With Ryan on the way to Jonestown, the secrecy surrounding the camp would be broken and desperate measures would need to be taken to keep the truth from escaping, much less the inmates. In a futile attempt to test their conditioning methods, the leaders at Jonestown apparently tried to implement an actual suicide drill, but it was obviously ignored. Official stories first numbered the victims at 408, but later revised the toll upward to 913. It was claimed that some 505 bodies had been covered by those of the first 408 who had fallen directly on top of them, confusing those who had been counting from aerial photographs. The truth is that nearly 400 inmates were forced to die by injection, according to the Chief Guyanese medical examiner, Dr. Mootoo, who arrived at Jonestown within hours of the massacre.
Several pictures show the gunshot wounds on the bodies as well.
The U.S. Army spokesman, Lt. Col. Schuler, told the press, 'No autopsies are needed. The cause of death is not an issue here,' and the forensic doctors who later performed the autopsies at Dover, Delaware, were never made aware of Dr. Mootoo's findings. It was very evident that Jonestown was a tightly-run concentration camp, complete with medical and psychiatric experimentation. Direct orders to cover up the cause of death came from the top levels of the American Government. Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter's national security advisor, authorized Robert Pastor to order Lt. Col. Gordon Sumner to strip the bodies of the medical bracelets they had been forced to wear for identification.