REDACTED: Declassified Mysteries with Luke Lamana - Charles Manson and the CIA (Part 2)

Episode Date: December 17, 2024

As we dive deeper down the Charles Manson rabbit hole in Part 2, we explore the shocking link between the cult leader, mind control, and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. As Tom O’Neill concludes his two decade long investigation, we look at the author’s findings that have rocked everything that the American public thought they knew about the Manson Family Murders.Be the first to know about Wondery’s newest podcasts, curated recommendations, and more! Sign up now at https://wondery.fm/wonderynewsletterFollow Redacted: Declassified Mysteries with Luke Lamana on the Wondery App or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to new episodes early and ad-free on Wondery+. Join Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Start your free trial by visiting https://wondery.com/links/redacted/ now.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to redacted, declassified mysteries early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. In the library basement of UCLA on a June afternoon in 2001, time suddenly slowed to a crawl for journalist Tom O'Neill. For more than two years, O'Neill had been searching for the truth about the notorious cult leader and murderer Charles Manson in dusty archives just like this. He was convinced that Manson did not act alone when he sent his followers

to slaughter Hollywood actress Sharon Tate and six others in August of 1969. Manson and members of his so-called family all went to prison for the shocking crimes. But O'Neill thought other people had blood on their hands too. He had begun to suspect that the CIA might somehow be involved So what started out as an assignment to write a magazine article Had become an obsession And O'Neill had missed his deadline by more than two years Now he was determined to write a book That exposed a potentially massive government cover-up,

if, that is, he could prove it happened. Standing over a box of old government documents in the UCLA basement that day in 2001, O'Neill felt the rush of a eureka moment. Finally, all the pieces of his exhaustive research seemed to fall together. In O'Neill's hand was a 1963 letter from a CIA psychiatrist requesting to examine an infamous murderer. The letter was written just two days after Jack Ruby had shot and killed Lee Harvey Oswald, the man who was suspected of assassinating President John F. Kennedy, and the psychiatrist, Dr. Jolly West, was eager to learn more about Ruby's state of mind.

Eventually, Dr. West was permitted to visit Ruby in prison. It was a one-on-one meeting, no witnesses, cameras, or recordings. And then something strange happened. The very next morning, news broke that Ruby had suffered an acute psychotic breakdown. Overnight, Ruby had gone insane. Doctors declared the condition unfixable. As a result, Ruby could not testify before the commission investigating JFK's assassination. His mind was too scrambled to explain why he killed the man who killed the president. To O'Neill, who thought it seemed conspiratorial, the implications were clear.

Dr. West, an early researcher in mind control techniques, had visited Ruby with the deliberate intention of ruining his mental state. The goal was to ensure Ruby wouldn't be able to provide more information on why he killed President Kennedy's assassin. It was a brazen act, derailing the investigation into a presidential assassination. As O'Neill dug deeper into the box of Dr. West's papers, he found letters describing the doctor's larger role in CIA-backed experiments using drugs and hypnosis to control people's minds. By 1967, Dr. West was doing mind control research with LSD and other drugs at the Haight-Ashbury Free Medical Clinic in San Francisco, where many of the city's hippies hung out. And curiously, that was also the year that one man became a favorite patient at the clinic, Charles Manson. At last, O'Neill thought, he might just have his smoking gun. Declassified Mysteries, where each week we shine a light on the shadowy corners of espionage,

covert operations, and misinformation to reveal the dark secrets our governments try to hide. This is part two of Charles Manson and the CIA. It was a sunny July morning in 2001, a few weeks after his visit to the UCLA archives. Tom O'Neill sat across from his literary agent on the patio of a cafe in Venice Beach, California. They were there to discuss his recent findings about the CIA psychiatrist, Dr. Jolly West. O'Neill thought he detected a hint of worry on his agent's face. Each time he shared a new, bizarre discovery about the Manson case, O'Neill feared he might be pushing things too far. Fortunately, his agent remained supportive. O'Neill dove into the subject of Jolly West. He couldn't interview West himself since he had died in January of 1999,

