After studying the Charles Manson case for 20 years, journalist Tom O'Neill claimed there was evidence that the Tate-LaBianca murders may have been the unintended result of an experiment involving brainwashing, LSD, and the top-secret CIA program MK-Ultra.
Bettmann/Getty ImagesOne journalist’s investigation found evidence to suggest a link between Charles Manson and MK-Ultra, the secret CIA program that studied mind control.
In the summer of 1969, members of the Manson Family cult brutally murdered at least nine people, including pregnant actress Sharon Tate. The subsequent trials determined that they’d carried out the killings on the orders of Charles Manson in an attempt to spark a race war — but in the decades since the crimes, new theories have emerged. Journalist Tom O’Neill, who studied the case for 20 years, claims that the Tate-LaBianca murders may have actually been the result of a secret connection between Charles Manson and the CIA.
In his book CHAOS: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties, O’Neill argues that Manson may have unknowingly been a part of secret CIA programs like Operation CHAOS and MK-Ultra that aimed to eliminate counterculture groups, experiment with brainwashing, and test the effects of LSD on mind control.
Manson’s “Helter Skelter” prophecy of an apocalyptic race war certainly aligned with the CIA’s attempts to infiltrate and take down the Black Panthers by baiting them into committing crimes that would turn the general public against them. What’s more, Manson purportedly met with his parole officer in the very building where MK-Ultra’s lead psychiatrist experimented with LSD, sparking suspicions that the cult leader learned how to control his followers with the drug while there.
O’Neill has never definitively linked Charles Manson and the CIA, but he once stated, “I think there is a good likelihood that Manson is a product of MK-Ultra, whether he was knowledgeable about it or not.”
The History Of Charles Manson And The Manson Family Murders
Charles Manson was the cult leader who led the Manson Family, a group of young hippies who lived at Spahn Ranch near Los Angeles in the late 1960s. Manson had spent most of his teens and 20s at reform schools or in prison for crimes like arson, theft, and rape. After his release following a seven-year stint for parole violations in 1967, he moved to San Francisco and became immersed in the counterculture movement of the time.
Eventually, he drew a group of followers who lived communally in a “free love” environment. They came to be known as the Manson Family, and though they seemed relatively harmless at first, that would soon change.
In August 1969, Manson directed his followers — Charles “Tex” Watson, Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel, and Linda Kasabian — to the residence of actress Sharon Tate at 10050 Cielo Drive. There, they brutally murdered Tate, who was eight months pregnant, along with three of her friends and a visitor of the property’s caretaker.
Santi Visalli/Getty ImagesSharon Tate visiting Roman Polanski on the set of Rosemary’s Baby in 1967.
The following night, Manson Family members murdered Leno and Rosemary LaBianca with equal brutality. At both crime scenes, they used their victims’ blood to write things like “Death to Pigs” and draw paw prints on the walls in an attempt to frame the Black Panthers.
According to prosecutors at the subsequent trials of Charles Manson and his followers, this was because Manson preached of an apocalyptic race war that he called “Helter Skelter.” He claimed that racial tensions between white and Black people would eventually culminate in the near extinction of white people — except those who joined his “family.”
While Manson later tried to discount any assertions that he actually believed in Helter Skelter, there was no denying that he and his followers were to blame for the murders. That was the official — and accepted — narrative.
Los Angeles Public LibraryMembers of the Manson Family shaved their heads in protest of Charles Manson’s conviction.
But what if there was more to the story? This was the question that plagued journalist Tom O’Neill and prompted him to look further into the Manson case. As he expressed in an interview with Jacobin in 2023, he ultimately came to the conclusion that “the facts that were presented to the public are not true. And, in the case of the prosecution of Charles Manson and the Manson Family, many things were, in fact, deliberately lied about.”
In CHAOS: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties, O’Neill asks: Could there be a connection between Charles Manson and MK-Ultra, the CIA’s top-secret mind control experiment? Did the agency set out to influence Manson and his followers as part of a larger program known as Operation CHAOS?
This led to a theory that the Tate-LaBianca murders were an unintentional consequence of this disturbing link between Charles Manson and the CIA.
Challenging The Official Narrative Of The Manson Family Murders
Tom O’NeillJournalist Tom O’Neill, the author of CHAOS, the book on Charles Manson’s CIA connection.
The first thing that raised O’Neill’s suspicion was the argument of the district attorney Vincent Bugliosi during the Manson Family trials — and how he capitalized on the media sensation surrounding them.
According to O’Neill, Bugliosi’s recounting of the case in his book Helter Skelter is full of “contradictions, omissions, [and] discrepancies with police reports.” Bugliosi led the charge on the Helter Skelter theory, citing it as Manson’s true motive on more than one occasion. Yet, he also reportedly told two journalists that he felt Manson was too smart to actually believe in Helter Skelter and only used it as a tool to manipulate his followers.
