Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties by Tom O’Neill, with Dan Piepe
A journalist’s twenty-year fascination with the Manson murders leads to shocking new revelations about the FBI’s involvement in this riveting reassessment of an infamous case in American history.
Over two grim nights in Los Angeles, the young followers of Charles Manson murdered seven people, including the actress Sharon Tate, then eight months pregnant. With no mercy and seemingly no motive, the Manson Family followed their leader’s every order-their crimes lit a flame of paranoia across the nation, spelling the end of the sixties. Manson became one of history’s most infamous criminals, his name forever attached to an era when charlatans mixed with prodigies, free love was as possible as brainwashing, and utopia-or dystopia-was just an acid trip away.
Twenty years ago, when journalist Tom O’Neill was reporting a magazine piece about the murders, he worried there was nothing new to say. Then he unearthed shocking evidence of a cover-up behind the “official” story, including police carelessness, legal misconduct, and potential surveillance by intelligence agents. When a tense interview with Vincent Bugliosi-prosecutor of the Manson Family, and author of Helter Skelter-turned a friendly source into a nemesis, O’Neill knew he was onto something. But every discovery brought more questions:
Who were Manson’s real friends in Hollywood, and how far would they go to hide their ties?
Why didn’t law enforcement, including Manson’s own parole officer, act on their many chances to stop him?
And how did Manson-an illiterate ex-con-turn a group of peaceful hippies into remorseless killers?
O’Neill’s quest for the truth led him from reclusive celebrities to seasoned spies, from San Francisco’s summer of love to the shadowy sites of the CIA’s mind-control experiments, on a trail rife with shady cover-ups and suspicious coincidences. The product of two decades of reporting, hundreds of new interviews, and dozens of never-before-seen documents from the LAPD, the FBI, and the CIA, CHAOS mounts an argument that could be, according to Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney Steven Kay, strong enough to overturn the verdicts on the Manson murders. This is a book that overturns our understanding of a pivotal time in American history.
I found out about this book because I’m a fan of Candace Owens and her podcast. It’s required summer reading if you listen/watch her show. I put a hold on the book at the library and I had to wait a while. In the meantime I listened to the Helter Skelter audiobook. I’ll be revising my review of Helter Skelter.
So this book is crazy in a scary way. I thought Chaos was a metaphor for the insanity surrounding the murders the Manson Family committed. But it’s more than that. Its meaning is CHAOS - a CIA program. And CHAOS is a better title than COINTELPRO.
There are still mysteries and unanswered questions because of missing or destroyed and redacted documents, etc. What is even the point of a FOIA request if the government is just going to lie, hide and redact information? Like, a FOIA request was submitted so RELEASE THE KRAKEN!
We won’t ever have the full story but we know enough that Manson was an asset to the CIA or FBI, or both. The CIA and FBI run programs to go after Americans they consider dissents, and they aim to control Americans through fear. It’s diabolical.
I still have some questions about the mind control / brain washing program MKULTRA. Under the influence of drugs and mind control people committed horrible atrocities but then didn’t remember doing them. So why did Susan Atkins, Linda Kasabian, and the other Family members remember what they did? Susan Atkins bragged to her cellmate about the Tate murders. Was she programmed to do that?
There are still so many questions and mysteries about how and why they chose their victims. There’s lots of nefarious speculations around the people at the Tate house involving drugs and Terry Melcher. But why the LaBiancas? Why Filippo Tenerelli?
Something that came up in Helter Skelter that I thought would be addressed in Chaos: were “Father John” and “Brother Matthew” from The Process cult really CIA agents? They visited Manson in jail and got him to be silent on certain issues. Tom O’Neill didn’t bring them up and I suspect either because he didn’t know how it fit them into the narrative or he didn’t find enough information about them in his investigations so it wasn’t worth mentioning.
There will always be questions about the true motive behind the murders the Manson Family committed, but it’s certainly not what Bugliosi said it was in Helter Skelter. (Boy did that man perjure himself and he was also a P.O.S. in his personal life.) As one of my favorite quotes stated on page 153- Helter Skelter was “not a motive,” Whiteley said, “but a philosophy.”
My thoughts after listening to Helter Skelter (as well as living through the OJ Trial when I was a young teen) were that local law enforcement, the judges and Manson’s parole officers were either lazy, incompetent, or bleeding heart liberals. Well, in CHAOS it’s abundantly clear they were ordered to be lenient because there was secret government program in effect. Now when I see law enforcement being bad at their job I think it’s on purpose. That there’s a hidden agenda going on.
