Why Won't the FBI Release "Jonestown" Files Until 2025 or Later?

If this sounds like another nutty conspiracy theory, you might ask why the FBI is holding documents as classified until 2025, and why professors at US universities, 30 years after the incident, are still having to go to courts to try to get information. And when the children of a murdered US congressman file a lawsuit that says that the CIA had infiltrated Jonestown and may be implicated in his murder (the lawsuit was dismissed), it probably is a little more than just a loony conspiracy theory. People don't often file lawsuits with zero evidence or gossip.

"Seven months after the massacre, the New England Journal of Medicine commented on the handling of the bodies at Jonestown.[9] Citing the criticisms of forensic experts and organizations, [10] the Journal noted that:
- six months after the massacre, only one-third of the bodies at Jonestown had been positively identified;
- no death certificates had been obtained for any of the people who'd died in Guyana;
A medicolegal autopsy ought to have been performed on every body to establish the cause and manner of death in each case. In fact, only seven autopsies were carried out among the 913 victims---an appalling figure.
http://jimhougan.com/JimJones.html
9. New England Journal of Medicine, "Law-Medicine Notes: The Guyana Mass Suicides: Medicolegal Re-evaluation" by William J. Curran, J.D., LL.M., S.M. Hyg., June 7, 1979

Here's one person trying to get information:
"My other two requests went to the FBI. The first FOIA request sought information pertaining to the disposition of the transceivers used in Jonestown. I wanted to know where the radios were and – if the FBI no longer has them – what happened to them? I figured this request would generate something, especially since federal regulations require a paper trail on the disposal of any tangible items following an investigation such as that into Peoples Temple.

I was also hopeful, because the FBI release of 42,000 pages of information on three CDs included several records which I used as the basis for requesting a larger search. According to these documents – generated by the FBI in early December of 1978 – two Yaesu FT-101 transceivers were taken out of Jonestown and flown to MacDill Air Force Base in Florida, where Major Richard T. Corbett turned them over to agents from the Tampa field office of the FBI. They, in turn, were ordered to mail these transceivers to the San Francisco Bureau office. I was unable to locate any documents, however, that indicated that the radios actually made it to San Francisco."
http://jonestown.sdsu.edu/AboutJonestown/JonestownReport/Volume8/dieckman2.htm

Here are some excerpts:

"I will break down [count] those whom I consider to be murdered, beginning with the group of people who were forcibly injected with poison. This is a historical fact that no documentary or film has yet chosen to discuss or even portray. In every interview I’ve ever given, I’ve spoken about the bodies that I personally saw with abscesses. And yet, that fact is never reported. Could it be that this reality is left out of media portrayals because it doesn’t fit neatly into the “mass suicide” argument?"
http://jonestown.sdsu.edu/AboutJonestown/JonestownReport/Volume8/forumCarter.htm
"Murder or Suicide: What I Saw" by Tim Carter

"In correspondence with Fielding McGehee (2003) about these episodes I have found out that the House Foreign Affairs Committee has placed a “30 year hold” on all documents concerning Jonestown, making it virtually impossible to learn more from what materials do still exist. Further efforts to obtain materials by McGehee have resulted in what can only be described as classic delaying tactics. He asked the State Department for materials which the agency provided to the 1979 congressional investigation, only to be told the request cannot honor without identification of the documents. That identification, of course, could not be furnished without more knowledge of what is still available."
http://jonestown.sdsu.edu/AboutJonestown/Articles/richardson.htm
"Jonestown 25 Years Later: Why All The Secrecy?" by James T. Richardson, J.D., Ph.D

"Somewhere along the line, though, the agency lost interest in making the documents readily available to the general public. We learned of this a few years ago when we made a seemingly innocuous FOIA request for a limited number of papers and were told that there were 43,000 pages which “may or may not be responsive” to what we sought. We were also told that we could have the documents at a cost of ten cents per page, although the first 100 pages would be free. What had happened, of course, is that all the Jonestown papers were lumped together as a single entity. You could not longer ask for documents by index number, first of all because the records were no longer sorted according to the index, secondly because the index itself was merged into anonymity within the larger collection, and thirdly because the new arrivals to the FBI’s Freedom of Information staff didn’t even acknowledge the existence of the index, until we provided them with a copy.

We have resolved one of the issues related to the FBI’s Jonestown papers. The agency has scanned all 43,000 pages onto three CD’s, which are available from the FBI for $30. We have made copies of the CD’s ourselves, and suggest it might be faster to order them through us rather than through the agency, especially since one person who recently requested the CD’s from the agency itself was told they were no longer available, but that Fielding McGehee and Rebecca Moore had some extras. Even though the cost of the records has come down to the affordable, the question of the index still remains: the records are scanned randomly, with no guide, no search engine, nothing to help you find your way around it. The comparison we use is that of a bookstore or a library with its stock jumbled onto the shelves. Sure, the book you want is there, but who has the time and patience to search through thousands of uncatalogued volumes to find it?"
http://jonestown.sdsu.edu/AboutJonestown/Articles/mcgehee_2.htm
“Attempting to Document the Peoples Temple Story: The Existence and Disappearance of Government Records” by Fielding M. McGehee III

MKULTRA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKULTRA
Headed by Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, MKULTRA was started on the order of CIA director Allen Dulles on April 13, 1953[5], largely in response to alleged Soviet, Chinese, and North Korean use of mind-control techniques on U.S. prisoners of war in Korea.[6] The CIA wanted to use similar methods on their own captives. The CIA was also interested in being able to manipulate foreign leaders with such techniques,[7] and would later invent several schemes to drug Fidel Castro.

In 1964, the project was renamed MKSEARCH. The project attempted to produce a perfect truth drug for use in interrogating suspected Soviet spies during the Cold War, and generally to explore any other possibilities of mind control.

Because most of the MKULTRA records were deliberately destroyed in 1973 by order of the Director at that time, Richard Helms, it is impossible to have a complete understanding of the more than 150 individually funded research projects sponsored by MKULTRA and related CIA programs.[8]
Dr. Sidney Gottlieb approved of an MKULTRA subproject on LSD in this June 9, 1953 letter.
Dr. Sidney Gottlieb approved of an MKULTRA subproject on LSD in this June 9, 1953 letter.

Experiments were often conducted without the subjects' knowledge or consent.[9]