but he'd learned quite a bit about the man. O'Neill said that despite his cheerful name, Jolly spent his life doing dark business. West got his start in the army during World War II, and by 1953, he was doing classified work for the top-secret CIA program, MKUltra, in several states. There, he experimented on unsuspecting test subjects using LSD and hypnosis. O'Neill told his literary agent that he believed Dr. West's overlap with Manson at the Haight-Ashbury Clinic wasn't a coincidence. More and more, it seemed to him like strings had been pulled to make their paths intersect. His agent asked an obvious question. Exactly who pulled these strings, and what did they stand to gain by

having West and Manson interact? To O'Neill, there was only one possible puppet master, the CIA. Specifically, officials from MKUltra. This was the agency's long-running research program aimed at finding techniques to brainwash and manipulate individuals mk ultra researchers had started off using lsd as an interrogation tool in the 1950s but they had gradually become more interested in mind control and dr west was one of the mind control pioneers pioneers. In 1953, at the height of the Korean War, 36 American pilots captured by the North Korean Army went on national radio and confessed to spraying the local countryside with biological weapons. This was a war crime and made global news. O'Neill told his agent that the pilots' accusations were never proven,

but U.S. military officials suspected that the men had been brainwashed by the communists to make them give false statements. When the pilots were eventually freed, the CIA sent Dr. West to deprogram them. Although the specifics of Dr. West's methods weren't revealed, the results were a triumph. Most of the pilots renounced their confessions, claiming they had been obtained using torture. O'Neill said this made Dr. West a hero in military circles and sparked the CIA's fascination with controlling people's thoughts. West had successfully deprogrammed men who had been brainwashed. Now, the CIA wanted to figure out how to brainwash people themselves. To O'Neill, Dr. West's career from then on always pointed him toward the Haight-Ashbury

Free Medical Clinic, where Charles Manson would soon be arriving to. It seemed like destiny. Dr. West was convinced drugs, especially LSD, were integral to controlling people's thoughts. So what better place to do the research than a medical clinic that catered to free-spirited hippies who often took drugs anyway? O'Neill's agent finally interrupted with another question. Where did Charles Manson fit into all this? O'Neill admitted that that was the million-dollar puzzle piece, but he thought it was plausible that the CIA saw Manson as someone who could be used, trained, or weaponized for some purpose.

And since Manson was an ex-con who did drugs, he was someone they could discredit if he tried to spill secrets. O'Neill's agent was intrigued, though he worried about how far the journalist was straying into the weeds. O'Neill promised his agent that he was doing his best to stay on track. In the meantime, he needed to go back down the rabbit hole. One morning, a few months after meeting with his agent, O'Neill's phone rang.

It was earlier than usual. His brain felt fried from too many late nights trying to organize his research He knew the project was consuming him, but he was determined to fight his way through the fog On the phone was a man named Bob Conrick O'Neill had left him a voicemail months ago, but never heard back, which he was used to by now O'Neill had first learned about Conrick from reading about the early days of the Haight-Ashbury Free Medical Clinic. Conrick handled the administrative side, while clinic founder

Dr. David Smith oversaw the research and day-to-day patient visits. But O'Neill's reason for reaching out to Conrick concerned one of their employees, Dr. Jolly West. O'Neill had heard from one of his sources that Conrick objected to Dr. West joining the clinic in 1967. He was curious if this was true, and if so, why? Conrick was blunt. He never trusted West, not from day one. West's reputation made Conrick suspicious. He had learned that West was a military insider with high-ranking connections. His previous assignment was on an Air Force base in rural Texas, doing psychiatric projects so classified he couldn't discuss anything about them. Conrick still remembered the day West walked into the clinic. He wore a colorful knitted shirt,

