Jon Atack takes issue with new theory about Charles Manson that ignores Scientology
Tony Ortega Undergrund Bunker
Charles Manson and his ‘Family’ will always stir up fascination, because of the horrifying brutality of the slayings in Los Angeles in 1969, and the mythology that has been so dexterously spun around them.
Manson was the pied piper who brainwashed runaway girls in his orgiastic, drug-crazed sex cult and then loosed them on a rampage of murder in the attempt to begin a race war in the US. A war named for The Beatles’ song Helter-Skelter, which would also be the title of the book that made prosecuting attorney Vincent Bugliosi rich.
That narrative took a beating when Tom O’Neill’s book CHAOS: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties came out in 2019. The prestigious Times Literary Supplement dubbed it a ‘masterpiece’ and the book sold like hot cakes.
I eagerly checked the book’s index for ‘Scientology,’ to see what O’Neill had added to the secret internal Scientology files in my collection. I knew Manson had been deeply involved with the famous mind control training. Finding not a single mention of Scientology, I looked then for a reference to Manson’s autobiography, Without Conscience. There were only two paragraphs, and they related to a pair of spectacles left at the Sharon Tate crime scene. O’Neill ignored the autobiography’s numerous references to Scientology. In his 200-page account, Manson himself said that he had been ‘heavily into dianetics and scientology.’ At that point I put O’Neill’s book aside without reading any further.
After a recent video chat, YouTuber Eric Hunley, referring to O’Neill’s book, asked if I knew that my late friend Jolly West had programmed the Manson Family. I was aghast. In my experience, Jolly was a friendly, compassionate, and helpful man. Not the sort of person who would systematically create mayhem and murder.
When we first met in 1988 Professor Louis Jolyon ‘Jolly’ West, MD, was the head of the department of neuroscience and biobehavior at UCLA Medical School. We were not close, but we met four times over the next few years, and spent hours talking each time. On our second meeting, his assistant told me he kept two books on his desk – the Bible and my Piece of Blue Sky. She said he would read a few paragraphs whenever he took a break. It cheered him to see that the history of this group which had caused him so much trouble had finally been printed.
Jolly had been an out-spoken critic of Scientology for almost forty years by this time. He had fought off several suits filed against him by Scientology. In a speech to the American Psychiatric Association, he once said, ‘I would like to advise my colleagues that I consider Scientology a cult and L. Ron Hubbard a quack and a fake. I wasn’t about to let them intimidate me.’ He threw down the gauntlet. After sixteen unrelenting years of my own harassment by Scientologists, I can assure you that this was a brave stance.
Jolly was an important speaker at Cult Awareness Network and American Family Foundation conferences. I have a recording of an excellent history of hypnotism from one CAN conference. Unlike most in his profession, Jolly recognised the value of hypnotism, a practice that has seen a resurgence in the decades since his death in 1999. Jolly determinedly shared sound information about hypnotism and the potential dangers of hypnotic states at a time when academia smirked at the subject (by the 1970s, only six out of ninety US university courses on psychology included any mention of it). By demonstrating hypnotism, he helped many, many people to avoid control through exploitative persuasion or ‘mind control.’ Hardly the psychopath portrayed by O’Neill, because by definition, psychopaths have no desire to help others.
Jolly was a polymath and one of the most intelligent and well-informed people I’ve ever met. Our last meeting was in London. He was en route to a celebration of the work of Patrick O’Brian, author of the Master and Commander novels. Jolly was invited to speak about the accuracy of O’Brian’s descriptions of surgery during the Napoleonic Wars. One of many subjects on which he was expert.
Jolly’s research into drugs was well known, especially through the death of the elephant Tusko during the crazy period when LSD was used in experiments on both human and animal subjects by hundreds of researchers around the world (I long ago interviewed an English psychiatrist who had given LSD to an eight-year-old child. It was a time of innocence and stupidity, when hallucinogens were handed out like candy).
When I was invited to apply for a doctoral degree for A Piece of Blue Sky by Aarhus University, Jolly was quick to write a fulsome letter of support. He not only stood up to Scientology and other authoritarian sects, but was also active with Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in the civil rights movement. Another potentially dangerous pursuit. I was surprised when Tom O’Neill said a former colleague had labelled Jolly ‘the only benevolent psychopath I ever met.’ Psychopaths are not likely to take up good causes. Jolly had put himself in the firing line with both cults and the at times murderous enemies of civil rights. O’Neill also tells us that for forty years Jolly was ‘vehemently against capital punishment,’ an unlikely position for a true psychopath.
In CHAOS, O’Neill argues that for twenty years Jolly West was a principal investigator for the CIA’s deplorable MKULTRA mind control programs. As O’Neill says, there were 149 separate ‘experiments’ carried out under the aegis of MKULTRA during that period. He goes on to say that ‘Surviving records name eighty institutions, including forty-four universities and colleges, and 185 researchers…’
O’Neill cites a 1977 New York Times article, which tells us that MKULTRA was ‘a secret twenty-five year, twenty-five million dollar effort by the CIA to learn how to control the human mind.’ Most accounts agree that the program flopped (Naomi Klein takes an interesting contrary position that is highly relevant; but not to our discussion).
In an interview with Eric Hunley, Tom O’Neill says that Jolly West was ‘the MKULTRA psychiatrist who I’ve uncovered documents showing that he was a pivotal part of the MKULTRA program for twenty years, and he practically wrote the blueprint for it with Sydney Gottlieb…’ This is a monumental claim based upon a handful of circumstantial evidence.
O’Neill does admit his personal disdain for Jolly during their only conversation, where he says Jolly ‘droned on for so long I cut the interview short.’ I never knew Jolly to ‘drone on.’ He was one of the most fascinating conversationalists I’ve ever met. O’Neill tells us that ‘West became my white whale.’ It’s a telling remark, because this makes O’Neill the fervently obsessed Captain Ahab of Melville’s great novel (‘a grand, ungodly, god-like man’). Ahab goes to his death to destroy the white whale in revenge for it taking his leg off. Of course, in the novel – spoiler alert – Captain Ahab goes down lassoed to the whale. I hope the same will not be true for Tom O’Neill. He has done remarkable research, so a follow-up book on the Scientology connection might well save him.
O’Neill’s obsession with Jolly is compounded by several statements, peppered throughout his 400-page book. He wants us to believe that Jolly West programmed Manson, but says, ‘I could never prove that he’d [West] examined Manson himself – or that they’d ever met.’
He makes this overblown statement: ‘As a self-styled brainwashing expert, he’d [West] been present whenever mind control reared its ugly head in American culture. Murders, assassinations, kidnappings, cults, prisoners of war – his fingerprints were on all of them.’ All of them? Thousands of people were subjected to Bluebird, MKULTRA, MKNAOMI. West could not possibly have ‘been present’ in every case, and O’Neill gives us no shred of evidence of involvement in any vicious act on Jolly’s part, let alone ‘murders’ or ‘assassination’.
Further, O’Neill tells us, ‘I didn’t have a smoking gun … I worried I never would … I could poke a thousand holes in the story [of the killings], but I couldn’t say what really happened. In fact, the major arms of my research were often in contradiction with one another. … to imagine state, local and federal law enforcement cooperating in perfect harmony, with the courts backing them up – it made no sense. What I’d uncovered was something closer to an improvised, shambolic effort to contain the sequence of events without tripping on something. I was a lousy conspiracy theorist … because I wanted nothing left to the realm of the theoretical.’
