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Hello, this is E. Scorpio and I'm here with author Tom O'Neill and we will be talking

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about his recent book, Chaos, Charles Manson, the CIA and the Secret History of the 60s.

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Mr. O'Neill, before we get into your book, tell us a bit about your background and how

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you got involved with this story.

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Well, I was working as a magazine writer in 1999 and this began simply a phone call from

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an editor that I'd worked with before asking me to write a feature story on what was then

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going to be the 30th anniversary of the murders.

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And I was reluctant to take it because I was never interested in the subject, had never

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read Helter Skelter, but I could use the job so I took it and the rest became history,

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I guess.

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Yeah, so it's 20 years of history, right?

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Yeah.

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So, Mr. O'Neill, this book covers so much ground, so much, especially new information.

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I think we might freewheel it a bit, but I want to begin, as the book does, with Vincent

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Bouliosi.

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It seems to me that Bouliosi is the linchpin between what actually happened and what the

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public accepts as the official narrative.

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Tell us who Vincent Bouliosi was and about some of his indiscretions in the Manson case.

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Well, he was a young deputy DA in LA in 1969 when he got assigned the case.

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He was relatively well known in the city because he'd done a couple of high profile murder

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cases.

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Right.

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But this one obviously rocketed him to international fame because it was such a high profile case

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and trial.

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He was smart.

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He was tough.

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He was never satisfied with what he had.

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He always wanted more information, more proof, and he was very ambitious.

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He definitely, according to the people around him that I spoke to, wanted a lot more than

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just to be a successful prosecutor.

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He had his sights set on possible political campaigns.

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First, district attorney of Los Angeles.

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He had his sights on that.

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Attorney general and who knows beyond.

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When this case came along, he saw it as a good opportunity to write a book about it.

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He had already started a book with a collaborator on his previous trial that ended in a conviction

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of a double murder.

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But this one was so much more spectacular that he put that aside and got another collaborator.

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Before the trial started, he got this guy a seat in the courtroom.

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So that's kind of the first instance in my book where I question his motives because

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if you've got an ulterior objective besides just convicting people but also wanting to

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make sure that the story of the trial is going to be interesting.

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Yeah, that's a conflict of interest.

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Plus, he never told anyone at the time what he was doing.

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So I believe that began as kind of the root of what became a very corrupt year and a

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half long trial that included the lies, fabrications, perjuries, and ultimately convictions that

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aren't rested on fundamental law but could be overturned if a lot of this information

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came out.

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Now, I just want to clarify that because I think it can be confusing to some people.

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That's not to say that they would be let off the hook, right?

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I mean, it would just have to be.

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Those people that went to prison should have gone to prison.

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But doing so in the prosecution, the choices that were made, one person alone, Boliossi,

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decided to let other people off the hook, other people who were just as implicated

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possibly more, and shield people and organizations from the role in how and why these murders

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happened.

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He kind of synthesized it down to something as spectacular and simple to present that

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was hard to question because it was just so outrageous.

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It was a helter skelter out of.

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But by doing that, it was a smokescreen to hide a lot of other important elements.

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And you can't do that in a death penalty case because you're playing with people's lives.

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And all the evidence has to be put on, especially if there's exculpatory evidence, and especially

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prosecution witnesses are lying for the prosecution and the prosecutor is aware of that.

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So it's complicated.

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But you'll see I make a strong case in my book that that was done throughout the trial.

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And Boliossi got away with this and then wrote what to this day is the best selling true

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crime book of all time and pretty much had a comfortable life for the next four years

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until he passed away and career because of this one case, which I now think was entirely

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fraudulent.

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Yeah, it sounds like it.

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Now he got into some trouble, didn't he, during that trial, wasn't there?

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Wasn't he brought up on charges for perjury or?

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Yeah, yeah, that was a...

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You won't read about it in his book of the trial.

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I mean, his book is pretty exhaustive about what happened every single day in the case.

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He does mention that somebody violated the judge's gag order and passed a private document

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to a journalist.

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He makes it clear, he says he didn't do it.

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The judge suspected that one of the six attorneys working in the case had done it, called all

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of them before the stand.

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And under oath, they had to say that they did not pass that document.

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And each of them said that.

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Well, after that trial was educated and the convictions were delivered, there was an

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investigation by a grand jury and the grand jury indicted Bouliosi and one of the defense

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attorneys and said the two of them in collusion spread this information and violation of the

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gag order and also lied under oath during this trial.

