68 Studies in Intelligence Vol 65, No. 3 (Extracts, September 2021)
born for the new millennium." O'Neill reaches a similar
conclusion, which brings us to the main point, which is
the CIA's alleged role.
If, as Gitlin suggests, Manson embodied for most
Americans the darkness hard wired in the counterculture,
then how did the US government benefit? O'Neill delves
into the FBI's COINTELPRO and CIA's CHAOS, domes-
tic surveillance programs designed to infiltrate, discredit,
and neutralize civil rights, student, and anti-war organi-
zations that first Lyndon Johnson and then Richard Nixon
regarded as subversive. These programs, which in the
case of CIA violated its charter, were ultimately exposed
and triggered congressional hearings in the mid-1970s, in
which the Intelligence Community was held to account.
And this is where O'Neill ultimately falls short.
Despite what his title implies, he cannot document any
compelling link between these programs and Manson.
This was not for lack of effort. Extensive research and a
slew of FOIA requests did not produce a smoking gun or
much beyond the shadowy, ill-explained presence around
these events of Reeve Whitson, an alleged "intelligence
operative." O'Neill also examines the CIA program
MKULTRA, which may have gotten him closer to his
goal—but not much. Conceived by Richard Helms and
authorized by Allen Dulles in 1953, MKULTRA studied
mind control, one possible path to which was hallucino-
genic drugs.
The standard histories of the subject indicate that the
CIA, through MKULTRA, spent considerable effort to
understand the use and effects of LSD and other sub-
stances, and contracted with a number of researchers
to that end. One was Dr. Louis Jolyon West, who is the
closest O'Neill gets to tying Manson to the CIA. West,
purportedly at the behest of the agency, opened an office
in San Francisco, the purpose of which was "studying the
hippies in their native habitat", Haight Ashbury. Manson
had, at the same time, been a denizen of the Haight before
moving the "Family" to Los Angeles, and he liberally
dosed his followers with LSD, which was one of his tools
for bending them to his will. Indeed, defense attorneys
unsuccessfully attempted to use this as a mitigating factor
during the trial.
While O'Neill not unreasonably asks how a barely
educated criminal like Manson could use sophisticated
methods to control his "Family," he cannot link Manson
to Dr. West. There is no evidence the two ever met, or
that Manson was—in what O'Neill admits is the most
"far-out" theory—the product of "an MKULTRA effort to
create assassins who would kill on command." (430) His
own conclusions about CHAOS—which are less relevant
to his theory of the case than MKULTRA—are dubious.
He describes a program that kept tabs on 300,000 people,
sharing intelligence with FBI, the Department of Justice,
and the White House, but he then claims it was so
well-hidden within CIA that "even those at the top of its
counterintelligence division were clueless." (233). And
yet, when the program was exposed and Director William
Colby admitted its existence, James Angleton, the long-
time head of counterintelligence and presumably no
stranger to such efforts, was the official who resigned.
O'Neill also makes the occasional odd statement. One
example will illustrate the point. In untangling the web of
connections surrounding the Manson case, O'Neill links
one figure to former Air Force Chief of Staff General
Curtis E. LeMay, who, he writes, "tried to organize a
coup against Kennedy among the Joint Chiefs of Staff"
during the Cuban Missile Crisis (83). This was news, as
the standard Cold War history fails to mention it, as does
LeMay's biographer. LeMay did forcefully advocate
for military action against the missile sites—and he was
famously satirized in Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove—
but a coup? Presumably if his advocacy had reached even
the level of significant insubordination Kennedy would
have removed him. There was, after all, precedent for
doing so.
O'Neill's narrative is never uninteresting. His research
has raised legitimate questions about the investigation and
prosecution of these notorious crimes, and the actions of
a number of people, from the district attorney's office to
the sheriff's department; from the associates and relatives
of the victims to the perpetrators. However compelling his
determination to follow every last thread, O'Neill has not
written a "secret history" of the 1960s, unless the secrets
are those certain individuals wished to keep for their own
reasons. The author cannot definitively tie Manson to
MKULTRA or CHAOS; he can only imply it on circum-
stantial evidence. At least, in the end, he has the grace to
acknowledge it.
v v v
The reviewer: Leslie C. is a CIA operations officer.
Chaos