In the end, however, almost everything is left in ‘the realm of the theoretical.’ And ‘an improvised, shambolic effort to contain the sequence of events without tripping on something’ comes very close to Manson’s own account.
O’Neill continues in the same vein, ‘My theory that Manson and West were linked was tenuous, circumstantial, lying solely in the fact that they’d walked the same corridors of the same clinic. Wouldn’t it be more effective to argue that the entire prosecution of Manson was a sham, with Helter Skelter as a cover-up? … Maybe Jolly West didn’t even belong in the book.’
O’Neill then goes with what he himself calls the ‘most “far out” theory,’ which is ‘that Manson was tied to an MKULTRA effort to create assassins who would kill on command.’ I’m dissatisfied that sufficient evidence is provided to draw this conclusion. Or indeed, any evidence. It doesn’t reach the ‘realm of the theoretical’ because it is actually hypothetical rather than theoretical. It remains an untested, unproven hypothesis, a ‘theory’ requires evidence.
O’Neill believes that Jolly had ‘claimed to have achieved the impossible’ that ‘he knew how to replace “true memories” with “false ones” in human beings without their knowledge.’ Yet, bringing people to manufacture false memories is an everyday experience. Most people who have undergone ‘past life regression’ (a favourite technique in Scientology) have readily created memories that they will believe to be real, although they can provide no evidence (such memories would include the language spoken by them at the time. No medieval French has been recovered from supposed reincarnated survivors of Agincourt nor any other instance, despite myriad hours of Scientology ‘processing’). One formerly very high-ranking, long-term Scientologist told me she’d seen about two hundred believers reporting that they had been Jesus. At least 199 were mistaken. UK mentalist Derren Brown has induced false memories (and beliefs) during his TV shows within minutes. Elizabeth Loftus spent a career studying the induction of false memories. It is far from ‘impossible.’ In his 1961 study of returnees from Chinese Thought Reform Camps, Robert Jay Lifton calls the change of memory ‘ideology over experience’ or ‘doctrine over person’ where the individual replaces a memory with the group’s description of events.
O’Neill does show that Jolly West had contact with the head of the dreadful MKULTRA program, Sydney Gottlieb. The two corresponded in the 1950s, but Gottlieb used an assumed name (Sherman Grifford). O’Neill does not prove that West was aware that the correspondent was Gottlieb.
As O’Neill says, CHAOS, another CIA program, was so secret that when William Colby was appointed director of the CIA, he wasn’t told of its existence. This secrecy extended to the funding of the 149 projects in MKULTRA. A host of front groups were created through which monies could be channelled. These included ‘Chemrophyl Associates’ – the letterhead for ‘Sherman Grifford’ in his correspondence to Jolly West. It is possible and indeed highly likely that Jolly West did indeed receive funding indirectly from the CIA, however, we need to put the CIA’s research projects into context.
The CIA represented the US government. While its activities were deplorable, immoral, and illegal — and its members deserved to be incarcerated in mental asylums or prisons — it nonetheless represented a legitimate government and was considered to be ‘making the world safe for democracy’ until the early 1970s, when Victor Marchetti pierced the veil of silence.
In his study, Science of Coercion, Communication Research & Psychological Warfare 1945-1960, Professor Christopher Simpson found that over 90 percent of psychological research in the US in the two decades after the war was sponsored by the military: “Military, intelligence, and propaganda agencies such as the Department of Defense and Central Intelligence Agency helped to bankroll substantially all of the post-World War II generation’s research into techniques of persuasion, opinion measurement, interrogation, political and military mobilization, propagation of ideology, and related questions. The persuasion studies, in particular, provided much of the scientific underpinning for modern advertising and motivational techniques. This government-financed communication research went well beyond what would have been possible with private sector money alone and often exploited military recruits, who comprised a unique pool of test subjects.” Which is not to say that the research was morally proper. The various foundations created as fronts were to prevent researchers from knowing the source of their funds.
The only possible connection that O’Neill can make is that Jolly West used a ‘crash pad’ in Haight Ashbury in 1967 to monitor the effects of LSD on hippies who were invited to trip there. Some of those hippies were referred by the Haight Ashbury Free Clinic which Manson attended. End of connection. That’s everything O’Neill has about the relationship between Jolly West and Charles Manson.
O’Neill would have us believe that Jolly West manipulated Manson for two years. He cannot show that they communicated in any way. He does not track any coincidence in their movements during that two years either.
The methods of manipulation are also given scant attention. O’Neill tells us that ‘Manson … had used LSD to collect and reprogram his followers.’ But he also reports Jolly West’s conclusion that ‘Acid … made people more difficult to hypnotize: it was better to pair hypnosis with long bouts of isolation and sleep deprivation.’ He adds to this Dr Eugene Schofield’s assertion that ‘LSD produced disorganized behavior, not violent behavior.’ This is supported by the literature. LSD would not be useful in creating programmed murderers – Manchurian candidates – because it has unpredictable effects. The CIA’s attempt to program students and soldiers with LSD failed. It disorientated rather than increasing obedience. They could find no effective way to distribute it to enemy soldiers and, after thousands of tests, LSD was abandoned as a chemical weapon.
If O’Neill had paid attention to Manson’s Without Conscience, he would have found references to the drug most likely to have caused the psychotic behaviour of the Manson gang. O’Neill makes no mention of that drug.
Tex Watson participated in both the Tate and the LaBianca murders. He and Manson both refer to a drug they call ‘talatche tea.’ By strange happenstance, at a meeting between us and Jolly West, my friend and colleague Steven Hassan asked Jolly what drug he thought had influenced the Manson Family. Extremely knowledgeable about drugs, without hesitation, Jolly said, ‘jimson weed.’
In Without Conscience, Manson says one ‘Indian Joe’ brought Family member Brenda ‘belladonna’ plants. The roots were boiled to make ‘talatche tea’ by her. Tex ‘picked up a large root and started scarfing it like he was eating an apple. Before the full effect hit him, Tex caught a ride into town. I wasn’t in the kitchen, nor did I know what was going on … I think it was the last time before the trials I saw Tex in what might be called his right mind.’ Manson says that Tex Watson took both ‘talatche’ and LSD before setting off on the Tate murders.
After reviewing O’Neill’s and Manson’s books, I contacted an ethnobotanist, who very kindly explained that Manson and Watson had misspelled toloache, which is indeed jimson weed or datura. Here is his report: 
‘Datura is common wild to the southwestern US and the Sonoran desert. It is sometimes called thorn apple, which refers to the thorny seed pods. It is also known as devil’s weed or hell’s bells. Once you know what to look for you can spot them all over. Manson and crew would have had ready access to datura around Spahn Ranch and the Simi Hills. It’s pretty easy to get into mischief with datura. It’s free and broadly distributed and will get you loaded, though at a potentially horrific cost. Datura has alluring trumpet-shaped blossoms. In the US West you will find abundant datura, also known as jimson weed or locoweed. All parts of the plant contain the highly toxic tropane alkaloids atropine, scopolamine, and hyoscyamine. The plant is easily located along roads, and is a source of poisoning for both people and animals. The tropane alkaloids are potent medicines in broad pharmaceutical use today. The effects of toloache’ vary greatly according to how you take it. If you make a tea, then it is a very risky business.