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That was going to go to open court and Bouliosi and Deschenes, the other prosecutor, were

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going to be prosecuted.

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But the journalist who had originally gotten the document refused to testify about who

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his source was.

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And the judge ruled that without his testimony, we can't proceed because everything else is

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secondhand information.

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Oh, yeah.

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I mean, this is completely an opinion of mine and actually a lot of people who were

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present in the law enforcement at the time.

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The real reason the judge did that because they had enough witnesses.

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They had an eyewitness of Bouliosi giving the document to the reporter.

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Yeah.

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Already, it was done because had Bouliosi been convicted of perjury, it would have overturned

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the entire trial because it would have raised questions about his actions during the trial

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if he lied under oath on the stand during the trial about this incident.

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And ironically, he did get away with it.

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But in my book, I have instances of 10, 12 more episodes like that that are even more

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serious and impactful on the truth of the case that Bouliosi's own co-prosecutor, when

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he saw this information, said if this comes out, this could overturn the verdicts.

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Yeah.

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And you know, since we're talking about those instances in your book, I haven't read Bouliosi's

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Helter Skelter.

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But one of the questions I was thinking when I when I was reading your book is all these

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inconsistencies you point out in his book.

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And I just think like is how how worthwhile is his book?

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I mean, does it?

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I mean, it's a good primer on the case.

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As long as you understand when you're reading it that there's a second story here.

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It has a lot of fiction in it from from his point of view.

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Yeah, a lot of fiction.

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And I mean, if you read it the way I read it without knowing any of the stuff, I would

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later find out because it was the first thing I did when I got the assignment.

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And then you're going to think, wow, this is one of the coolest, fastest paced, most

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intense books about a kind of a one of a kind crime spree that I've ever encountered.

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But it's not until you then read my book or read my book before that I think it's difficult

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to read his book now, knowing what I know and what people will read in my book.

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If they read his next, they're going to see how I lay out the specifics of his lies and

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and and malfeasance.

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Yes, yes, exactly.

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So going back to the the helter skelter motive, I want to focus on this a bit.

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Now, you point out in the book also, Bouliosi in an interview admitted that.

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He believed Manson did not take the helter skelter motive seriously.

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Now, this is not to say it wasn't something that wasn't talked about at Spahn Ranch, but

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your book seems to indicate that it's an unlikely motive for the murders.

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So where did Helter Skelter come from?

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Was it an urban legend in 60s, LA circles or did you find external forces pushing this

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narrative?

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Well, that's it. I couldn't find out where it originally originated, but it was definitely

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talked about at the ranch prior to the murders.

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I have a lot of the early interviews with family members that reference it, but never in

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the same way it's presented a trial.

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It's more just a silly kind of acidity.

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Oh, the world could end.

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There's, you know, the blacks are going to rise up against the whites.

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What was really critical to me and unfortunately, I didn't discover it until Bouliosi had

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separated himself from me and wouldn't talk to me anymore after a pretty contentious

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period when he was threatening to sue me, writing letters to my publisher.

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After that time, I found three different instances in old interviews from the early 70s, two

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of them and then one from 2015, the year he died or about six months before he died.

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What he literally said to all three interviewers, you know, do I think that Hansen

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believed in this crazy race war and a hole in the desert that he was going to hide them

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from? And then he goes, no, not not for a minute.

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He goes backwards, believe that.

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But he didn't. Now, each of those three interviewers sort of automatically said to him,

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OK, followers who killed the people believe that you believe that.

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But if Manson didn't believe it, well, then why did he send his followers to kill those

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people if not to start a race war?

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What was the other reason?

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Nobody ever asked him that follow up question.

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And I couldn't because he wouldn't take my phone calls at that point.

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I should have just ambushed him again.

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And how he would react to seeing me, he didn't like me at all at that point.

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Well, he was your adversary, right, at that point.

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Yeah, yeah. But it mildly, mildly.

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Yeah. And your book is so interesting because it go.

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I mean, you go into all these these these spreads.

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There's there's some I mean, there's so many theories as to what the motive is.

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And I don't want to ask you to speculate too much, but what did personally what do you think the motive was?

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I really don't like because.

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Yeah, I mean, it's not in the book, you know, but the reason I don't put it in the book or say it in

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interviews is frankly, my opinion of that evolves and changes.

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And what I can say definitively is not supportable in evidence.

