One of our unsung heroes - Leo Ryan

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Leo Ryan was born in Lincoln, Nebraska. Throughout his early life his family moved frequently, through Illinois, Florida, New York, Wisconsin, and Massachusetts. He graduated from Campion Jesuit High School in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin in 1943. Ryan then received V-12 officer training at Bates College and served with the United States Navy from 1943 to 1946 as a submariner. He graduated from Nebraska's Creighton University with an A.B. in 1949 and an M.S. from the same in 1951. He served as a teacher, school administrator and San Francisco councilman from 1956 to 1962, at which time he was elected mayor of South San Francisco, serving less than a year before taking a seat in the California State Assembly, which he held through 1972, when he was elected to the United States House of Representatives.

During his life, Ryan was known for his colorful personality and for the aplomb with which he tackled social inequality. After the Watts Riots of 1965, Assemblyman Ryan went to the area and took a job as a substitute school teacher to investigate and document conditions in the area. In 1970, using a pseudonym, Ryan had himself arrested, detained and strip searched to investigate conditions in the California prison system. During his time in Congress, Ryan went to Newfoundland to investigate the inhumane killing of seals; he was famous for vocal criticism of the judicial excess of the CIA, authoring the Hughes-Ryan Amendment, which would have required extensive CIA notification of Congress about planned covert operations. Shortly after his death, the Amendment was quietly dropped, leading to the development of a conspiracy theory relating to his death. Ryan was also an early critic of L. Ron Hubbard and his Scientology movement and of the Unification Church of Sun Myung Moon. On November 3, 1977 he read to the congress a testimony by John Gordon Clark about the health hazards connected with destructive cults.

He was killed in Guyana by members of the Peoples Temple shortly before the Jonestown Massacre.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Ryan