‘A mild datura tea may produce somewhat pleasant and dreamy effects, but a stronger tea will be a whole other bad thing. Visions on datura tend to be dark, crazy, evil, gravely disturbing. Most people become distraught and will not take a strong dose twice. It’s the definition of a bad trip. And if the tea is too strong, then you ride a gurney into that big hotel for dead souls. Thousands have died consuming datura in various forms. The seeds of datura may be ground finely and used as a poison or to intoxicate others such that they become open to suggestion. This is currently a known practice among robbers in Colombia. Finely ground seeds are blown into people’s faces, they inhale the powder, and become malleable and empty their ATM’s to robbers. The powdered seeds are also put into drinks, rendering the unsuspecting incapacitated and easy to rob. The Thuggee cult of India, from which we derive the word thug, used datura preparations regularly to kill and rob. It’s a very powerful poison, fast acting, associated with the goddess Kali.’
Datura belongs in a stronger class of drugs than LSD. It is a ‘deleriant’: due to its primary effect of causing delirium, as opposed to the more lucid and less disturbed states produced by other hallucinogens.
Manson said, ‘I still don’t believe any of the violence would have erupted if we had controlled the drugs instead of letting them control us.’ It isn’t possible to control datura. It turns the whole world into a hallucination, a living nightmare.
We come – at last – to Manson’s involvement with Scientology. In his interview with Eric Hunley – but nowhere in his book – is O’Neill’s single statement about the influence Scientology might have had on Manson: ‘The official narrative is that he audited or was audited for about a hundred hours and absorbed a lot of the techniques, a lot of the language of this ‘religion’ and then walked away from it, but a lot of it stayed, you know, stuff about ego and … all this word play. The question is, was there more to that? … Scientology had been infiltrated by federal agents too, who were using it to accomplish things. And there’s an interesting character who was the one who taught Manson Scientology, who later represented Squeaky Fromm after the assassination attempt of Gerald Ford … in ’75 … Lanier Ramer … Bruce Davis … was suspected in a couple of other murders, including two Scientology teenagers in LA in November of ’69’.
I’d love to see information about this use by federal agents of Scientology. The only time I’ve heard it before was back in 1983 from Hubbard’s ‘Second Deputy Commodore’ Captain Bill Robertson, who assured me that Scientology had been taken over by the FBI as part of the alien invasion of Earth which was already underway with two hundred thousand Marcabians in Switzerland under the cover of Transcendental Meditation and the Freemasons. The occasional infiltrator from the intelligence community perhaps, but agents working to ‘accomplish’ something using Scientology? That’s new to me.
While I was working on this piece, Steven Hassan, PhD, wrote a column for Psychology Today about the parole request for Manson Family member Leslie Van Houten. To our surprise, Psychology Today pulled the reference to Manson’s Scientology experience. You can see Steve’s response and my email to the timorous magazine here. The expurgated Psychology Today article is here.
Scientology relied on a 1971 Guardian newspaper article where the allegation of Manson’s involvement was withdrawn after litigation. This disingenuous tactic conceals Scientology’s certain knowledge that Manson received about 150 hours of dianetic and scientology ‘processing’ from his cell mate Lanier Ramer over a fourteen-month period at McNeil Island penitentiary beginning in 1962. Files seized by the FBI show that Scientology tried to suppress any mention of this involvement. I brought it up in the original edition of Let’s Sell These People a Piece of Blue Sky back in 1990. Scientology made no attempt to sue me over the claim, despite launching suits against the book in both New York and London.
One of the seized internal Scientology Guardian’s Office documents is headed ‘Re: Our disinformation action on the Process re Manson.’ The Process was a Scientology splinter group that caused Scientology a headache when it was alleged that Manson had been involved with it. Deliberate ‘disinformation’ has been a usual tactic for Scientology for decades, to ‘find or manufacture enough threat … to cause them to sue for peace … Don’t ever defend. Always attack,’ in Ron Hubbard’s words. The key word is ‘manufacture.’
In 1979, Mary Sue Hubbard, Hubbard’s wife and Controller of the Guardian’s Office, was sentenced to five years imprisonment for a long list of crimes including kidnapping, false imprisonment, theft, bugging and burglary. She oversaw the Manson cover-up, which was part of ‘Operation Rawhide.’
Manson was apprehended for the Tate-LaBianca killings in October 1969. On 22 June 1970, a full month before his trial began, a ‘compliance report’ concerning Manson and Family member Bruce Davis was sent to Mary Sue Hubbard. It detailed Manson’s ‘approximately 150 hours of auditing’ and his practice of Training Routine 0 (TR-0) with cell mate Lanier Ramer (a drill that is done for ‘some hours’ according to Hubbard’s instructional bulletin).
The report adds that ‘for a time,’ Manson would ‘talk about nothing but Scientology to the extent that people avoided his company.’ Later, he was ‘screaming to get away from his auditor.’ (In the opinion of the report’s author, Manson had been run for too long – or ‘over-run’ – on a ‘process’). This report also says that Leslie Van Houten was ‘interested’ in Scientology. Elsewhere, there is mention of Sandra Good, another Family member, also having an interest in Scientology. Four of the key players in the Manson story had an involvement in a sophisticated system of thought reform.
As part of Mary Sue Hubbard’s ‘disinformation’ campaign, the Guardian’s Office had Lanier Ramer sign an affidavit to the effect that he was not a Scientology ‘minister,’ saying ‘I have at no time held nor claimed any licensed, certified, official, or employee position within any Church of Scientology.’ He seems to have been a very dedicated Scientologist, however. A Scientology timeline of Ramer says that he ‘supposedly told Riverside PD that he robbed the bank in order to get money for Scn. courses.’ (‘Scn’ here means ‘Scientology.’)
There is no secret that Scientology is an indoctrination in control techniques. Hubbard called this ‘infinite control’ or ‘8C’ (Hubbard often used the number 8 in place of the infinity symbol: ∞). There are many Scientology drills and processes that are supposed to lead to ‘8C’ or ‘Tone 40’ control. The manipulation of others’ emotions is part of the basic drilling of all Scientologists.
Manson describes his time in the Gibault Catholic Boys Home from the age of twelve, saying ‘being under five feet tall and weighing less than sixty-five pounds … I was easy pickings for the bullies.’ He spent most of the next fifteen years in institutions being picked on by the bullies. Then he was initiated into the control methods of Scientology – including the famous thousand-mile ‘TR-0’ stare that he and other Scientologists are commonly associated with.
We do not know the extent to which Scientology training was a part of Manson’s authority over the Family, but it should surely find a place in any analysis of his behaviour. It is likely that he passed on other elements of Scientology belief to his followers – as may the other three Scientologists in the Family. He certainly shared Scientology’s core belief in reincarnation. Perhaps he taught Training Routines to members of the gang too. As these constitute the first step of Scientology indoctrination, it is likely that Bruce Davis, Leslie Van Houten and Sandra Good were already acquainted with what cult expert Steven Hassan has called ‘the most overt use of hypnosis by any cult group.’
Manson himself said that in 1962 in prison, where he had just learned to read: ‘I studied hypnotism and psychiatry. I found whatever books I could find (and understand) that dealt with mind development. A cell partner turned me on to scientology. With him and another guy I got pretty heavily into dianetics and scientology. Through this and my other studies, I came out of my state of depression. I was understanding myself better, had a positive outlook on life, and knew how to direct my energies to each day and each task. I had more confidence in myself and went the way I chose to go, whereas previously, I had always been content to listen and follow.’ If only Scientology hadn’t bolstered Manson’s confidence.
