In conversation with tom o’neill
Sitting down with investigative journalist and author of ‘Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA and the Secret History of the Sixties’, Tom O’Neill.
By Enya McIntyre
Charles Manson is a name known by all and liked by few. For most, this cult leader is a chilling reminder of the hippy movement gone wrong and a series of shocking Hollywood murders.
For others, it’s a far more complicated topic drenched in conspiracy, drugs and secret CIA operations.
My first introduction to the latter came from a Joe Rogan podcast featuring the author and investigative journalist, Tom O’Neill who was on the show discussing the release of his new book ‘Chaos: The Truth Behind the Manson Murders’ and the shocking revelations it included. Immediately, I was hooked.
Conspiracy, murder, covert opeartions .. it had my name all over it and straight into my basket it went.
It just so happened that at this time, I was beginning a case study project for an investigative journalism module I was taking and decided to centre it on ‘Chaos’.
‘Chaos’ is the product of 20 years of investigation, hundreds of documents and interviews and sits at a page count of over 500 so I wasn’t exactly short on information but yet I still found myself coming up with questions I wished I could ask Tom.
One night in November 2020, as I was seated in Glucksman Library in UL (my home away from home), my head reeling from everything I was reading, I decided to take a chance and send Tom an email requesting a Zoom interview with him.
To my great dismay and excitement, he replied a simple “sure, let me know what time works for you” and so on December 3rd 2020, I got to sit down and interview one of my favourite investigative journalists, Tom O’Neill.
To understand the full magnitude of how big this was, you need to know the main details of this complicated investigation and the man that undertook it.
Tom was a reporter at LA Magazine, tasked with completing a “then and now” piece on Hollywood 30 years on from the Manson murders.
It seemed fairly standard; interview some people, flick through some documents, patch it together and voila. However, as Tom began digging, he noticed the official narrative and the accounts he was being told combined with the documents he was uncovering, weren’t adding up and he couldn’t let it go, he had to know more.
The official story went something like this:
On August 8th 1969, a group of four individuals from ‘The Family’ commune; Tex Watson, Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel and Linda Kasabian, drove to Cielo Drive on instruction from their leader, Charles Manson, and brutally murdered Hollywood actress Sharon Tate and her unborn child, as well as her two guests, Wojciech Fryoski and his girlfriend, Abigail Folger, hairstylist, Jay Sebring and 18-year-old, Steven Parent who had been visiting in the neighbourhood.
Two nights later, the same group along with several other members of the commune went on to murder supermarket executive Leno La Bianca and his wife, Rosemary.
Vincent Bugliosi was Los Angeles District Attorney at the time and the frontman who took responsibility for locking Manson up.
The official narrative outlined in Bugliosi’s hit book, Helter Skelter, was that Manson, hallucinating on LSD, had interpreted The Beatles song Helter Skelter as a warning of an apocalyptic race war which prompted him to carry out a killing spree and pin it on The Black Panthers. The reason he chose the Tate household was that previously music producer and son of Doris Day, Terry Melcher had lived there. As he didn’t follow through on his promise of giving Manson a record deal, Manson decided to scare him by killing the current residents of the house he once owned.
August 8th 1969 is remembered as the beginning of the end but in truth, this story began much farther back than that and is much more complicated than just a hippie gone rogue.
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
The only known picture of Manson with The Family. Death Valley, Nov. 1968. Charlie is 4th from left, back row via. chaoscharlesmanson Instagram.
Let’s take it back to 1967.
Charles Manson was released from Terminal Island Prison in Los Angeles and for unknown reasons was granted extreme parole leniency allowing him to relocate to Berkley, San Francisco where he was reassigned a new parole officer, Roger Smith.
This was just the beginning of a longstanding theme of “special treatment” that Manson recieved from authorities.
Smith was a Doctoral Student at Berkley School of Crimonology and involved in the San Francisco Project which was a study on the rehabilitative progress of newly released felons. It was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health which through a Freedom of Information (FOI) request was later proven to be a funding front for CIA mind control experimentation.
Tom O’Neill Court Tv appearance discussing Manson’s relationship with authorities via chaoscharlesmanson
It’s important to note that over a decade before this was the birth of MKULTRA; the infamous CIA mind-control project. It’s main aim was to control people’s behaviour without their knowledge using substances such as LSD or hypnotism so that they could create controlled assassins to be used in war.
At the time Manson was in Berkley, MKULTRA was in full swing and San Francisco was the heart of the operation.
Picture the scene - the sixties. San Francisco (gay pride etc). Opposition for Vietnam War, Black Panther Movement, Peace, love. Musicians having more favour and influence then politicians. Threatened the government
The Haight Ashbury Free Medical Clinic was a critical part of this lifestyle on the West Coast and a regular hangout spot for Manson and his girls. As described by it’s founder, it was a “scene within a scene” where “hippies” could get “free” medical care.
Just how “free” this clinic actually was remains debatable.
Jolly West was one amongst many who occupied office space in the building and recruited subjects for LSD experimentation. West is one of the most intriguing characters in the investigation and even has ties to the Lee Harvey Oswald assassination (assassinator of JFK).
