Transcript of Charles Manson and the CIA (Part 1)

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to redacted, declassified mysteries early and ad free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. 1 afternoon, around the year 2000, a journalist stepped into a bustling cafe a few blocks from the courthouse in downtown Los Angeles. He was there to find out about a man rumored to have played a key role in 1 of the most infamous crimes of the 20th century. The crime had unfolded 35 years earlier when cult leader Charles Manson sent his followers to the Beverly Hills mansion of a pregnant actress and her movie director husband.

By the end of the night, 5 people in the home were brutally stabbed to death seemingly for no reason. The following night, Manson's cult struck again, butchering a married couple in a nearby neighborhood. Though Manson and his followers were all sentenced to life in prison, the journalist suspected that Manson was a pawn in a much larger game, possibly involving the US government. But he needed proof. That was where the man in a dark suit sitting at 1 of the cafe tables came in.

He was a lawyer who had agreed to talk about a man named Reeve Whitson. The journalist had repeatedly heard rumors about Whitson in connection with the murders and the lawyer was 1 of Whitson's few close friends. After some small talk and a few sips of coffee, the lawyer leaned closer to the journalist, then he dropped a bombshell. Whitson Whitson was a CIA operative. The journalist's eyes widened as the lawyer kept talking.

In the late 19 sixties, Whitson was working on a secret CIA project where he befriended powerful people and celebrities in Hollywood. This included at least 1 of the murder victims from that first night. The lawyer said that Whitson called people to let them know about the murders the next morning as early as 7 AM, which was strange because the police didn't know about the deaths until the maid found the bodies around 8:30 AM. The journalist asked how Whitson found out before the police. The lawyer looked around the cafe before he answered.

Then he said that Whitson was at the murder scene. The journalist's mind reeled. A CIA operative wandered into a bloody crime scene at a celebrity's home that included 5 dead bodies and then didn't report it to the police? The chatter of the cafe faded to a murmur as the journalist thought about what he had been told. If what the lawyer said was true, it meant that the CIA was somehow involved in 1 of history's most gruesome crimes.

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From Ballen Studios and Wondery, I'm Luke Lamanna, and this is redacted, declassified mysteries, where each week, we shine a light on the shadowy corners of espionage, covert operations, and misinformation to reveal the dark secrets our governments try to hide. This week's episode is called Charles Manson and the CIA part 1. Charles Manson both fascinated and repelled Americans in the early 1970s. On 1 level, he was just a scraggly ex con who had been in trouble with the law ever since he tried to burn down his school at the tender age of 9. Yet with his crazed, piercing eyes and his affinity for doomsday predictions, Manson had an undeniable charisma, charisma that helped him build a cult following that he called the Manson Family.

In 1969, he ordered his followers to commit a series of murders that he hoped would trigger a race war. It started at the home of movie director, Roman Polanski, and his 8 and a half months pregnant wife, Sharon Tate. Polanski was out of town, but Tate and 4 other people were taken prisoner and then killed. Tate was stabbed 16 times as she begged for her child's life. To make the crime seem politically motivated, 1 Manson family member then wrote pig on Tate's front door in blood.

The next night, they drove to another neighborhood and murdered a husband and wife, leaving a carving fork stuck in 1 of the bodies. The killers raided the refrigerator and then scrawled more weird messages on the walls in the blood of their victims, including death to pigs and Helter Skelter, which is the name of a Beatles song. By the time Manson went to prison in 1971, he was convicted of 7 murders but bragged about having killed 35 people. Yet, the full truth of Charles Manson remains shrouded in mystery. Was the often incoherent Manson really the leader or did darker powers conspire to use him as an evil force?

1 journalist became so intrigued with this question that it took over his life as he began peeling back the layers of the official story. In this 2 part series where every question is answered with an even bigger question, we're going to find out the shocking revelations this journalist uncovered and ask whether it could all be true. On the morning of March 21, 1999, the phone rang in the Venice Beach apartment of journalist Tom O'Neil. He was still in bed, hungover from his 40th birthday party the night before. He rubbed his eyes and reached over to answer the call.