Overall this was a head spinning and sickening page turner but an important book to read so you open your eyes and stop believing the narrative the media tries to sell you. Before returning the book to the library I bought a copy and transferred all my bookmarks with notes.
5 out of 5 FOIA Requests.
Quotes that stood out to me:
Page 13 - That’s not to say the work was without its twists and turns. I’d gotten in a shouting match with Tom Cruise about Scientology; Gary Shandling had somehow found a way to abandon me during an interview in his own home; and I’d pissed off Alec Baldwin, but who hasn’t?
Page 27 - The consensus from the straight world was that hippies were mostly harmless - but you didn’t want to be one.
Page 126 - The Hollywood community knew that the Beach Boys had been wrapped up in Manson’s world, and it turned them into pariahs, for a time; nightclubs where they’d once been welcomed were suddenly turning them away. “We couldn’t go out because people didn’t want us at their place,” Parks said….”So you’re saying a huge community of people knew before the world did that Charles Manson committed these murders?”
“Yeah.”
Page 153- Helter Skelter was “not a motive,” Whiteley said, “but a philosophy.”
Page 180 - Then he shook his head and, getting into his car, said, “You got Hollywood fluff, like Marilyn Monroe was murdered, that’s what you got. But that’s good. That’s what sells books.”
Page 212 - And so feeling the line between “researcher” and “conspiracy theorist” blurring before me, I hunkered down in the library to read about the many ways our government has deceived us.
Page 234 - If anything, these abuses were so gross that they’ve lent authority to any and every claim against federal intelligence agencies: if the CIA and the FBI are capable of killing American citizens in cold blood, often in elaborate schemes, what aren’t they capable of?
Page 311 - One reason the HAFMC was free, after all, was that David, Roger, and their colleges had received private and federal grants to conduct drug research there. The Smiths were both studying amphetamines and LSD, the latter being the crucial component in Manson’s “reprogramming” process.
Page 321 - Grogan saw through the HAFMC’s mission statement right away:”just because no one was made to pay a fee when they went there, didn’t make it a ‘free clinic,’ ” he wrote. “On the contrary, the patients were treated as ‘research subjects’ and the facility was used to support whatever medical innovations were new and appropriate to the agency.”
Over two grim nights in Los Angeles, the young followers of Charles Manson murdered seven people, including the actress Sharon Tate, then eight months pregnant. With no mercy and seemingly no motive, the Manson Family followed their leader’s every order-their crimes lit a flame of paranoia across the nation, spelling the end of the sixties. Manson became one of history’s most infamous criminals, his name forever attached to an era when charlatans mixed with prodigies, free love was as possible as brainwashing, and utopia-or dystopia-was just an acid trip away.
Twenty years ago, when journalist Tom O’Neill was reporting a magazine piece about the murders, he worried there was nothing new to say. Then he unearthed shocking evidence of a cover-up behind the “official” story, including police carelessness, legal misconduct, and potential surveillance by intelligence agents. When a tense interview with Vincent Bugliosi-prosecutor of the Manson Family, and author of Helter Skelter-turned a friendly source into a nemesis, O’Neill knew he was onto something. But every discovery brought more questions:
Who were Manson’s real friends in Hollywood, and how far would they go to hide their ties?
Why didn’t law enforcement, including Manson’s own parole officer, act on their many chances to stop him?
And how did Manson-an illiterate ex-con-turn a group of peaceful hippies into remorseless killers?
O’Neill’s quest for the truth led him from reclusive celebrities to seasoned spies, from San Francisco’s summer of love to the shadowy sites of the CIA’s mind-control experiments, on a trail rife with shady cover-ups and suspicious coincidences. The product of two decades of reporting, hundreds of new interviews, and dozens of never-before-seen documents from the LAPD, the FBI, and the CIA, CHAOS mounts an argument that could be, according to Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney Steven Kay, strong enough to overturn the verdicts on the Manson murders. This is a book that overturns our understanding of a pivotal time in American history.
I found out about this book because I’m a fan of Candace Owens and her podcast. It’s required summer reading if you listen/watch her show. I put a hold on the book at the library and I had to wait a while. In the meantime I listened to the Helter Skelter audiobook. I’ll be revising my review of Helter Skelter.