Showing Louis J. ("Jolly") West's participation in the CIA's effort to create mind controlled assassins. These pages, from a June 1953 letter to Sidney Gottlieb, the head of the CIA's MKULTRA program, outline experiments West planned to conduct on "unwilling" subjects via chaoscharlesmanson Instagram.
When Ruby was imprisoned following Oswald’s assassination, West paid him a visit. O’Neill writes in the book that after this Ruby was said to be acting “mad”, talking about Jews on a killing spree and other things.
While scouring through files at UCLA, O’Neill discovered correspondence between West and a “Sherman Grifford”, outlining success in experiments controlling human beings to do as he instructed and replacing real memories with false ones .. sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
Sherman Grifford had earlier been discovered as a code name for the CIA’s Head Mind Control Scientist, Sidney Gottlieb.
What O’Neill had accomplished with this discovery was far greater than a mere chapter in his book. For the first time in official history, evidence had been uncovered to conclude the long suspected Jolly West was in fact involved in MKULTRA.
Furthermore, National Security Archives in DC revealed to O’Neill that later when the agency was forced to disclose MKULTRA to congress, they expurgated the version of West’s papers with no mention of the contents of this correspondence.
CIA had outlined Mkultra to congress as being “unsuccessful” which is a stark contrast to what lies in the correspondence between Gottlieb and West.
Of course, when I spoke with O’Neill, I wanted to know if anything came of the evidence he discovered connecting Jolly West to the CIA; I was shocked to learn there’s an auditorium at UCLA in West’s honour and he is still very much celebrated.
Manson’s unusual ties with authorities didn’t stop there. On August 16th, just days after the murders were committed, the Spahn Ranch where Manson and The Family lived was raided on suspicion of the running of an auto theft ring.
All 27 members and Manson were arrested and released three days later despite guns, underage girls, drugs, stolen bank cards and other things found.
Bugliosi said this was over a technicality: the warrant was misdated and therefore invalid.
However, through access to LASO’s files, O’Neill accessed the warrant and found that it was dated “August 13th”. A warrant lasts ten days. The raid was on August 16th, so Bugliosi’s excuse doesn’t add up.
The warrant also stated that the police were aware of Manson’s parole status so why was he not locked up again?
Preston Guillery was a member of LASO at this time and said to O’Neill LASO instructed them to take surveillance and memos of the ranch in the months before the murders.
They were told “make no arrests, take no police action toward Manson or his followers”.
They even went as far as ignoring a rape by Manson.
After the Tate murders, Guillery became a whistleblower and went to the media with what he knew. He was soon fired and a smear campaign began accusing him of being a drug addict and leftist.
Evidence of surveillance taken of Manson in the LASO Archives via. chaoscharlesmanson Instagram
This was a common defence tactic used by the CIA; the media were a valuable tool for them and used to push certain narratives. In a Congressional Investigation, the CIA admitted to having over 250 assets in the media over the course of the 1960’s.
One of these recruits is believed to have been Lawrence Schiller. Schiller wrote the first book attacking conspiracy theories on JFK assassination and got the only recorded confession from Jack Ruby saying him killing Oswald had nothing to do with a government conspiracy.
It’s also worth noting Schiller was a good friend of Bugliosi and was actually involved in a book of his at the time of the murders.
Schiller was appointed as the ghostwriter for Susan Atkin’s Los Angeles Times Story .. and yes, you heard me right; Atkins was permitted and encouraged to write a first hand account of the murders for publication.
When questioned on Newsweek about how he got so close to the star witness, Schiller said, “let’s say this, the prosecution didn’t put up any obstacles”.
Not only was the mere existence of this story bizarre but so were the chain of events leading up to it.
Atkins was a crucial component in the indictment of Manson and the other members of The Family. She was arrested on other charges at the time and the hope was that by cutting her a deal for a minimised sentence, she would agree to testify against The Family.
A lot depended on her attorney, Gerald Condon liking the deal. It turned out this wouldn’t be an issue as only a matter of days in, Condon was replaced by Caballero on orders by the District Attorney’s Office.
O’Neill spoke with Condon who told him neither he nor Atkins approved of this change. In addition to this, LASO archive notes from the DA meeting show no reason for the change.
A snippet from my interview with O’Neill.
This is the first amongst many red flags in the trial. The District Attorney’s (Vincent Bugliosi) job is to represent the interests of the state which were in direct contrast to the opponent, Atkins.
Guilt or innocence is irrelevant, everyone is entitled to a fair trial and this is something Susan Atkins was denied from the beginning when the DA went above the law to interfere with her legal counsel.
In my interview with Tom, he touched on this saying, “people were so blinded by the circus like actions of the trial and the Manson family which I believe was calculated by the people manipulating The Family, to distract from what’s actually happening here legally”.
“I mean if people knew the attorney had been switched by the prosecutor and judge without Atkins knowledge or attorney, that would have caused a mistrial but nobody looked into it until now”, said O’Neill.