It was an editor O'Neil knew from Premiere Magazine, 1 of the better film publications. She had a job offer. How would he like to write a feature for their August issue on the upcoming 30th anniversary of the Manson murders? All he needed to do was interview some entertainment industry people who'd been affected by the case and reflect on the crime's legacy in Hollywood. O'Neil sighed.

What could there be left to say about Charles Manson in 1999? The case had been the subject of countless books and bad movies for 3 decades. The prosecutor on the case, Vincent Boubouliosi, wrote the definitive account of the crimes in 1975. It was called Helter Skelter and instantly became the best selling true crime book of all time. According to Bugliosi, Helter Skelter was Manson's term for his racist and drug fueled fantasies.

Manson wanted the crime scene to look like the work of a militant black civil rights group called the Black Panthers. Police would confront the Panthers, who would then retaliate. Manson hoped this would spark a violent race war. And once society was in ruins, Manson and his followers would seize control. To O'Neil, it was a tired story.

On the other hand, he needed money. He had written about famous directors and actors for renowned magazines, but it had been months since his last decent paycheck. Plus, turning 40 had him feeling down about his future, so he agreed to do the piece. O'Neil hung up and reached for his rolodex of a list contacts. He started by calling people who ran in the same social circles as Sharon Tate or were professionally involved with her husband, Polanski, actors like Jack Nicholson, Warren Beatty, Jane Fonda, and Dennis Hopper, but none of them agreed to discuss Manson.

Then he moved on to actors more indirectly connected, like Mia Farrow, Angelica Huston, Kirk Douglas, Paul Newman. All of them refused to talk too. It didn't take long for O'Neil to conclude that something was off. Sure, they were big stars who valued their privacy, but these were also crimes that happened over a generation ago. All the defendants were locked up serving life sentences.

Why was this still such a sensitive topic? As a seasoned journalist, O'Neil knew that silence often spoke volumes. The refusal to talk suggested there was something being concealed. He was going to dig around. O'Neil decided to reach out to other players in the story.

He was surprised when Vincent Bugliosi, the former prosecutor who had secured the Manson Family's conviction, agreed to speak to him on the record. Bogleosi, however, was vague. He just kept quoting his own book like he was reciting from a script. It was a disappointing encounter, yielding no new insights. After the call, O'Neil realized that if he was going to find anything of substance for the story, he would need to go rogue and talk to people beyond the official accounts.

A short time later, O'Neil was having lunch at a sushi bar with a reporter who covered the Manson trial. They talked about whether the motives behind the murders could have been something entirely different than Manson's Helter Skelter visions. The reporter warned O'Neil to be careful and that a story like this could take over his life if he let it. O'Neil knew it was already too late for that. As O'Neil kept digging through police reports about the early days of the Manson case, he focused on 1 man, Preston Guillory.

He was an ex detective with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Office, whose jurisdiction included a rundown Wild West movie set called Spahn Ranch. This is where Manson and his followers called home. Guillory had made some wild claims in the past, but he swore all of it was the truth. A few weeks later, on a smoggy afternoon in 1999, O'Neil pulled into a Forgettable Bay strip mall 50 miles southeast of downtown LA. Wedged between a taco spot and a check cashing business was a small private detective agency.

O'Neil crossed the parking lot and went inside. A stocky older man with white hair and a bushy mustache introduced himself as Preston Guillory. He gestured to a chair in front of his desk, and O'Neil took a seat. He started by telling Guillory that he had read a transcript of a controversial radio interview Guillory gave back in 1971, 2 years after the murders. In the interview, Guillory detailed Manson's activities in the months leading up to the Tate murders and alleged that the police were allowing him to evade justice for a range of crimes.

He had access to alcohol, narcotics, and, illicit sex. When I'm so when I say illicit sex, I'm talking about minor girls. And all this was going down in full with the with full knowledge of his parole officer as well as the officers at Malibu Patrol Station.

And machine guns.

You have the weapons,

the paroli with the weapons.