Remember the day West walked into the clinic. He wore a colorful knitted shirt, loose pants, and brand new sandals with wavy hair and a bushy mustache. To Conrick, West looked like a narcotics agent trying desperately to pass as a hippie. Conrick was convinced West had hidden motives. He was soon proven right. Within weeks, Conrick learned about an experiment Dr. West was conducting at a hippie apartment only blocks from the clinic. There, young people were invited in off the street, offered drugs,

and then observed by a rotating staff of graduate students. The research was apparently for a book West was writing that examined how LSD broke down a person's ego and made them easier to manipulate. Conrick's story reminded O'Neill of something he had found in West's archives. At one time, the scientific leader of MKUltra instructed West to see if it was possible to change a person's memories or implant a false memory without them realizing it. O'Neill wondered if this might have been what Dr. West was doing at the hippie

apartment. Conrick thought O'Neill's theory sounded likely. In his experience, everything Dr. West did was a cover-up. He also said West never finished his book. Conrick wasn't sure if it ever even existed, or if that was a front too. He wondered if the apartment research was a real study at all, noting that West's graduate students told him they didn't even record their findings. After O'Neill got off the phone, he took a walk along the beach to stretch his legs. Conrick's words swirled in his head. If West's scientific projects were just a facade, what were they hiding? And why would the CIA pay for studies but not collect any results?

As O'Neill strolled across the sand, an idea began to take shape. As O'Neill strolled across the sand, an idea began to take shape. Maybe West was using the apartment as a net to find a candidate for their real project, a pawn for the CIA to be trained or deployed for some unknown purpose. Once he was back home, O'Neill reviewed his notes. On April 11, 1967, at the exact time West's LSD study was happening, Charles Manson arrived in San Francisco and reported to the local parole board for the first time. Within months, the apartment research was shuttered, and West never mentioned his book again to Conrick. Maybe, O'Neill thought, West believed that the project was no longer needed,

because maybe he had found the perfect test subject. Two months later, on a cool autumn afternoon in late 2001, O'Neill strolled through Santa Monica with a coffee. He had been trying to keep his morale up, but life had been hard lately. O'Neill had been forced to borrow money from his family to stay afloat, since he was too busy writing to take on other work. His apartment had gradually transformed into a storage area filled with files, books, and three-ring binders. into a storage area filled with files, books, and three-ring binders. His phone rarely rang, since he was too busy to make time for friends. If someone did come over, they'd cast anxious looks around the place, wondering what the hell he'd gotten into. The book was eroding O'Neill's

life, but his head was too full of ideas to even consider stopping. There was no doubt, but his head was too full of ideas to even consider stopping. There was no doubt Manson and the CIA had grown into a full-blown obsession. O'Neill realized that to anyone else, the idea that the CIA had a purpose in mind for Manson still seemed far-fetched. Both because Manson was a career criminal and not easily controlled, and for a larger reason. What potential could a loose cannon like Manson have had for the CIA?

They seemed like opposite forces. The thought reminded O'Neill of one of his earlier interviews. Back in his office, O'Neill dug out the notes from his chat with a deputy sheriff named Preston Guillory. Guillory claimed his department was ordered not to interfere with the criminal activities of the Manson family. Guillory also said the sheriff's department had been running heavy surveillance on Manson and his followers at the time of the murders. Towards the end of O'Neill's interview with

Guillory, the former deputy sheriff speculated why law enforcement was so lenient with Manson. He thought it was because they shared a common enemy, the Black Panthers, a radical organization that preached black nationalism. The Black Panther Party was despised by the police because they carried guns and openly insulted cops as pigs. Even worse, they were admired by hippies, students, and progressive young people. The Black Panthers were equally despised by Charles Manson. His many years in prison had hardened him into a staunch racist. Among his followers, Manson talked about the Black Panthers constantly,

how dangerous they were, and his constant paranoia that they were about to attack Spahn Ranch. When Guillory suggested this theory to O'Neill, he initially thought that it didn't seem like a strong enough motivation. It was no secret that the police were hostile towards the Black Panthers, and Manson hated them so much that he concocted an entire apocalyptic fantasy about them that he called Helter Skelter. But this didn't necessarily make law enforcement and Manson into allies. But the more he thought about it, the more O'Neill wondered if Guillory was onto something.

After all, Manson didn't just command his followers to kill strangers in cold blood. wall, Manson didn't just command his followers to kill strangers in cold blood. He also instructed them to write messages on the wall that sounded just like the Black Panthers. Like death to pigs. O'Neill realized he needed to zoom out and better understand the Black Panthers' role in the 1960s. So he made another pot of coffee and went to his bookshelf. When he had first started researching the CIA, O'Neill had also done some digging on other classified government programs of that era. Among them was an FBI domestic surveillance program called COINTELPRO. The purpose of COINTELPRO was to undermine the peace movement and any other organization the FBI considered radical.

