Chaos
Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties
Ratings17
Average rating3.8
15
Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties
Ratings17
Average rating3.8
A journalist's twenty-year fascination with the Manson murders leads to shocking new revelations about the FBI's involvement in this riveting reassessment of an infamous case in American history. Over two grim nights in Los Angeles, the young followers of Charles Manson murdered seven people, including the actress Sharon Tate, then eight months pregnant. With no mercy and seemingly no motive, the Manson Family followed their leader's every order-their crimes lit a flame of paranoia across the nation, spelling the end of the sixties. Manson became one of history's most infamous criminals, his name forever attached to an era when charlatans mixed with prodigies, free love was as possible as brainwashing, and utopia-or dystopia-was just an acid trip away. Twenty years ago, when journalist Tom O'Neill was reporting a magazine piece about the murders, he worried there was nothing new to say. Then he unearthed shocking evidence of a cover-up behind the "official" story, including police carelessness, legal misconduct, and potential surveillance by intelligence agents. When a tense interview with Vincent Bugliosi-prosecutor of the Manson Family, and author of Helter Skelter-turned a friendly source into a nemesis, O'Neill knew he was onto something. But every discovery brought more questions: Who were Manson's real friends in Hollywood, and how far would they go to hide their ties? Why didn't law enforcement, including Manson's own parole officer, act on their many chances to stop him? And how did Manson-an illiterate ex-con-turn a group of peaceful hippies into remorseless killers? O'Neill's quest for the truth led him from reclusive celebrities to seasoned spies, from San Francisco's summer of love to the shadowy sites of the CIA's mind-control experiments, on a trail rife with shady cover-ups and suspicious coincidences. The product of two decades of reporting, hundreds of new interviews, and dozens of never-before-seen documents from the LAPD, the FBI, and the CIA, CHAOS mounts an argument that could be, according to Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney Steven Kay, strong enough to overturn the verdicts on the Manson murders. This is a book that overturns our understanding of a pivotal time in American history.
Reviews with the most likes.
A journalist spends twenty years researching the Manson family murders and other crimes surrounding those, throwing the official trial story and the book Helter Skelter into doubt.
I finished the book feeling bad for O'Neill who, while succeeding in showing that Bugliosi was probably full of it, never finds any confirmed answers to his questions.
Reallllly interesting. Did I get any actual answers to any of my questions? No. Do I have even more questions than I did to start? Yes. I feel reinvigorated around a story which has gotten so tired and gone over it isn't even funny. Lots of new information in this book. That said: I'm not entirely sure that the author isn't just a conspiracy theorist chasing something a bit farther than needed.
Manson is a part of the 60s I never paid much attention to. I knew his name and sinister acts, but not in detail. This book was mind blowing - not only because of how I managed to evade so much of this information when reading other accounts of events from this decade, but also how deep it all went (and still goes). The web seems to intertwine with other happenings around that time, too, and paints a much bigger picture. I hope there will be a follow up book in years to come.
This book is interesting, I'll give it that. But it is very difficult to follow and inconclusive. I think this book would have worked better in two parts: as a tear down of Helter Skelter and as an investigation into CIA operations and how that connects to Manson. It kind of is written that way but it all blends together too much and could have used more in depth reporting into both areas.
I understand why O'Neill couldn't go too hard at Bugliosi and I understand why he couldn't frame his own theory about what all happened in the Manson investigation. But I think the book suffers for this and O'Neill purposefully ignores writing a compelling narrative in order to get all the facts he's found on paper. Which is fine but again it makes for a much less interesting read. If you find all of this information that points to a cover up, I wanna know why it needs to be covered up.