When I was there when I was at Malibu, we knew that there were machine guns being fired on the spawn ranch. We had citizen complaints about this. We were forbidden to make arrests. The the station had a policy prior to the Spahn Ranch raid. Our policy was make no arrests, take no police action towards Manson or his followers.

And needless to say, any thinking officer

The revelations from Guillory on the radio interview painted a confusing picture. O'Neil asked Guillory why an ex con who violated his parole wasn't sent back to prison. Guillory didn't know, but he thought that events a week after the Tate murders, when investigators were still looking for suspects, provided a clue. On that day, August 16, 1969, the LA County Sheriff's Department staged the largest raid in its history at Spahn Ranch. They sent in more than a 100 officers armed with AR 15 rifles and backed up by helicopters overhead.

Almost 30 people were arrested. But the strange part was that the raid had nothing to do with the murders. Guillory's bosses claimed they were targeting the ranch because they thought Manson was running a stolen car ring. Guillory told O'Neil that he thought it was ridiculous. Law enforcement had its hands full with 7 unsolved murders that were on the front page of every newspaper in the country, yet they launched the biggest crackdown ever on some hippies with stolen cars?

And he said the aftermath was even more suspicious. The sheriff's department confiscated submachine guns and drugs, plus stacks of stolen wallets and credit cards at the ranch. But the entire Manson family was released from jail 3 days later, with no charges filed. O'Neil agreed this was baffling. If no 1 was arrested, what was the real motive behind the raid?

And why did Manson seem untouchable? Who benefited by dismissing his crimes? Guillory scowled. O'Neil could see that their discussion was stirring up old resentments in the former detective, but Guillory said his biggest beef came later. In December of 1969, 3 months after Sharon Tate and the others were killed, the LAPD held a press conference announcing that they had finally cracked the case.

Manson and his crazed band of evil hippies were the killers. The hunt was over, and Manson made the perfect villain. But to Guillory, the whole thing seemed dishonest. Law enforcement had long known that Manson was trouble. He wondered why didn't they stop him before the killing even began.

That's when Guillory went to a local news station and told them everything he'd witnessed, blaming senior officials for failing to stop Manson. As soon as his bosses heard about the interview, Guillory was fired. Now, O'Neil understood why Guillory was still angry 30 years later. Something didn't add up. Later, as O'Neil's car crawled through rush hour traffic on his way home, he realized that the Manson case was bigger and messier than he understood.

The sheriff's department had let Manson get away with too much before finally arresting him. The question was why. Maybe the tipping point came after Manson orchestrated the brutal murders, and then someone at the top finally said enough was enough. After his meeting with Guillory, O'Neil decided to consult a retired deputy district attorney. He wanted to understand how Manson was able to keep violating his parole without facing consequences.

The former prosecutor was blunt. This was no accident. This revelation left O'Neil perplexed. The local sheriff couldn't have enough power to shield a criminal like Manson. There had to be a more powerful force at play.

The deadline for filing O'Neil's 30th anniversary article about the murders passed in August 1999, but his story was far from ready. O'Neil had to explain to the editor in chief that the piece had evolved into something bigger and juicier. He wasn't happy about the missed deadline, but encouraged O'Neil to keep going. A short time later, on a freezing December afternoon, O'Neil drove along an icy country road in Michigan. His research was showing that law enforcement had deliberately protected Manson from arrest in the months leading up to the murders.

A part of O'Neil was worried that he had stumbled into something more complex than he could handle, but another part of him was electrified. This felt like real journalism with real stakes. That's what inspired O'Neil to fly to Ann Arbor to have a sit down with another mysterious figure from Charles Manson's past, his former parole officer. In 1967, Manson had just been released from prison after serving 7 years for violating probation on a federal check forgery charge. He took up residence in Berkeley, California, where Parole Officer Roger Smith met with him weekly for almost a year.

This meant Roger Smith saw firsthand Manson's evolution from small town con man into hippie guru. The San Francisco Bay Area in 1967 was the epicenter of the Summer of Love, and Manson took full advantage. Week by week, his harem of hippie runaways known as the Manson Family kept growing. O'Neil was curious what Roger Smith had noticed in Manson back then. Based on his research, it looked like Roger was much more than Manson's parole officer.