Only a few months after COINTELPRO was activated, the CIA followed the FBI's lead and formed their own program. They named it CHAOS. Both COINTELPRO and CHAOS were active in San Francisco, which was just across the bay from Oakland, where the Black Panthers were based. O'Neill thought the location of the government programs was no coincidence. The more O'Neill read about COINTELPRO's tactics, the more he thought about that description of Dr. West trying to pass as a hippie. This is precisely how COINTELPRO operated. COINTELPRO agents were trained to dress and speak like the youth groups they were infiltrating, even though they were in fact government agents.

They were even trained how to take LSD and not break cover. O'Neill shook his head, imagining how many stiff, awkward men in flowy shirts loitering around Haight-Ashbury in 1967 were actually undercover federal agents. But this wasn't COINTELPRO's only tactic. They also recruited certain inmates from the prison system. Potential candidates were offered a deal, freedom in exchange for going undercover for the FBI. Most prisoners agreed. In 1960, Manson was given a 10-year sentence for forging a U.S. Treasury check while he was already on probation for other crimes. But, for unknown reasons, Manson was transferred from Washington State to California

and given an early release on March 21 of 1967. and given an early release on March 21st of 1967. O'Neill had one simple question. Did the FBI or CIA offer Manson a deal? O'Neill realized he was deep in the weeds of conjecture, but that didn't mean he was wrong. As he finished his third cup of coffee, O'Neill found something in his COINTELPRO files that made him sit up even straighter. It was a transcription of a series of leaked memos

sent by COINTELPRO to the Los Angeles police in the late 1960s. In the memos, COINTELPRO shared ideas for how the LAPD could help weaken radical political groups. The COINTELPRO shared ideas for how the LAPD could help weaken radical political groups. The COINTELPRO officials suggested that police shouldn't rely mainly on direct harassment of groups like the Black Panthers. That could too easily blow up in their faces. Instead, they should harass people sympathetic to these radical groups, such as civil rights advocates and Hollywood liberals. The targets for harassment in the COINTELPRO memo perfectly described the people that

Charles Manson's family killed. One of the victims, coffee heiress Abigail Folger, was actually a member of the White Panthers, a group of white activists set up to support the Black Panthers, and Sharon Tate and her husband, the famed director Roman Polanski, were known for hosting Hollywood's liberal elite. Most of the guests on the night of the murder, August 9th, 1969, were likely Black Panther supporters. O'Neill knew it was a wild thought, but it was almost as if the Manson family was doing the work of the FBI when they went on their rampage. Sure, COINTELPRO did not recommend murder as a form of harassment, but the parallels between the FBI strategy and Manson's were disturbing. O'Neill's head was spinning.

But did these strange parallels prove anything? Was he unraveling a mystery, or unraveling himself? The line between cracking the case and becoming a crackpot kept getting thinner. The End Three weeks later, on a brisk November morning, O'Neill sat in his office finalizing a list of interview questions. He felt rattled. a list of interview questions. He felt rattled. O'Neill had been told by a source that the author of the overwhelmingly popular book about the Manson murders, Helter Skelter, had been asking

about him. Vincent Bugliosi had been undermining O'Neill's credibility, saying O'Neill was only pretending to be a magazine journalist. O'Neill figured it was because he felt threatened by what his book would contain. After all, Bugliosi's book made it seem like Manson had been the lone mastermind of the Tate murders, and that wasn't what O'Neill was finding. O'Neill did his best to block out the drama and stay focused. And he had more questions about Bugliosi, who had been the prosecutor at Manson's trial. O'Neill wanted to reach out to another person who knew all about the actual Manson murder investigation, and who could provide a different perspective on Bugliosi's version of

events. Mike McGann had been the lead investigator on the Tate murder, working side-by-side with Bugliosi. McGann had retired to Idaho, and many of the documents from the investigation had ended up in his possession. When O'Neill finally got McGann on the phone, he could tell the retired detective's patience was thin. McGann was blunt in his assessment of Bugliosi. Everything in Vince Bugliosi's book is wrong, McGann said. Bugliosi didn't solve it. Nobody trusted him.