Scientology is the most elaborate and perhaps the most successful system of behaviour modification ever devised. Fervent Scientologists have included NASA scientists, theoretical physicists, high-power trial attorneys, politicians, sociologists, medical doctors – even one psychiatrist – and, of course, many famous actors, composers and musicians. Hubbard rarely told the truth, but when he said of Scientology, ‘We have ways of making slaves here’ and ‘We can brainwash faster than the Russians,’ he was offering his honest opinion. If Manson made slaves, if Manson brainwashed his followers, we must look to his time in Scientology and carefully consider its significance.
O’Neill spent twenty years researching CHAOS. He added a great deal of information to the record but as he tells us about one potential interview, ‘I was overthinking everything, and then overthinking my overthinking.’ The book is drenched in speculation. While O’Neill does put to rest the corrupt prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi’s myth of ‘Helter Skelter,’ he replaces it with a far more elaborate and fanciful idea: that the Manson gang’s murders were the consequence of ‘programming’ by Jolly West. He tells us nothing about this programming process.
I’ve spent a lifetime investigating the methods of brainwashing, mind control, thought reform, coercive control – call it what you will – and it is vital to have details of any such program; the often incremental steps. The frightening documentary Manson: The Lost Tapes was not available to O’Neill. It shows remaining ‘Family’ members only days after Manson’s arrest and the later testimony of the girls then filmed is a keen insight into the madness of the Family. None of them mention Jolly West.
Jolly is indeed O’Neill’s white whale. Chaos is not the only place where he heaps blame upon Jolly. In an interview with Eric Hunley, O’Neill says West ‘snapped’ Ruby into insanity in a single session. No corroborating evidence is offered and no explanation of the method used.
In an article in The Intercept, O’Neill asserts ‘Louis Jolyon West seems to have used chemicals and hypnosis liberally in his medical practice, possibly leading to the death of a child and the execution of an innocent man.’ If West could do this in 1954 – when these dreadful events took place – the whole MKULTRA program would have been redundant: if O’Neill’s speculation is accepted, a programmed killer had been made and the CIA’s quest was complete. The program continued for another twenty years without, as far as we know, achieving this objective.
While I’ve met many people who were exploited into allowing others to interpret their reality, I’ve yet to find any case among the thousands I’ve looked into where anyone was turned into a compliant robot (my own Opening Our Minds explores the many ways in which obedience, groupthink and deliberate thought reform work). Yes, it is possible to make people act against their own best interests and even their own morality, even to sacrifice their lives for the good of a bogus cause, but to maintain murderous conviction requires rather more than a few positive suggestions and a few tabs of LSD.
In fact, the first stage of mind control is the creation of feelings of knowing, a spurious ‘certainty.’ This ‘certainty’ is based upon belief rather than evidence. Mind control is undone when the individual discards the feelings of knowing, the sense of certainty, by accepting hard evidence that they are just feelings. O’Neill has successfully convinced many people of his own certainty. As yet, as he admits, he has only circumstantial evidence to support that certainty. It remains an unproven hypothesis; a speculation, worth further investigation, but not yet worth believing.
In O’Neill’s account, West has become a magician with supernatural abilities beyond description or explanation. But O’Neill is not Captain Ahab. He worked not for revenge but in the hope of understanding an awful series of events. That is a noble endeavour. He amassed a mountain of research, and his work was meticulous. I do not question his integrity, just his conclusions.
— Jon Atack
36 comments:
Hey Vera/Tom- this is a very even handed well written article that establishes that your book is hokum. Any thoughts?
Our conspiracists - look away now.
Before publication, there was a galley floating around. It saved me the book price. It was like reading a conspiracy manifesto. (snore...)
Interesting post though some paragraphs would've been nice. Thanks Col.
Personally, I'm not really convinced that West is the benign character that Atack describes. I've no doubt that he was a fascinating, entertaining, articulate and charismatic man but there's something about his history that's always sounded at least moderate alarm bells for me. On the other hand, I don't really buy O'Neill's blag about him either. Both stories are all too black and white and I just don't think the spooks back then (or now) were ever as omnipotent as the more paranoid among us would have you believe... and as Atack pretty clearly demonstrates (and as O'Neill admits), it's all just conjecture.
What I found most relevant though is to hear someone finally call out the most obvious elephant in the room (excuse the pun). To whit...
"Yes, it is possible to make people act against their own best interests and even their own morality, even to sacrifice their lives for the good of a bogus cause, but to maintain murderous conviction requires rather more than a few positive suggestions and a few tabs of LSD"
Yes, indeedy... datura, on the other hand... and oh yeah... scientology. :-)
Sorry for being off-topic, but I have a question about the 1973 Manson documentary.
Near the end, there's a video of Manson's speech ("You gotta sneak to get to the truth"). Footage of Manson from that period is extremely rare. What's the source of it? Who recorded it?
Just before it's shown, the narrator says "Jerry Rubin, one of the Chicago Seven requested and was granted an interview with Manson". Is this a recording of that interview? Or is it something entirely else? Maybe it was Merrick or Hendrickson?
I assume that's all that was ever released from that interview.
kurious said:
I have a question about the 1973 Manson documentary.
Near the end, there's a video of Manson's speech ("You gotta sneak to get to the truth"). Footage of Manson from that period is extremely rare. What's the source of it? Who recorded it?
It was recorded by Robert Hendrickson, sometime in December '69 or very early 1970. He sneaked a camera into a briefcase when he went to see him in jail and secretly filmed Charlie. Charlie clearly knew what was going on. If you ever manage to get hold of the book "Death to pigs," you can find the full transcript on page 97 and 98.
Thank you!
Grim you are the best
ColScott said...
Grim you are the best
For a minute I thought this was like one of those common Sitcom plots where the negative character learns his lesson, turns sweet and benevolent, or at least turns more "refined" — and becomes absolutely intolerable such that his new behavior is even more intolerable, making the other characters yearn for the original personality.
😅
This post is gonna be a real mindfuck (his own personal MK-Ultra) for our regular blog contributer Starviego.
Go slow, take breaks, ingest it fully.
The truth is yours *if you want it, friend.
There is nothing new here. I met Col over 5 years ago, and I was wearing an O'Neill surf shirt and he brought this up. Oh well another person wrote a shitty book about a 50 year old crime. Get over it.
Scientology I got into out of curiosity long before I got into Manson and wrote many posts here about the supposed connections- that's how I got into all this originally, and there is nothing there. Nada.
Is all of this getting any of you closer to the true motive? lol
The first Transformer movie was garbage. The second one was unwatchable. How about coming up with something original in your movies or commentary about a case that you really should be ashamed of. Do you still promise the Parole Board Bobby Can work for you?
Shameless. Vera was right
https://youtu.be/z834x4Qk_pM
Off topic, but a major happening: it looks like LVH is getting out.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/manson-follower-parole_n_64a8bb6de4b0e87d6554a3e0
St, Col being obsessed about this subject is no different than your obsession with the women in the Manson circle and you making sure we all know how horrible and evil you find them and making sure everyone knows that YOU'RE SUCH A GOOD PERSON for pointing it out. I'm anticipating your rant about the newest Leslie news where you comment for the thousandth time about how she doesn't deserve to get out but to rot.