“But what those journalists did not ask is why Manson sent those people to those places to kill people if he didn’t want to ignite a race war,” O’Neill told Jacobin. “If he didn’t believe that this was going to cause a race war, or even care about it, then why did the murders happen?”
Damon D’Amato/Wikimedia CommonsVincent Bugliosi, the D.A. who prosecuted the case against Charles Manson.
While he never got to ask Bugliosi this directly — because Bugliosi stopped speaking to him — O’Neill did develop his own theory about Manson’s motive. According to O’Neill, the circumstances surrounding Manson were suspicious well before Bugliosi ever got involved.
For instance, O’Neill says that Manson’s parole officer, Roger Smith, should have recommended parole revocation and a return to prison when Manson was using drugs in the late 1960s. Instead, Smith wrote to his supervisors and even tried to get permission for Manson to live in Mexico, where it would be impossible to supervise him.
It was almost as if some higher-ups didn’t want Manson behind bars.
At one point during his research, O’Neill said he spoke with a retired deputy D.A. who told him, “I can’t tell you why this happened, but it isn’t a mistake. Somebody wanted him out there. And what you need to do is find out who it was.” With his book, O’Neill reached the end of that search — and it led him to Operation CHAOS.
The Alleged Connection Between Charles Manson And The CIA Program Operation CHAOS
In 1967, the same year Manson was released from prison, the CIA launched Operation CHAOS. Its primary objective was to investigate potential foreign influences on domestic protest movements, particularly those opposing the Vietnam War and advocating for civil rights — and especially the Black Panther Party.
Agents infiltrated various groups to monitor their activities and assess any foreign connections. Around the same time, the FBI launched COINTELPRO, which also targeted the Black Panthers. COINTELPRO reportedly aimed to eliminate the group by baiting its members into committing crimes that would make them seem more dangerous than they really were and turn their supporters against them, weakening their power.
Washington State Archives, State Governors’ Negative CollectionAn armed demonstration by the Black Panthers on the steps of the Capitol Building in Olympia, Washington, in 1969 to protest a bill that would make it a crime to exhibit firearms “in a manner manifesting an intent to intimidate others.”
This, O’Neill claims, is where the link between Charles Manson and the CIA begins. Manson’s Helter Skelter prophecy and attempts to frame the Black Panthers for the Tate-LaBianca murders mirror the aims of CHAOS and COINTELPRO.
“So was Manson a tool, or was he a product?” O’Neill asks.
If he was a CIA tool, agents may have intentionally fed him a narrative about the Black Panthers that caused him to create his Helter Skelter prophecy. If he was a product, it means that Operation CHAOS fulfilled its goal of making U.S. citizens fear the Black Panthers and similar groups. The Tate-LaBianca murders may, then, have been an unintended consequence of Operation CHAOS — a brainwashing experiment gone too far.
However, the conspiracy may have gone even deeper in the form of a connection between Charles Manson and MK-Ultra.
Was Charles Manson Part Of MK-Ultra?
Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesCharles Manson was sentenced to death for his role in the Tate-LaBianca murders, but the death penalty was suspended in California the following year, and he died in prison in 2017 at the age of 83.
MK-Ultra was a top-secret CIA program that experimented with mind control and the effects of LSD. Researchers involved in the project tried to determine if they could use the drug to manipulate people into doing their bidding.
Tom O’Neill discovered that while Manson was on parole, he attended weekly meetings with his parole officer at the Haight Ashbury Free Clinic. Dr. Louis “Jolly” West, one of the main psychiatrists for MK-Ultra, also worked at this very clinic.
If the CIA wanted to sow fears about the Black Panthers, then getting someone like Manson and his followers to frame them for a gruesome crime certainly seemed like an effective way of doing it without getting their own hands dirty. Perhaps Manson learned to dose his own followers with LSD at the clinic so they would carry out the murders that he ordered. Perhaps the CIA even intentionally taught him to do this to see if their mind-control experiments worked.
This is what O’Neill calls his most “far-out theory” — that Manson was part of a CIA effort “to create assassins who would kill on command.”
Public DomainA declassified MK-Ultra document related to studying “the stimulus-response relationship in biological systems.”
Of course, O’Neill never goes as far as to say this is for sure what happened. While he claims there is a “good likelihood” that there is a link between Charles Manson and MK-Ultra, he was never able to definitively prove it after 20 years of research — but he couldn’t disprove it, either.
In the end, we’re left with a conspiracy theory that seems at least somewhat plausible but without a smoking gun. Could the CIA have influenced Manson as part of Operation CHAOS or MK-Ultra? Yes. Did they? The jury is still out.
After reading about the potential connection between Charles Manson and the CIA, read about the life of Charles Manson’s mother, Kathleen Maddox. Then, learn about the brief and tragic life of Charles Manson Jr.