O'Neill was eager to get more details, but McGann insisted he needed to be paid for his time. O'Neill knew that wasn't an option. As a journalist, he couldn't pay someone for information. And even if he wanted to, O'Neill was flat broke. So he hung up, frustrated. It seemed like Bugliosi and his book didn't have as many fans as O'Neill had assumed. Even Charles Manson criticized Bugliosi's work during a prison interview in 1972. Buleosi's work during a prison interview in 1972. Buleosi looks in the mirror every morning when he shaves.

And that's the only person in Buleosi's world. Just him. What about the accuracy of the book, though, Charlie? He had the dates right and the names right. But he had a million illusions that had nothing to do with my reality. He was only trying and convicting his own reality. It didn't have anything to do with me. O'Neill knew he had to keep asking questions and circle back to the CIA and its mind control program, MKUltra. It felt like he was climbing a mountain as he went from interview to interview and the air was getting thin. Today, O'Neill was speaking to a man named Alan Scheflin.

He had written one of the first books about MKUltra published in 1978. O'Neill hoped he would be able to clarify some of his theories. O'Neill dialed the number and waited. It was a familiar feeling. By now, he had interviewed over 500 people, and his list kept growing. When Scheflin answered, O'Neill laid out his case

about Manson's connection with the CIA. Scheflin reminded O'Neill laid out his case about Manson's connection with the CIA. Schefflin reminded O'Neill that in 1973, the head of the CIA ordered all files connected to MKUltra destroyed, so a complete understanding of the program could never be known. But Schefflin said some documents survived, most importantly, a stash of 20,000 pages at an off-site warehouse. Eventually, in December 1974, the New York Times obtained those records of the CIA's secret mind control research, forcing the agency to finally admit the program existed. The MKUltra files exposed how illegal and invasive the program

really was. They dosed people with psychoactive drugs and conducted extensive experiments to test the limits of the human mind. They were convinced the brain was a code that could be cracked by the right combination of stresses, chemicals, and manipulation. More often than not, MKUltra's subjects emerged from the experiments deeply damaged. There were many cases of permanent mental illness, shocking episodes of violence, and unexplained suicides. One of the most disturbing MKUltra files revealed CIA attempts to manipulate someone into attempting an assassination. Schefflin told O'Neill that, fortunately, the CIA had failed in this.

When the CIA finally acknowledged MKUltra's existence, they admitted that, despite all their efforts, they had never successfully brainwashed anyone. Then O'Neill told Schefflin that he hated to be the bearer of bad news, but it looked like, once again, the CIA had lied. They just might have succeeded in brainwashing after all. O'Neill described a letter he had found dated in 1956 from Dr. West to the head of MKUltra. In the letter, West boasted that he had finally achieved the impossible. He had successfully replaced true memories with false ones in a subject using drugs, sleep deprivation, and hypnosis. Even better, the subject of West's experiment had no idea his brain had been changed. Schefflin was speechless. This was science fiction, treating a person's mind like putty

to be molded at will. But if Dr. West had accomplished this, it meant that MKUltra wasn't a failure. Which raised the question, what other horrifying achievements could they have hidden? O'Neill had one more question for Sheflin. He had saved his biggest for last. Was it possible that Charles Manson was an MKUltra experiment in mind control gone wrong? gone wrong? Sheflin's response was chilling. He told O'Neill no, but it was possible that Manson was an MKUltra experiment gone right. After Sheflin hung up, O'Neill paced his apartment, his mind racing. What if Dr. West had conducted a session at the clinic with Manson using drugs and hypnosis? Could Dr. West have planted the seeds of Helter Skelter and mass murder in Manson's mind? Or maybe Dr. West showed Manson how to combine LSD, sleep deprivation, and hypnosis to change the brains of others for a different mission.