As for the other stuff in your comment, why on earth every time that someone disagrees with Col on this site (with the exception of Grim) they think they've scored some massive burn by mentioning that "Transformers sucked"? That shit came out like 15 years ago. If the best you can come up with is "that movie franchise you produced 15 years ago, that made you more money then I'll ever see in my entire lifetime even if I worked every single day for 14 hours a day, 7 days a week at my shitty job, SUCKS!!!!"
Lmao, go drink a shitty Coors and chill out.
Saint
You said you were leaving. We said goodbye. You were missed by no one. Yet here you are. I did warn you that all the facts about you would come out. Do you really expect me to keep quiet on some of the deviant things you have done?
- You met me 10 years ago. So yeah more than five. But your rapidly decreasing brain cells got it wrong by 100%. Worrisome
- When your wore your fanboy shirt, there was still reasonable hope that O'Neill's 20 wasted years of research would be helpful to the investigation. Now there isn't. Yes somebody wrote a shitty book about a 50 year old crime. Each shitty, badly researched book denigrates the real work we are doing. It is a big deal. I doubt you even enjoyed the book on tape. Again, you left, why are you here?
- Of course you were involved in Scientology. Gullible, lonely, unloved, unwanted, uneducated. Every box checked.
- Do you know what the motive is St? Do you even know what day it is most times you unsexxy alcoholic.
- The first Transformers was amazing. The second was garbage. At least I know you paid for two of them so far/. But whataboutism here is extremely weird. We are talking about TLB and your loser life. Not Robots in disguise.
- No the job I had for Bobby was eliminated years ago. But I hear LVH can type extremely well. Sadly there is no employment for plump incoherent drunks- sorry pal.
BHarris- the funny thing is that sucky franchise just had the 7th movie come out three weeks ago and make $400m. Number 8 is next July. Meanwhile at 11:58 tonight St, incoherently drunk, will try to jerk off into a dirty sock and look up at his stolen HBO Max and see Bumblebee (2018), be riveted by the teenage girl bonding with the cool robot and fall silently asleep with his micodick in his hand, not realizing that arguing with his betters is futile.
Saint you left. Stay gone.
sorry. autocorrect. We can confirm that we were speaking about ST'a MICROdick in the above posting
Col, just for the record, I wasn't calling it "sucky" but picking on the plebs on here who think it's some kind of burn to talk shit about a franchise that's earned you millions and continues too earn you millions lmao as if you're losing sleep over it in your mansion knowing you'll never have to worry about money again over what some dude who brags about being an alcoholic and drinking a 12 pack of coors light a night from his local gas station while wondering why he's alone and still living with his mother thinks about a movie franchise that started 15 years ago that's made you once again, MILLIONS. Yeah, he really got you with that comment, I'm sure it was real upsetting. And WHY am I not surprised in the least that he has a closet full of skeletons that he doesn't want anyone to know about while simultaneously using every opportunity he can to post his self fellating comments to make sure we all know that Manson and anyone involved with Manson are "evil, pieces of shit who deserve to rot in hell" unlike himself whose SUCH a good guy because "derrr, what about the ViCtImS"
and if you really want to get a laugh at how delusional this guy is..Let me remind you of when he tried to beg people who had "the in" with Manson to get him a visit with him because "he would be able to get the truth from him easily because he's so super special and so super smart". And in case, he denies he said this OR you just want a good laugh and up close look at how delusional someone can be- here's his comment, in all it'a shitty spelling, lack of punctuation and pathetic glory:
"ST. Circumstance will be driving right past that prison come this May...
All of you who claim to be inside with Charlie take this challenge-
Get me in for a visit with Charlie
I dont want to write a book- or cash in- I have plenty of dough already- not my style to make my name off others-
But I bet I could talk to Charlie on a level he would understand, and he isn't going to get over on me with any of that ATWA nonsense either...
I think at his core Charlie is a intellectually challenged redneck punk from the sticks with low self esteem....
There ways to talk to people like that
The couple of men who challenged Charlie in his life- had no problems from him- and much like Tom Cruise did to Jack Nicholson in a few good men-
I think he could be mentally dominated to a point where you could get the answers you want out of him.... when he gets angry- he lashes out and gets loud- he does not THINK- and he LOVES to TALK- another weakness ( just ask me)
Bugs could have done this, but
I dont think Bugs needed to go that far-
Charlie asked to make his statement in front of the courtroom and the world- he didn't need to be tricked.. and then he buried himself- he isn't really bright enough to be sneaky. He is more in love of the sound of his own voice.
And since then- he hasn't spoken to anyone who really gave it a true shot....
Believe it or not- as useless as he is- Gerlado would have been the one guy who I thought had a crack at this....
Because he is trained in law- and he is a nosey bastid, and he understood and would have wanted to take advantage of the financial value of breaking something new...
But he just tried to tough guy it...
no thought whatsoever- just a verbal hard guy contest with someone who proved he is willing to go much further to be hard....
So much for that nitwit
But St. Circumstance is a different type of guy
I am one of a kind
He wont feel threatened by me lol
he wont have any idea what to make of me...
But Ill get us some answers
I promise"
Getting reamed by the col is the number one reason to comment! Born in 74 i grew up a transformer fanboy. The hyper real alien style of the modern movies lost of the charm of the toys. I wanna see bully. Read it before there was a movie
I'm too old to have noticed Transformers the first time around but I've watched all the recent movies with my grandkids... and they certainly dig 'em. As Irving Berlin very wisely said “Listen kid, take my advice, never hate a song that has sold half a million copies.”
Great article
There's a "place" where Manson reflected his involvement with Scientology: his music.
There's a great deal of it in the lyrics. But before you can see it you have to learn some lingo.
Atwar talks about the mind as a tape recorder.
Before before is about what is called Time track. Ego is about the reactive mind. Etc
Hello! First-time poster here and just wanted to say I've really enjoyed lurking the many discussions on this board. This was the first time, though, that I felt inspired to join in. While Atack has done some very good work on COS over the years, I found this attack on O'Neill baffling and inconsistent.
“In his 200-page account, Manson himself said that he had been ‘heavily into dianetics and scientology.’ At that point I put O’Neill’s book aside without reading any further."
Commemt- Very rigorous study of O’Neill’s claims.
“After a recent video chat, YouTuber Eric Hunley, referring to O’Neill’s book, asked if I knew that my late friend Jolly West had programmed the Manson Family. I was aghast. In my experience, Jolly was a friendly, compassionate, and helpful man. Not the sort of person who would systematically create mayhem and murder.”
Comment- Nice diversion and misrepresentation of O’Neill’s claims. He never explicitly said that West programmed Manson or his Family, but established that West was present at the Haight Ashbury Free Clinic at the same time that the Family were regulars, as was another doctor working on MK-ULTRA projects. It is also known that Abigail Folger was a regular volunteer at the Clinic as well.
“When we first met in 1988 Professor Louis Jolyon ‘Jolly’ West, MD, was the head of the department of neuroscience and biobehavior at UCLA Medical School. We were not close, but we met four times over the next few years, and spent hours talking each time. On our second meeting, his assistant told me he kept two books on his desk – the Bible and my Piece of Blue Sky. She said he would read a few paragraphs whenever he took a break. It cheered him to see that the history of this group which had caused him so much trouble had finally been printed.”