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I mean, all I can say definitively that is supportable is it didn't happen for the reason the

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bullio see presented the helter skelter race where there was something else in the book.

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I give two or three possibilities, you know, a drug burden gone wrong, some kind of drug

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confrontation happened at the house between one or more of the victims and several people who were

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buying and selling drugs at the house that and or that the federal government was involved and using

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Manson to further an agenda of something that they had secretly in operation at the time.

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There were actually two programs, the chaos program and the Cointel Pro program, which was to

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incite race wars and get people from both sides to fear and attack each other.

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Oh, hang on. Let me just turn this off.

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OK, yeah, fear and attack each other.

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And that's all documented in the public record.

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And I write quite a bit about that in my book.

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And then the third theory is the possible role of CIA program called MKUltra, which was

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experimenting on kids and prisoners with drugs and trying to learn how to manipulate, control

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their behavior, provoke them.

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And Manson had contact with one of the primary researchers of that group in the period that he

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turned into exactly what that group was trying to create with the people who would kill without

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remorse. Be amnesic of the reasons they did it in the first place.

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Who provoked them, that type of thing.

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So I just present everything I got and hopefully as cohesively as possible.

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And then let the readers decide because I couldn't prove one happened in an absolute way.

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All I could say is each of these three, there's more evidence that they happened for these

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reasons than for the one Bouliosi showed us.

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And then I completely dismantled Bouliosi's argument by showing the lies and the testimony that he

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presented and that he did knowingly, you know, with malice aforethought, as they say.

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Yeah, in my opinion, that comes through crystal clear in the book.

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I really respect that angle you took, you know, but I wanted to be the conspiracy.

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I I'm more of a conspiracy guy myself, you know, and I use that word lightly.

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So the CIA angle really interested me.

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If you could go in a bit more, just give us a brief synopsis of how Cointel Pro and Project Chaos

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fit into your story.

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Well, I just stumbled on them when I was kind of encountering all these shadowy dark figures

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that were around Manson during the couple of years prior to the murders, that he was kind of

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gravitating between the Bay Area and further north in California and then down to

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Southern California and Los Angeles and trying to figure out who some of these individuals were who

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kind of were kept out of the picture and out of the history of the family.

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And during that period, I learned about these programs where they would plant

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provocateurs, I have a hard time saying that this morning, into these groups to do a

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number of things, to surveil them if they thought they could gather information.

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There were any number of reasons that these people were being monitored.

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And there was a man that was a very likely candidate as being working for the government,

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inserting himself in the Manson family in 1968 and 69 and provoking them and maybe ginning up

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Manson's fear of an attack by blacks.

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That's all laid out in the book.

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It's complicated to kind of explain, but these days with these programs that

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Chaos and Cointel Pro were Cointel Pro was started by the FBI, actually in the 40s,

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as a way to kind of neutralize and crack down on the Klan.

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And then it was when they got pretty far along in the 50s with suppressing the Klan,

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at least most of their violence stuff in the 60s.

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Hoover turned it against what he saw was a coming revolution in America about the first free speech

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movement, then the anti-Vietnam War movement, and then the Panthers and the black militants.

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So at that point, they had agents, FBI agents infiltrating Panther group, Vietnam War groups,

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and trying to disrupt them, provoke them to committing crimes that they would then be kind

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of set up for to be arrested.

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And worst of all, they attacked rival groups, and this was mostly what they did with the black

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militants, to kill each other, the Panthers against here in Los Angeles, the US slaves.

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And there were a number of murders that when all of this came out in the mid 70s and

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congressional hearings, the FBI admitted to being responsible through the provocations for,

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I think, upwards of 30 different African-Americans murders.

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Chaos was similar, except there's much less of a record of chaos, because unlike

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COINTELPRO, COINTELPRO files were obtained by theft in Pennsylvania at an outlet where they

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stored them all. To this day, no one has seen any of the records of chaos. It existed the same

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time frame from like 67 to 72. We don't know exactly what they did. We only know what their

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objectives were.

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And now the agent provocateurs that infiltrated the family, are you referring to Reeve Whitson?

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Yeah.

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Can you tell us who Reeve Whitson was?

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Well, he's a mystery, man. He was a close friend of Jay Sebring, one of the victims.

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He knew Sharon Tate. He knew Sharon Tate's family, and he was an undercover law enforcement

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person. I could never find an agency that would take responsibility for him. The closest I could

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find were people like the LAPD and some departments down in Long Beach area that said that they hired

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him kind of as a stringer, as a freelance person, to infiltrate groups and provide surveillance.