Manson seemed too unstable to treat like a weapon that could be aimed, but maybe that was the point. He was an element of chaos to unleash into the heart of the hippie movement. The day passed in a blur as O'Neill mapped every scenario that might explain the connections between Manson and the CIA. There were too many, yet somehow not enough. Maybe that's the way it would always be with Manson. O'Neill knew he couldn't wait any longer. It was time to start putting it all on the page.

putting it all on the page. Across the next decade, O'Neill dug through his research, trying to tie all the threads together. He scoured his interviews and files for the clearest and most direct links between the places, people, and events. Gradually, the book took shape. Even small details from early in O'Neill's investigation now began to fall into place. For instance, one of O'Neill's sources had mentioned something curious about Reeve Whitson, a CIA agent who allegedly was at Sharon Tate's house

on the night of the murders, as well as the morning after. The source told O'Neill that they had heard that Whitson believed there was an operation to destabilize American youth. Could the Tate murders be a part of that operation, the source speculated. At the time, O'Neill thought it sounded like confused paranoia, But with the benefit of more context, he believed there could be truth to it. Whitson may have been involved with the FBI's COINTELPRO, which routinely targeted political dissidents. Whitson had been friends with Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski.

It may have been just a cover for doing surveillance on their circle's liberal political activities. It may have been just a cover for doing surveillance on their circle's liberal political activities. Another Reeve Whitson rumor was that he had told several friends that the murders might have been prevented if his agency had listened to him. O'Neill had dismissed this as the hollow boast of an agent trying to sound more important than he really was. Now, a different theory began to take shape in O'Neill's mind. What if Whitson had actually tried to warn his agency about the threat posed by Manson and his followers, but was ignored? Maybe Manson had simply taken things too far, beyond what the agency had intended. Then, it was too late. Whatever role the CIA played in Manson's evolution, there was no denying law enforcement had let him get away with too much.

After the murders, the L.A. County Sheriff's Department raided Spahn Ranch and arrested members of the Manson family on auto theft charges. They never charged anyone, which Bugliosi attributed to issues with dated arrest warrants. But O'Neill suspected the CIA or FBI might be behind the raid, hoping to provoke Manson into attacking the Black Panthers. And then there was the Haight-Ashbury Free Medical Clinic. The clinic had stayed connected to Manson even after he left San Francisco to set up camp at Spahn Ranch. Dr. David Smith had even sent his assistant to the ranch to study the Manson family's lifestyle.

The assistant said he witnessed and participated in multi-day LSD sessions and even orgies. O'Neill didn't know if this was the CIA's way of keeping tabs on Manson, or if they were trying to prod him in one direction or another. Manson's world was spinning faster and faster in late 1968 and early 69, as more and more people joined his cult. O'Neill had read police reports of interviews with some Manson family hangers-on who mentioned how tense the vibe was getting. Apparently, Manson had grown paranoid that the Black Panthers were planning an attack on Spahn Ranch, so much so that he sent guards into the hills around the property with telescopes and guns to be ready when the Black Panthers made a move. The Malibu Sheriff's Deputy, Preston Guillory, claimed his department was surveilling Spahn Ranch during all this. Was it possible they saw this mania taking hold and did nothing?

Or were they actively encouraging Manson to hit his boiling point? If so, then it was mission accomplished. On August 8, 1969, the experiment officially spun out of control when Manson sent his followers out to wreak havoc and to commit murder for some combination of motives but the motives mattered less than the result the bloody senseless killings marked the end of the 60s and the death of the hippie movement charles manson had done his job without even realizing it without even realizing it. Somewhere, O'Neill thought, Dr. Jolly West was smiling.

In January of 2019, on a cold, clear February evening, O'Neill clinked glasses with his agent. They had met at a beach bar to celebrate the completion of O'Neill's book. Chaos, Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties was slated for publication in June. O'Neill had turned 40 when he started the assignment. Now he was about to turn 60. The book had taken a third of his life. During that time, he was evicted from his apartment and had to get loans from his family to survive.