Jolly was an important speaker at Cult Awareness Network and American Family Foundation conferences. I have a recording of an excellent history of hypnotism from one CAN conference. Unlike most in his profession, Jolly recognised the value of hypnotism, a practice that has seen a resurgence in the decades since his death in 1999. Jolly determinedly shared sound information about hypnotism and the potential dangers of hypnotic states at a time when academia smirked at the subject (by the 1970s, only six out of ninety US university courses on psychology included any mention of it). By demonstrating hypnotism, he helped many, many people to avoid control through exploitative persuasion or ‘mind control.’ Hardly the psychopath portrayed by O’Neill, because by definition, psychopaths have no desire to help others.”
Comment- Jolly was funded by CIA and the Agency has interest in BOTH the cult apologist networks (CESNUR, Jonestown Institute, Eileen Barker, Massimo Introvigne, Gordon Melton, and the like) and the anti-cult movement, which included West as well as Margaret Singer, who, like Jolly, was also part of MK ULTRA from its earliest days.
“Jolly was a polymath and one of the most intelligent and well-informed people I’ve ever met. Our last meeting was in London. He was en route to a celebration of the work of Patrick O’Brian, author of the Master and Commander novels. Jolly was invited to speak about the accuracy of O’Brian’s descriptions of surgery during the Napoleonic Wars. One of many subjects on which he was expert."
Comment- Nobody has ever claimed that West wasn’t a smart individual, including O’Neill, which Atack would know if he had bothered to read the book rather than just skim the index.
pt.2
“Jolly’s research into drugs was well known, especially through the death of the elephant Tusko during the crazy period when LSD was used in experiments on both human and animal subjects by hundreds of researchers around the world (I long ago interviewed an English psychiatrist who had given LSD to an eight-year-old child. It was a time of innocence and stupidity, when hallucinogens were handed out like candy).”
Comment- Atack betrays massive ignorance of what West and MK-ULTRA were about and makes it plain that he simply has never spent a minute of time researching West or his CIA background. This was not a “time of innocence”, but a time when the CIA was actively researching and testing psychedelic drugs on the American populace, including pouring it in gas form into US subways. This was not “innocence”, but the result of fanatical anti-communism during the Cold War, the same kind of “innocence” that resulted in the US backing fascists in Eastern Europe, allowing the trafficking of drugs like cocaine by political allies, and supporting jihadists in the Arab World. The most salient facts on West were established 40 years before O’Neill’s book came out and he simply fleshed out some of the unknown details of his background. But the core of West’s evil projects were long known and if Atack is planning to attack ALL the critics of West and not just O’Neil, he is going to have a lot of work cut out for him.
“When I was invited to apply for a doctoral degree for A Piece of Blue Sky by Aarhus University, Jolly was quick to write a fulsome letter of support. “
Comment- Atack received a personal favor from West, a man of considerable clout and influence. Got it. No conflict of interest here, folks!
“He not only stood up to Scientology and other authoritarian sects, but was also active with Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in the civil rights movement. Another potentially dangerous pursuit. I was surprised when Tom O’Neill said a former colleague had labelled Jolly ‘the only benevolent psychopath I ever met.’ Psychopaths are not likely to take up good causes. “
Comment- No, but CIA infiltrators are not above involving themselves with domestic politics, despite the laws against such activity.
pt.3
“Jolly had put himself in the firing line with both cults and the at times murderous enemies of civil rights. O’Neill also tells us that for forty years Jolly was ‘vehemently against capital punishment,’ an unlikely position for a true psychopath.”
Comment- How does he know that if he didn’t read the book? Also, Atack is either showing further ignorance of the book or intentionally distorting the claims made in the book. He makes no mention of the context for O’Neill’s discussion of West’s opposition to the death penalty: a murder case involving a patient of West’s at a time when he was researching the outer reaches of hypnosis and mind control on behalf of the CIA. O’Neill doesn’t claim to prove anything in this case, but merely points out discrepancies in the case and raises the possibility that the patient was mind controlled by West. He suggests that West’s sudden advocacy against capital punishment (a political cause he was not involved in prior to this incident) was a symptom of guilt felt by West for his involvement in the case which wound up with the man receiving the death penalty. While one may differ on O’Neill’s opinion on this case and West’s role in it, to exclude the entire context is suspicious behavior on Atack’s part.
In addition, unlike Atack, O’Neill has not been sued by subjects discussed in his book, and his only litigation surrounding the book involves disputes with his previous publisher. Atack, on the other hand, lost a defamation case in the UK, which was upheld on appeal. How hard is to write a book on Scientology given all that is known about them without defaming individuals? Yet Atack was not up to this task. Don’t get me wrong, I loathe Scientology, and view it in a very negative light and am well aware of how litigious they can be. In this case, it appears that the accuser’s son was a Church-connected lawyer. However, other people have made strong claims against Scientology and made it through the other side legally, albeit at tremendous cost to themselves, emotionally and in legal fees.
https://www.wired.com/1999/05/scientology-book-an-open-issue/
“In CHAOS, O’Neill argues that for twenty years Jolly West was a principal investigator for the CIA’s deplorable MKULTRA mind control programs."
Comment- That’s not an “argument”, that’s a fact well-established by many sources long before O’Neill took interest in West.
pt. 4
“O’Neill cites a 1977 New York Times article, which tells us that MKULTRA was ‘a secret twenty-five year, twenty-five million dollar effort by the CIA to learn how to control the human mind.’ Most accounts agree that the program flopped (Naomi Klein takes an interesting contrary position that is highly relevant; but not to our discussion).”
Comment- Which accounts? Atack doesn’t bother to name a single one. While some elements of MK-ULTRA likely were failures as they were casting such a wide net, not all of them were, and O’Neill provides evidence of West in his own words announcing that he has mastered the ability to remove memories from a patient and replace them with false ones.
“O’Neill does admit his personal disdain for Jolly during their only conversation, where he says Jolly ‘droned on for so long I cut the interview short.’
Comment- Guess Atack actually did read the book despite claiming to have put it aside. LOL. Again, Atack leaves out context. At the time he interviewed West, O’Neill had no interest in the Manson case, MK ULTRA, West as a person, etc. and was working on a completely different story. While clearly some folks like Atack liked West on a personal level, many others did not. Human beings are complicated, and neither O’Neill or West are exceptions.
“O’Neill tells us that ‘West became my white whale.’ It’s a telling remark, because this makes O’Neill the fervently obsessed Captain Ahab of Melville’s great novel (‘a grand, ungodly, god-like man’). Ahab goes to his death to destroy the white whale in revenge for it taking his leg off. Of course, in the novel – spoiler alert – Captain Ahab goes down lassoed to the whale. I hope the same will not be true for Tom O’Neill. He has done remarkable research, so a follow-up book on the Scientology connection might well save him.”
Comment- Way to take a literary device, comparing oneself to Ahab, and turning it into an attack on O’Neill. Tom is clearly aware that being obsessed with someone like this can be unhealthy, and this project caused significant damage to both his bank account and personal wellbeing, which is exactly why he picked Ahab for an analogy. That was his point. Like West and Atack, O’Neill is also not a stupid, poorly read man. But, hey, got to give points to Atack for admitting that O’Neill has done “remarkable research”. Maybe Tom can use that as a blurb for his next book?
