Base, where we transport a lot of people from the East Coast to Germany, Europe, and stuff like that.
Jones: What was your job at that time?
Staats: I was a Personnel Control Facility Officer, where we take AWOL apprehensive personnel and process them based on what they want to do, which is either stay in the military or receive court martial punishment or get out with a dishonorable discharge.
Jones: So your particular job involves—just for folks who don’t know, AWOL means absent without leave. So he was sort of processing these folks who’d either come back voluntarily or been right or been tracked down.
Staats: Yes. And we had a lot of them that were in the Vietnam War that went AWOL and didn’t want to serve.
Jones: Oh, is that right?
Staats: Yes, sir.
Jones: So in the late 1970s, you’re still dealing with the Vietnam era AWOL guys?
Staats: Correct.
Jones: What kind of punishments would they face? Because either Ford or Carter gave amnesty to the ones who went to Canada?
Staats: Some of them would get a reduction in grade and a reduction in pay if they wanted to get back in the military and finish their service. Some of them that did not want to would either end up in Leavenworth for a period of time or also receive a dishonorable discharge.
Jones: So let’s say a guy goes AWOL in 1970—maybe gets a ticket or something, and the police officer finds out he’s AWOL. Now he’s back in the Army’s custody. This person could say, “okay, I’ll go and I’ll get busted down to E-1 and finish out my two years in the Army.” Could it be an option?
Staats: That would be an option. That way he would at least get an honorable discharge.
Jones: So the reason I’m asking about November 1978 is because that’s when the Jonestown thing goes down and you have a long career in the Army, and you’ve seen a lot of things. And one of the things you saw was just part of that Jonestown—that process of more than 900 Americans dying in Jonestown, Guyana. And then the bodies are coming back.
What did you see in relation to the bodies coming back from Jonestown to the States?
Staats: We’ll get to where I was based at McGuire Air Force Base, which was right next door. So the runway would go right down past our building and we would watch the aircraft go in and out and later on sometime during that time, we also found out that McGuire Air Force probably was tasked with bringing back some of the bodies from Jonestown because they were splitting them up. Most of them would go to Dover Air Force Base, which was closer to California, where a lot of those people were residents. And some of them would come to the East Coast and one of the largest Air Force bases at that time that handled C-141 aircraft was McGuire Air Force Base. And they would bring some of those in there and place them in a makeshift morgue to make sure that they were identified properly using either the passports or whatever they had available that they found down in Jonestown.1 And then the families that were living on the East Coast picked up the remains.
Jones: Now, is this stuff that you heard about when you were on the base, or did you actually see some of this?
Staats: I saw a lot of the aircraft going in and out, which was very unusual. And we got a confirmation that yes, some of those lights were going down to Guyana, and at the airport they were picking some of the remains up.
And at the same time, that’s when we found out that Dover Air Force Base was getting a lot of them. They were getting the bulk of them back to Dover.
Jones: In terms of the caskets and things like that, you didn’t see any of that stuff?
Staats: No. We did get information as they were coming down the pipeline about what was going on because we were close to that Air Base. We had a lot of questions. And a lot of people in Wrightstown, which lives right next to the base, were asking us too, and we were getting a lot of information from them on what’s going on.
Jones: Had you ever heard of Peoples Temple before?
Staats: Yes, I have.
Jones: I mean, before this event in November 1978. It was quite common what was going on with them down there.
Contextual Notes
- McGuire AFB did not process any of the repatriated remains of the Americans who died in Guyana. McGuire AFB supplied and coordinated the logistics of the C-141 planes used to bring the remains to Dover AFB in Delaware.
Associated Press, “McGuire to airlift cult bodies home,” The Times, November 22, 1978. (Part 1; Part 2). ↩︎