O'Neill even became an Uber driver to support his investigation. Everyone who had heard about the book was anticipating answers to burning questions like, what actually happened? What was the big reveal? And that's when Tom O'Neill had to take a deep breath. It was like answering a riddle. He presented a significant amount of evidence that challenged the official narrative around the Manson murders. However,

despite 20 years of extensive reporting and investigation, O'Neill didn't feel like he could definitively prove or disprove one specific theory about the government's role in the Manson murders. The one thing O'Neill was able to prove, beyond a reasonable reasonable doubt is that many of the facts presented to the public about the Manson case were simply not true. He believed the prosecution, led by Vincent Bugliosi, deliberately lied and distorted key details. For example, Bugliosi said Manson was motivated by something Manson called Helter Skelter, his apocalyptic vision of triggering a race war. But O'Neill thought Bugliosi exaggerated and embellished the extent to which Helter Skelter was a true driving force behind the crimes. In fact, Bugliosi himself later

admitted to journalists that he didn't believe Manson truly believed in Helter Skelter, but had used it to manipulate his followers. Beyond that, O'Neill explored the possibility that Manson may have been a product of the CIA's MKUltra mind-control experiments. While this was a likely explanation, O'Neill ultimately could not conclusively prove or disprove this theory to his own satisfaction. In the end, O'Neill felt it was important to present all the contradictory evidence he uncovered, but leave readers to draw their own conclusions. But ultimately, he believed other forces were at play beyond Manson's paranoid mind. Overall, O'Neill felt confident that his reporting was thorough and professional. He followed every thread as far as it would go

and admitted when he came up short. He had turned over stones and found people connected to the case who hadn't spoken on the record their entire life. But he knew one man whose blood would have boiled if he read it. Vincent Bugliosi. Bugliosi died four years earlier in 2015. Manson died two years later in 2017. It was the end of an era for the Manson saga. Even though Bugliosi had been hostile towards O'Neill's efforts, O'Neill still felt a bit sorry for him. Bugliosi convicted Manson when he was 36 years old. He spent the next 44 years, in Manson's shadow, completely unable to escape it. O'Neill took a swig of his drink and watched the sun set into the Pacific. He couldn't help but think a similar fate awaited him. O'Neill's book, titled Chaos, was published on June 25th of 2019. It quickly became a New York

Times bestseller. O'Neill had set out to challenge the accepted narrative of the Manson family murders. In the process, he opened a Pandora's box of dark secrets about one of the most complex eras in American history. He had mapped out the way the FBI and the CIA had fought dirty against the hippie movement in the 1960s, resorting to everything from surveillance to harassment to drugs to maintain control over them. The CIA's MKUltra and Chaos, like the FBI's COINTELPRO, were all deeply un-American in their practice, yet designed to defend a fading notion of how the country should be. Into this whirlpool walked Charles Manson. His life somehow became a conduit for everything

happening around him. Whether he was the evil cult leader as depicted in the media, or whether he was a pawn in a bigger game, O'Neill could never definitively prove one way or the other. But his book successfully upended the accepted version of events of one of the most scrutinized crimes of the 20th century. Since the book's publication, O'Neill's perspective has sparked significant debate and controversy about domestic surveillance and governmental abuse of power in the 1960s. As of 2024, Tom O'Neill is writing a second volume of Chaos, following the story even further. Follow Redacted, Declassified Mysteries on the Wondery app, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to every episode of Redacted early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.

Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at wondery.com slash survey. Luke LaManna. A quick note about our stories. We do a lot of research, but some details and scenes are dramatized. We used many different sources for our show, but we especially recommend Chaos, Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the 60s by Tom O'Neill, and the LA Times' in-depth reporting into the Manson family murders. This episode was written by Britt Brown. Sound design by Ryan Potesta. Our producer is Christopher B. Dunn. Our associate producers and researchers are Sarah Vytak, Teja Palakanda, Adam Mellion, and Rafa Faria.

Fact-checking by Sheila Patterson. For Ballin Studios, our head of production is Zach Levitt. Script editing by Scott Allen. Our coordinating producer is Samantha Collins. Production support by Avery Siegel. Produced by me, Luke LaManna. Executive producers are Mr. Ballin and Nick Witters. For Wondery, our head of sound is Marcelino Villapando.

Senior producers are Loredana Palavoda, Dave Schilling, and Rachel Engelman. Senior managing producer is Managing producers are Our executive producers are and Marshall Louis for Wondery.