“O’Neill’s obsession with Jolly is compounded by several statements, peppered throughout his 400-page book. He wants us to believe that Jolly West programmed Manson, but says, ‘I could never prove that he’d [West] examined Manson himself – or that they’d ever met.’”
Comment- At no point does O’Neill claim that “West programmed Manson”, so these statements are not contradictory. However, he does firmly establish that West was involved with the Haight Ashbury Free Clinic, that the clinic had ties to CIA, and that Manson and his Family were regulars at the clinic. I have not seen any of those three points rebutted by any researchers up to this point. If any mansonblog.com readers care to enlighten me about how O’Neill was wrong on any of those counts, please feel free to do so! O’Neill himself admits that he has not “proven that West brainwashed Manson”. However, he has provided in his book enough information contradicting traditional narratives surrounding the case that future researchers will have to address these discrepancies, whether debunking or supporting his claims.
“He makes this overblown statement: ‘As a self-styled brainwashing expert, he’d [West] been present whenever mind control reared its ugly head in American culture. Murders, assassinations, kidnappings, cults, prisoners of war – his fingerprints were on all of them.’ All of them? Thousands of people were subjected to Bluebird, MKULTRA, MKNAOMI. West could not possibly have ‘been present’ in every case, and O’Neill gives us no shred of evidence of involvement in any vicious act on Jolly’s part, let alone ‘murders’ or ‘assassination’.”
Comment- Once again, Atack is being disingenuous or ignorant here, take your pick. And again, pretty interesting insight from someone who claims to have not read the book! O’Neill in no way is claiming that West was directly responsible for these events. However, the record is clear that he a) was brought into some of the most important cases in American history, including the JFK assassination and the Patty Hearst kidnapping and b) that the MK ULTRA program was influential on USG actions like Operation Phoenix, Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, the Waco raid, and many others. In that sense, while West wasn’t the person involved in the suffering directly, his influence is wide and perpetual due to his key role in MK ULTRA research. Also, he was used repeatedly as a go-to source by the media when cults were discussed, including some of the earliest articles on the Jonestown slaughter. O’Neill’s statement may be slightly hyperbolic, but the reality is that West found himself involved in multiple, highly notorious, cases.
pt. 6
“It is possible and indeed highly likely that Jolly West did indeed receive funding indirectly from the CIA, however, we need to put the CIA’s research projects into context.”
Comment- It is not merely “possible”or “highly likely”, it is a fact established by researchers and writers 40 years before O’Neill’s book was released.
“The CIA represented the US government. While its activities were deplorable, immoral, and illegal — and its members deserved to be incarcerated in mental asylums or prisons — it nonetheless represented a legitimate government and was considered to be ‘making the world safe for democracy’ until the early 1970s, when Victor Marchetti pierced the veil of silence.”
Comment- So that makes it OK? The SS, Ahnenerbe, and Auschwitz were all legitimate components of the Third Reich if that is the logic we are going with here.
“In his study, Science of Coercion, Communication Research & Psychological Warfare 1945-1960, Professor Christopher Simpson found that over 90 percent of psychological research in the US in the two decades after the war was sponsored by the military: “Military, intelligence, and propaganda agencies such as the Department of Defense and Central Intelligence Agency helped to bankroll substantially all of the post-World War II generation’s research into techniques of persuasion, opinion measurement, interrogation, political and military mobilization, propagation of ideology, and related questions. The persuasion studies, in particular, provided much of the scientific underpinning for modern advertising and motivational techniques. This government-financed communication research went well beyond what would have been possible with private sector money alone and often exploited military recruits, who comprised a unique pool of test subjects.” Which is not to say that the research was morally proper. The various foundations created as fronts were to prevent researchers from knowing the source of their funds."
Comment- On this point we can agree. This actually reenforces O’Neill’s case and does nothing to help West. Thank you, Jon!
“The only possible connection that O’Neill can make is that Jolly West used a ‘crash pad’ in Haight Ashbury in 1967 to monitor the effects of LSD on hippies who were invited to trip there. Some of those hippies were referred by the Haight Ashbury Free Clinic which Manson attended. End of connection. That’s everything O’Neill has about the relationship between Jolly West and Charles Manson.”
Comment- O’Neill also established that West was directly involved with the HAFC, not just “hosting a crash pad”. Also, even if it were merely a “crash pad”, isn’t it odd at all that a CIA-funded researcher was studying the effects of LSD at the exact time that CIA was looking at the possible use of LSD for intelligence and warfare purposes? Apparently not to Atack. O’Neill openly admits that he was not able to prove that West and Manson were there at the exact same moment, which is a difficult thing to prove in the first place due to the many years and the many deaths since. It is also well-established that Abigail Folger was involved as a volunteer at the HAFC. That may just be a coincidence, but if so, it’s one hell of a coincidence! Atack read the fucking book, let’s be real.
Pt, 7
“O’Neill would have us believe that Jolly West manipulated Manson for two years. He cannot show that they communicated in any way. He does not track any coincidence in their movements during that two years either."
Comment- Another claim NOT made by O’Neill.
“This is supported by the literature. LSD would not be useful in creating programmed murderers – Manchurian candidates – because it has unpredictable effects. The CIA’s attempt to program students and soldiers with LSD failed. It disorientated rather than increasing obedience. They could find no effective way to distribute it to enemy soldiers and, after thousands of tests, LSD was abandoned as a chemical weapon.”
Comment- This is true, though I do not have the book with me today and I cannot recall exactly what O’Neill said about LSD specifically. However, the other drug that was heavily connected to the Haight Ashbury and its eventual collapse was the drug STP, created by Sasha Shulgin of the Bohemian Grove member, DEA informant, and Dow Chemical chemist. He provided this to Augustus “Bear” Owsley, who distributed it widely in the Haight with disastrous consequences. I highly doubt that the Manson killers were high on LSD or recovering from a trip during the murders. However, I think it is highly likely that they were using STP, which was known for combining LSD-like hallucinations with the violent psychosis associated with methamphetamines. This is a matter that I would hope O’Neill would cover further in his next book. And in all honesty, I hope he discusses the Scientology angle further as well!
However, while I am well aware of the Scientology influence on the Family, I have never seen evidence that the Church directed or manipulated any of the events surrounding the murders. O’Neill has not hesitated to take questions about the Church in some of the interviews I’ve seen and merely said that it was not central to his investigation, nor did he find evidence laying blame on the Process Church, which is also blamed by “conspiracists” for the murders. While I see evidence that both the Process Church and the COS were close to the Manson situation, I have not seen proof that they were the whip hand. I also find it curious that those who focus on those two groups tend to never mention the OTHER groups near to The Family, including the remnants of the Krishna Venta group, the Self-Realization Fellowship which Leslie belonged to, Soka Gakkai which Gary Hinman belonged to, or the cults of Yogi Bhajan and Father Yod, both of which Aesop Aquarian belonged to. There were many mystical currents flowing around California during that time, influencing the Family and other hippies and putting all of ones eggs into the Process/COS baskets seems limiting, in my opinion.
“Datura belongs in a stronger class of drugs than LSD. It is a ‘deleriant’: due to its primary effect of causing delirium, as opposed to the more lucid and less disturbed states produced by other hallucinogens."