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Collect information and basically be a plant in groups. Some of them were organized crimes. Some

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of them were drug rings, child prostitution rings. And that was all after the late 60s. Prior to

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that, the record I was able to get was he was going back and forth to Southeast Asia, getting

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involved with guerrilla groups in the Vietnam War, training them how to attack and kill that type of

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thing, doing the work of the government in the Vietnam War. And then he was doing that in South

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America in the 80s. The CIA refused to say anything more in response to my request that was

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beyond that they could neither confirm nor deny that he had anything to do with them.

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Right.

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He passed away a few years ago before I even learned he existed. So through cobbling together

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whatever records and paperwork I could get, and there wasn't a lot, but interviews with his family

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and his closest associates, I learned and this was a pretty consistent thing from each of them. They

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all thought he was in this rogue element of the CIA. And he had told three or four of his very

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closest associates right before he died. One of his operations in the late 60s was to infiltrate

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the Manson family. And then he had done that. But for there were no specifics. For whatever reason,

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he didn't know that the murders were going to happen. But he told these friends he knew that

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something like that was going to happen. And his dying regret was he could have prevented it.

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And he didn't. But even more shocking, and again, this is him telling other people,

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so it's secondhand hearsay. I almost didn't even use it in the book, but I heard it from three

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people who were all one of them was his attorney. They were all legitimate people in his life.

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The more shocking thing was he told them that he had actually been to the house

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after the murders had been committed. And before the police arrived. So he had been there in this

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window of time that I had already been looking at, because there were all these noises reported

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from the property by security guards in the neighborhood, neighbors of shouting more gun

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shots. And it conflicted with the official timeline that willy Osse presented of the murders.

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And there's a lot of evidence even besides Reeve that someone went back to the house

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and rearranged the crime scene to make it look more horrifying and more macabre. So

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Reeve again, he's another one I can say definitively did anything of this, but I present a pretty,

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I think, strong circumstantial case that what he confided into his closest friends at the end of

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his life was more likely true than not true. Right. So you, towards the end of his chapter,

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you raised the question of him either being a true intelligence asset or an extremely

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accomplished con man. So you tend to lean more towards the intelligence asset.

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Yeah, I mean, I could see him, you know, I could see people pulling something like that. I mean,

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it happens all the time. I mean, I was able to confirm that his closest associates and friends

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were some of the most powerful military men in the United States. Curtis LeMay, General LeMay,

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bombs away LeMay. I've got many, many accounts of the two of them together, working together.

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There was a guy named Robert Anderson, who was a Treasury Secretary of the United States under

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Johnson and John F. Kennedy. And through the presidential files, I have all these this

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paperwork showing that Reeve Whitson traveled with them on overseas operations, usually in

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countries like the Middle East, when they're trying to make economic deals with leaders that

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we shouldn't have been dealing with at that time. So he definitely was in a world of that.

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You and I, I don't know you, but that not an ordinary person operates.

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Not me. As he had connections, in other words.

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Yeah, yeah.

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Let's talk about who Roger Smith was and his seeming role as Manson's guardian angel.

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Roger was a parole officer in San Francisco, was also getting his degree in criminology,

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his PhD at Berkeley in the grad school. And in 1967, he was assigned to Manson

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to be his parole supervisor. Manson had just gotten out. He also, and this was never reported

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until my book, was as part of his parole duties, was doing a research project that was called the

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San Francisco Project. And it was a study of recidivism of parolees and people on probation.

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So what they were doing was not only was he supervising Manson's parole, he was keeping

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very careful records of their encounters, Manson's behavior, because the purpose of the study was to

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try to decide how the relationship between the officer and the client affects their recidivism.

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You know, they wanted to have graphs, rates, like if you saw them more, was that more likely to keep

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them from breaking the law again or less? So this was a very intense program. And, and, and

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Smith had the, I think, the second largest load of clients, which was 20 or 30 the first year.

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And by the second year of his supervision of Manson, Manson was his only client.

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During that period, Manson was arrested several times, and he was even convicted or pled guilty

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to interfering with a police officer who was arresting a young girl that he, that he took

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into his family. It's a pretty serious charge to be a parole con interfering with a police officer

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on the line of duty. Not only wasn't he jailed except for overnight, but he was released. It

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wasn't reported. Well, it was put on his chart, so Smith knew about it, but he didn't violate his

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parole. They had a very unusual relationship when some of the girls were arrested, one of the babies

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was taken away. The first baby that Manson had with his followers, it was a baby called Pooh Bear.