If you know anything about the legal system, you will understand that the job of an attorney is to represent their clients best interests. “Don’t say anything” is the phrase we so repeatedly hear uttered between attorneys and their clients.
In the Susan Atkins case, Caballero’s phrase seemed to be, “write a 6,500 word first hand account detailing your part in this brutal murder and we’ll publish it in the Los Angeles Times for thousands upon thousands to read”.
This not only violated Atkin’s right to proper counsel but it also completely disregarded the gag order on the case, for which Caballero faced no retribution.
Manson was granted permission to become his own lawyer, meaning he could meet with members of The Family as “witnesses.”
Caballero approved of Atkins meeting Manson, essentially allowing his client to meet her cult leader; a direct contrast to her best interests.
After this, Atkins recanted her testimony meaning her deal was off. She also fired Caballero.
That same day, Judge Keene told Manson he could no longer represent himself.
Coincidence, or had they fulfilled their purpose? Manson and all members of The Family had been indicted at this point anyway so Atkins was no longer needed.
The trial went ahead, Manson and The Family were prosecuted and Bugliosi and all other law enforcement involved received great praise and credit for putting these murderous hippies behind bars.
Now that you are aware of some of the key points of this investigation, it’s easy to understand why I fell so hard for this book and the incredible work of this journalist.
As a budding journalist with a great passion for the truth , it was such an honour to be able to sit down and speak with the man himself.
To begin with, I wanted to know more about the; how? How did O’Neill manage to conduct this widescale investigation with such an array of interviews and documents?
“It was easy finding out where to look, the problem was getting access because it was a lot of law enforcement and government agency files so I either did the FOIA process which 9/10 times you don’t get anywhere with the state agencies like that, the same goes for police office, sheriffs, DA”.
So when I realised that wasn’t working I started contacting retired people who had worked for the agencies to see if they had kept stuff”, says O’Neill.
As a young journalist, whose worked on stories nowhere near O’Neill’s scale, even I can vouch for the difficulties in processing FOI requests.
However, what O’Neill did next is something, truthfully I wasn’t even aware was a viable (or legal) option; asking retired state officials for copies of their files.
“It took me 5 years or more to persuade the retired homicide detective who was the head homicide cop on the Tate murders to finally let me look at his files that he had kept. Also with the sheriffs department it took about a year or two years to get a sheriff to make a phonecall to one of their retired colleagues who ran the archive which was basically just a big warehouse where the sheriffs academy was and he let me in the backdoor to look at their files on Manson”, O’Neill recalls.
“You have to just keep going back to the source again and again. Otherwise, if I didn’t have the documents I never really would have had the evidence”.
Tom O’Neill pictured working in his office via. chaoscharlesmanson Instagram.
He told me about his conversations with Manson in the early 2000’s, describing them as “contentious” and far from fruitful.
One thing I was anxious to ask him about was whether or not the release of the book had prompted people to reach out with new information and fresh leads to emerge.
“I’ve gotten so much good information since the book came out that I’ve found a lot of credible important stuff that I’m following up on now. I’ve never stopped reporting on this”, he said.
Towards the end of ‘Chaos’ there’s mention of the “Tex Watson tapes” which are believed to be 8-20 hours in length and is the first known recorded confession relating to the Tate-LaBianca murders. The recording was made by Watson’s attorney but now remain in the custody of LAPD who refuse to release them.
As O’Neill detailed in our interview, he is eager for these tapes to be released and is currently in talks with Leslie Van Houten’s attorney in relation to this.
Houten was a member of The Family and has been trying for a number of years to be released from prison on parole. In the words of O’Neill, Leslie’s attorney has “embraced” Chaos as it’s findings relating to judicial misconduct could be used to help reopen the case.
In relation to the tapes the thought process is, “if the prosecution have the tapes and are using the information in the tapes against his client, which they are, then as her defence he should have access to them as well”, says O’Neill.
A New Yorker reporter was another individual who took interest in O’Neills work and set to do a long-form op-ed piece looking into some of the most sensational allegations made in the book. However, after 6 months of work; having interviewed countless experts and fact-checking claims which proved Tom’s investigations to be correct, the story was mysteriously pulled. As Tom admits in our interview, it’s hard not to become paranoid by these things.
Nevertheless, all threats and paranoia aside, Tom is still very much hooked on the madness surrounding Manson and even admitted during our interview that when we’d hang up he would be going right back to making calls and digging for more information.
Some may look at this and think, so what did Chaos actually achieve? The official cause or course of history hasn’t changed so what did he achieve that’s so great? The short answer as Tom put it is Chaos’s “goal isn’t to say what did happen - it’s to prove that the official story didn’t”.
At the very least, Tom has established reasonable doubt in the official narrative. He has uncovered hard evidence connecting key players to the CIA, documentation showing unexplained leniency towards Manson, discrepancies in the DA aka Bugliosi’s story, judicial misconduct in the dealings with Atkins and so much more. The amount of evidence pointing towards a different story is insurmountable.
So, if you haven’t read it then get going.