Comment- I actually agree with Atack on this matter, though I do not fault O’Neill for not going more deeply into the Datura discussion. Also, I should point out that it seems like a matter of confusion as to whether Watson took Belladonna or Daturua. Personally, I think it was likely Datura, which can be found all over the hills of SoCal. I suspect that Datura and STP were more likely the most destructive drugs that the Family was using, though that is just my opinion.
“The occasional infiltrator from the intelligence community perhaps, but agents working to ‘accomplish’ something using Scientology? That’s new to me.”
pt. 8
The occasional infiltrator from the intelligence community perhaps, but agents working to ‘accomplish’ something using Scientology? That’s new to me.”
Comment- That one is a real hoot. One of the first things I looked for when checking out Atack was whether or not he had ever addressed CIA collaboration with COS during the ESP research of the 1970s. I expected him to ignore that connection, but I was wrong! He HAS addressed it. Yet seems to forget about it now?
Let’s let Jon tell us about it. This is actually a very good piece from his never-released book “The Hubbard Intelligence Agency”.
https://www.wiseoldgoat.com/papers-scientology/popup-windows/scn_consp_atack_on_standford.html
“Most of the SRI team, including project director Puthoff, and the CIA's star psychic spies, Price and Swann, were members of the Church of Scientology. Indeed, all three were graduates of Scientology's own prolonged and expensive supposed psychic training. Pat Price died in an accident in 1975, but Puthoff and Swann were to control an enormous and highly secret U.S. government intelligence project for many years.”
“While I was working on this piece, Steven Hassan, PhD, wrote a column for Psychology Today about the parole request for Manson Family member Leslie Van Houten. To our surprise, Psychology Today pulled the reference to Manson’s Scientology experience. You can see Steve’s response and my email to the timorous magazine here. The expurgated Psychology Today article is here.”
Comment- This has nothing to do with O’Neill, and merely shows how the COS works to limit information. Gee, you think maybe O’Neill didn’t want to spend further years and money he didn’t have in courtrooms with COS while also pissing off the LAPD, LA DA, CIA, FBI, and many crazed hippies? They go after people for trivial things, what do you think they would do if accused of being behind the Manson murders? While it is sad that this lawfare has been so effective, the reality is that it works. While I personally wish O’Neill had discussed the COS angle more, I completely understand why he didn’t, as should anybody with even limited knowledge of COS.
“O’Neill spent twenty years researching CHAOS. He added a great deal of information to the record but as he tells us about one potential interview, ‘I was overthinking everything, and then overthinking my overthinking.’ The book is drenched in speculation. While O’Neill does put to rest the corrupt prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi’s myth of ‘Helter Skelter,’ he replaces it with a far more elaborate and fanciful idea: that the Manson gang’s murders were the consequence of ‘programming’ by Jolly West. He tells us nothing about this programming process.”
Comment- O’Neil’s main focus with the book was to demolish the narrative dominated by Vincent Bugliosi, which he did in spades. He readily admits that much of the non-Bugliosi material is speculative in nature and not once claims to have “solved the case”. In doing so, he also opened up a number of rabbit holes, which he openly admits he did not definitively establish as the “correct version”. He leaves it open-ended and urges his readers to do their own research. He also admittedly made much of it personal and not just the story of Charles Manson, but also the story of Tom O’Neill. Some may view that as “unprofessional”, but I found it honest and refreshing.
“In an interview with Eric Hunley, O’Neill says West ‘snapped’ Ruby into insanity in a single session. No corroborating evidence is offered and no explanation of the method used.”
Comment- Covered in the book. C’mon, Jon, did you read the book or not? If I was going to write a piece like this, I would at least finish the book. Sorry, mansonbloggers, for making so many posts, but there was a lot here that needed to be addressed.
Hopefully it was helpful to some, best wishes to all!
Unknown said:
O’Neil’s main focus with the book was to demolish the narrative dominated by Vincent Bugliosi, which he did in spades
I don't think he did that at all. For one thing, he never spoke with Susan, Leslie, Charles W or Pat. But he is part of a long line of punters stretching back 53 years that have tried.
Sorry, mansonbloggers, for making so many posts
Hey, there's previous form for that, on these pages ! 👍🏿
It's okay- Unknown/Tom/Vera got nothing but time
Unknown said:
O’NEILL DOES PUT TO REST THE CORRUPT PROSECUTOR VINCENT BUGLIOSI’S MYTH OF ‘HELTER SKELTER,’ HE REPLACES IT WITH A FAR MORE ELABORATE AND FANCIFUL IDEA
O’Neill did nothing of the sort. He took a solid motive that was confessed to by two of the killers (Watson, Van Houten) and spent 20 years trying to disprove it, failed, and then offered nothing in its stead. That motive was verified with evidence. The best possible evidence for motive is from the words of the perpetrators and we have that in this case. No matter how MANY pieces of evidence for drug burn, FBI-involvement, copycat etc, nothing is as good a smoking gun as the killers telling us why they did what they did. Schreck, Stimson and O’Neill all wrote excellent books that are well worth your time and investment, but they only tell a story for which there is no smoking evidence as good as HS. And after FIFTY-FOUR years, there is still no motive with as strong evidence as HS. More? Maybe. As good as? Not even close. If you must torture history and logic to arrive at a motive (with no solid evidence) when the killers have already told us why this happened, you have nothing to stand on.
HE LEAVES IT OPEN-ENDED AND URGES HIS READERS TO DO THEIR OWN RESEARCH
Which in modern times means he failed. Do their own research? That’s the rallying cry of every person who has no evidence to back up their claims. Why would anyone do their own research when the research has already been done? And what: spend 20 years in full time research to end up with nothing? If there was no motive with any solid evidence, fine. But this book along with many others, is just a refusal to accept the facts of perpetrator-provided-confession and offer no credible alternative theory. Not credible because no evidence in these books has ever come close to equaling the facts as told by the perps. O’Neill, Schreck, Stimson et al never “demolish the narrative” of Bugs. They only strengthen it by exposing how they have nothing else to counter it.
Someone please rid us of the asshole that posted the trash comments above on 8/3.
The most obvious criticism which no one seems to make is that an argument that Manson may have been a subject of MKULTRA experiments, does not explain Manson somehow learning and then independently implementing these mind control processes on others. Its like saying that someone can become a therapist by going to therapy for a few years. You'd have to believe that just being subject to MKULTRA experiments gave a person mind control powers, which doesn't follow. There were hundreds or thousands of other MK participants; why was Manson the only one to develop these jedi mind control tricks? Why didn't Whitey Bulger use his MK powers, if just being a participant qualified you to use mind control? You'd have to believe that the CIA wasn't just using a random prisoner like Manson as an experimental subject, but actually taking him under their wing to teach him the secrets of mind control.
I have an interview with Jolly West from 1977 when the NY Times confronted him about his previous denials concerning working with the CIA on MK-Ultra projects. They showed him newly revealed documents on various MK subprojects. West was forced to admit he spoke with Sidney Gottlieb personally. And Gottlieb told him the work was for the CIA and involved LSD testing on human subjects. The project’s purpose was to determine whether LSD could enhance susceptibility to being hypnotized. Prior to this, West said he only did testing on animals. He lied. I showed this interview to Jon Atack. He acknowledged his oversight. Is is an honest person.
Correction to typo in last sentence. Here’s what it should say: “He (Atack) is an honest person.”
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