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Man Roger and his wife took temporary foster custody of the child while the mother was in jail

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three months. He was also doing drug research at the newly open Haight-Ashbury Free Medical Clinic,

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and he started instructing Manson to have their parole meetings at this drug and medical clinic

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in the Haight in 67. It was during that period that Manson really kind of transformed into the

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Manson that we were all familiar with for the rest of the years after. This kind of Messiah,

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guru, hippie that could control his subservient followers. As the people at the clinic told me,

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he would even open his mouth, he would just look at them and he would nod or turn his eyes,

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and they would react and know what to do. It was obvious to me that

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it's getting into the weeds here, but also the CIA officer was working out of that same clinic,

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trying to create exactly that type of subservience using drugs at the same time that Manson emerged

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from it as a monster. Right, right, and that's where we start to pull it together is

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Jolly, you're referring to Jolly West, Louis Jolly on West, because I think, I mean, obviously in the

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book he's a major part of this puzzle, but could you speak to us about Jolly West and some of the

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work he was doing there at Haight-Ashbury and how it connected to his work for MKUltra? Because

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you uncovered his archives, correct? Yeah. He was deep in there. Oh yeah, he was a prominent

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psychiatrist at the time. He ran in 1967 the University of Oklahoma's psychiatry school and

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their neuroscience offices. He'd been in the military for many years. He was involved in the

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deprogramming of fighter pilots who had been shot down during the Korean War and had been

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allegedly brainwashed to make allegedly false confessions of germ warfare. When they were

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brought back to the United States, he and a team of five other psychiatrists deprogrammed them

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and got them to admit that they didn't know what they were saying. They had said it under duress.

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He became an expert in brainwashing and mind control then, and that was in the late 40s,

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early 50s. What happened was he was recruited by the CIA for their newly inaugurated

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behavior modification program, MKUltra, in 1953. For at least 20 years, maybe a little less,

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was doing Nazi kind of experiments on patients at psychiatric clinics and hospitals,

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people in prisons and people in public using drugs without their consent. This all came out

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in the 70s. His name was on the front page of the New York Times in a report in 1977 saying he was

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one of the doctors who operated in the secret program from 52 to 72. He denied it. He said he'd

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been approached to do it, but he would never have done anything like that. It was against

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the Hippocratic Oath and everything he stood for. He was never investigated. To his dying day,

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which was in the late 90s, every time somebody accused him of having been in this heinous program,

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he would threaten them with a lawsuit and say, absolutely not. There's no proof. I had nothing

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to do with it. Well, after he died, I got his archive opened at the University of UCLA, where

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he ended up, and he accidentally left some pretty incriminatory documents in there showing not only

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was he a part of it, he had helped create the blueprint for it. I got all these letters showing

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that this guy, we couldn't trust anything, he said publicly because his own personal papers

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did contain a smoking gun showing that he'd lied all those years. He should have gone to prison

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for some of the stuff he did. He was in close proximity with Manson. Circumstantial, he was

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working at the clinic for the three months that Manson was going there, once a week for parole

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hearings. Also, he was in there almost every day with the girls because they were getting

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treatment for VD and pregnancy issues and stuff like that. Everybody at the clinic said that they

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were fixtures there, and I couldn't ask Jolly West because he was dead, but the other people said,

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oh, Jolly would have known exactly who they were and would have had no choice but to have to deal

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with them because they were in and out of every room. I was looking for a piece of paper showing

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that he had spent time alone with Manson or something, but it didn't exist. That doesn't

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mean it didn't happen. Right. Yeah. I think the dots are pretty... It's not there, but

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that's what I appreciate about the book. There's just so much information that it makes it...

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You don't say it outright, but to me, it's pretty clear.

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Yeah. But we're getting close to our time. I wanted to ask you just a few more questions,

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more personal questions. I want to know how the book's been doing because if you've been branded

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harshly with the scarlet letter C for conspiracy theorist or... I haven't seen too many interviews.

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I'm more active on YouTube, but there's a few on there. What's your side of the story?