So this book is crazy in a scary way. I thought Chaos was a metaphor for the insanity surrounding the murders the Manson Family committed. But it’s more than that. Its meaning is CHAOS - a CIA program. And CHAOS is a better title than COINTELPRO.
There are still mysteries and unanswered questions because of missing or destroyed and redacted documents, etc. What is even the point of a FOIA request if the government is just going to lie, hide and redact information? Like, a FOIA request was submitted so RELEASE THE KRAKEN!
We won’t ever have the full story but we know enough that Manson was an asset to the CIA or FBI, or both. The CIA and FBI run programs to go after Americans they consider dissents, and they aim to control Americans through fear. It’s diabolical.
I still have some questions about the mind control / brain washing program MKULTRA. Under the influence of drugs and mind control people committed horrible atrocities but then didn’t remember doing them. So why did Susan Atkins, Linda Kasabian, and the other Family members remember what they did? Susan Atkins bragged to her cellmate about the Tate murders. Was she programmed to do that?
There are still so many questions and mysteries about how and why they chose their victims. There’s lots of nefarious speculations around the people at the Tate house involving drugs and Terry Melcher. But why the LaBiancas? Why Filippo Tenerelli?
Something that came up in Helter Skelter that I thought would be addressed in Chaos: were “Father John” and “Brother Matthew” from The Process cult really CIA agents? They visited Manson in jail and got him to be silent on certain issues. Tom O’Neill didn’t bring them up and I suspect either because he didn’t know how it fit them into the narrative or he didn’t find enough information about them in his investigations so it wasn’t worth mentioning.
There will always be questions about the true motive behind the murders the Manson Family committed, but it’s certainly not what Bugliosi said it was in Helter Skelter. (Boy did that man perjure himself and he was also a P.O.S. in his personal life.) As one of my favorite quotes stated on page 153- Helter Skelter was “not a motive,” Whiteley said, “but a philosophy.”
My thoughts after listening to Helter Skelter (as well as living through the OJ Trial when I was a young teen) were that local law enforcement, the judges and Manson’s parole officers were either lazy, incompetent, or bleeding heart liberals. Well, in CHAOS it’s abundantly clear they were ordered to be lenient because there was secret government program in effect. Now when I see law enforcement being bad at their job I think it’s on purpose. That there’s a hidden agenda going on.
Overall this was a head spinning and sickening page turner but an important book to read so you open your eyes and stop believing the narrative the media tries to sell you. Before returning the book to the library I bought a copy and transferred all my bookmarks with notes.
5 out of 5 FOIA Requests.
Quotes that stood out to me:
Page 13 - That’s not to say the work was without its twists and turns. I’d gotten in a shouting match with Tom Cruise about Scientology; Gary Shandling had somehow found a way to abandon me during an interview in his own home; and I’d pissed off Alec Baldwin, but who hasn’t?
Page 27 - The consensus from the straight world was that hippies were mostly harmless - but you didn’t want to be one.
Page 126 - The Hollywood community knew that the Beach Boys had been wrapped up in Manson’s world, and it turned them into pariahs, for a time; nightclubs where they’d once been welcomed were suddenly turning them away. “We couldn’t go out because people didn’t want us at their place,” Parks said….”So you’re saying a huge community of people knew before the world did that Charles Manson committed these murders?”
“Yeah.”
Page 153- Helter Skelter was “not a motive,” Whiteley said, “but a philosophy.”
Page 180 - Then he shook his head and, getting into his car, said, “You got Hollywood fluff, like Marilyn Monroe was murdered, that’s what you got. But that’s good. That’s what sells books.”
Page 212 - And so feeling the line between “researcher” and “conspiracy theorist” blurring before me, I hunkered down in the library to read about the many ways our government has deceived us.
Page 234 - If anything, these abuses were so gross that they’ve lent authority to any and every claim against federal intelligence agencies: if the CIA and the FBI are capable of killing American citizens in cold blood, often in elaborate schemes, what aren’t they capable of?
Page 311 - One reason the HAFMC was free, after all, was that David, Roger, and their colleges had received private and federal grants to conduct drug research there. The Smiths were both studying amphetamines and LSD, the latter being the crucial component in Manson’s “reprogramming” process.
Page 321 - Grogan saw through the HAFMC’s mission statement right away:”just because no one was made to pay a fee when they went there, didn’t make it a ‘free clinic,’ ” he wrote. “On the contrary, the patients were treated as ‘research subjects’ and the facility was used to support whatever medical innovations were new and appropriate to the agency.”