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Is it going well or...? We got better than... We got good reviews. We've only gotten... I mean,

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in the mainstream media, surprisingly. We got a couple of snarky ones, people that said,

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oh, it's a conspiracy book and there's no answers. I do feel like some of those reviews,

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I can tell by them that they didn't finish the book. More importantly, because they'll say that

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I have no documents or no proof. Well, I've got 60 pages of endnotes that references every

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document I cite. Then I have two websites that have the scanned documents on them. We do show

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some in the book, but I back everything up I have with paper. As far as sales, we did really well

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the first few months. As my agent put it when I saw him in New York a couple of weeks ago, he goes,

364
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we're disappointed because we thought this was going to be huge. We're excited because it's

365
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doing well, but we thought it would do better. We still have some stuff coming up where we think

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that could open it up to more audiences. I mean, it's maintaining a sales rate that

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it's still in bookstores and people are still buying it, but not like they did the first couple

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months, which happens with any book. So we'll see what happens. There's a couple of events

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are going to come up in the next six weeks. That'll bring a lot of light, some of it to my

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book and some of it to just the case in general that could generate more interest. I'm hoping

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because my disappointment is my real goal, especially not be able to provide conclusions

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in a lot of this, was that I would at least compel other journalists, especially in Los Angeles,

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where a lot of this stuff happened in San Francisco, where that whole period with Manson and these

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crazy doctors were. And DC, where the CIA records are, what's left of them and officials are.

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I thought wouldn't those mainstream papers pick up some of my loose threads and even just go verify

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because a lot of these people are still alive, not Boulos and not Manson. But I make some pretty

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outrageous charges against living people. And the fact that none of them have threatened me with a

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lawsuit makes me think, I guess I'm OK then because they know that they've got no grounds. But why

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isn't the mainstream media is going and getting more information from them because now they have

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to be held to account because it's out there in the public. Whereas when I did it alone,

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as you read in the book, people would just hang up on me and not talk to me.

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So I was hoping that would happen. And frankly, it's not. I mean, I've gotten some good.

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Times did a nice Q&A with me. The L.A. Times did a really thorough review, which raised a lot of

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questions about what we what the city has thought about all these murders now should be reconsidered.

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But then I thought the L.A. Times would hire a reporter to dig a little deeper or assign one.

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And as far as I know, they haven't. So so we'll see.

387
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Yeah, we'll see. Because I was on the same mind. I thought this this book should have been

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everywhere. It should have exploded. I mean, it's a great it's a great book.

389
00:36:32,560 --> 00:36:37,600
But real quick, I want to tell people how they can follow you and find out more about your work.

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You have your Instagram as well as Facebook, correct? Correct. Yeah. And and how what is

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as I tell you the name of that, right? Yes. Yeah, I got it out here somewhere, but I'm not I'm

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not too familiar with those platforms either. Yeah, I'm pretty lousy at them. So I think

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Instagram is called Hang on a second. I think it's just Chaos Charles Manson.

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I know if you Google my name, my last name, O'Neill Manson, and then you just put in Instagram or

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Facebook or Twitter, it gets you there. But like when I'm looking at it in my search bar, I'm a

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moron. I'm too old for this. It says it just says Instagram dot com and then slash Chaos Charles

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Manson slash. So I think that'll get you there. I'm going to I'll I'll figure it out somehow,

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but I'll put links in the in the description of this video. But I know for sure you have your

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website, Tom O'Neill dot org. Yeah, and there's a dash between Tom and O'Neill. Tom O'Neill,

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Tom O'Neill, O N E I L L. Yeah, dot org. And I'm looking at the Facebook address. It says Chaos,

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the book. So I think if you just put Chaos, the book in the Facebook search engine, you'll get

402
00:38:09,200 --> 00:38:14,240
that. And there's lots of documents. I even have audio tapes of some of my interviews, snippets on

403
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there, some videos. And I've been traveling for three months, I just got back a couple weeks ago.

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And now that I'm back, I'm going to start adding more more my documents and more my backup proof

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to these sites. All right, that sounds that sounds good. But I'll put the links in the description.

406
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Mr. O'Neill, it's been a pleasure speaking with you again. We're talking about Chaos,

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00:38:37,040 --> 00:38:44,000
Charles Manson, the CIA in the secret history of the 60s. Like I said, excellent achievement.

408
00:38:46,160 --> 00:38:52,320
I really appreciate you speaking with me today. Thank you. So when will I look for this to be up?

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I should be later today. I'll send you a link in your email. Okay. All right. So you're welcome.

410
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Thanks again and Godspeed. All right. Thanks for having me. Yes, sir. Bye bye. Bye bye.