When Roger stopped overseeing Manson, he started working at the Haight Ashbury Free Medical Clinic, where hippies flocked to get treatment. At the clinic, Roger led a research project that was supposed to explore the connection between highly addictive methamphetamines and violent behavior in the community. Roger sometimes had parole meetings with Manson at the clinic. Apparently, he even persuaded Manson to move to the Haight Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco in order to be closer to the clinic. It made O'Neil wonder if Manson was somehow involved in the clinic's drugs and violence research.

When O'Neil called Roger to ask for an interview, he was surprised how quickly he agreed. Roger told O'Neil that he had avoided talking about Manson because he thought it would hurt his career, but he was retiring soon, so that worry had passed. Turning off the dirt road, O'Neil cruised down a long driveway and parked in front of a scenic old farmhouse. At the door, Roger welcomed O'Neil into a large rustic living room. Smith's wife Carmen sat on a couch in front of a crackling fireplace.

Homemade pizza steamed on the kitchen counter alongside several bottles of wine. O'Neil felt bad. Roger and his wife had clearly prepared for a welcoming evening together, and here he was with a head full of uncomfortable questions. Once they were settled in by the fire, O'Neil presented Roger with copies of old parole reports bearing his signature. Each document was a memo to Roger's boss squinted at each sheet before setting it down, then he took a big sip of wine.

He told O'Neil that he didn't remember many specifics about that time. None that he didn't remember many specifics about that time. None of these documents rang a bell. O'Neil asked why his memories were so foggy and Roger shrugged. He said he was just a naive kid in his twenties at the time.

Being a parole officer was just a way to pay for grad school. O'Neil dug out another parole report Roger had filed in late 1967, saying that Manson was making excellent progress. O'Neil was curious what kind of progress Roger was referring to. Roger barely glanced at the document. He said Haight Ashbury back then was swarming with drugged out hippies.

He thought Manson seemed fairly sane compared to most of them. O'Neil pushed further. What about Manson's drug use? Many of his followers had testified in court that Manson dropped acid daily during the family's time in San Francisco, and he persuaded everyone else to do the same. But O'Neil noted that Roger had never mentioned this in any of his reports.

Roger just shrugged and uncorked another bottle of wine. To him, taking LSD in the Bay Area in 1967 was like drinking a beer. No No 1 thought of it as illegal. O'Neil waited while Roger topped off his glass. Then he switched gears.

He wanted to know more about Smith's work at the Haight Ashbury Clinic. O'Neil mentioned that studying people who take amphetamines in the same place that parole meetings were held seemed like a dangerous combination unless Manson was part of 1 of Rogers' drug studies. O'Neil asked him point blank if that was true. Finally, Roger's composure broke. He raised his voice and said O'Neil was looking for connections that weren't there.

Manson wasn't part of any study. Roger was suddenly done talking. O'Neil knew when to take a hint and left. That night, driving through the snow to his hotel, O'Neil wondered if Roger was more involved with Manson than he was admitting. But how, the journalist still wasn't sure.

He had to keep digging. O'Neil had been trying to get in touch with the person behind this whole mystery for months, Charles Manson himself. Finally, in early 2000, there was progress. O'Neil got in touch with 1 of Manson's associates, who helped arrange a telephone interview with the cult leader from the California state prison. O'Neil would be allowed 5 minutes to talk before the call was automatically disconnected.

O'Neil's nerves were jangled as the morning of the Manson interview arrived. It was February 14th, Valentine's Day. He was about to speak with a mass murderer, 1 whose strange charisma persuaded others to follow him without question. When the phone crackled to life, the notorious criminal's voice cut through. As Manson mumbled and rambled, O'Neil introduced himself and that was the last moment of any logical conversation.

The cult leader spoke in riddles, never making any sense. The 5 minute time limit ticked away as the journalist sat dumbfounded. O'Neil realized then that he would never get the answers he sought directly from Manson. Several months later in the summer of 2000, O'Neil drove across the Bay Bridge into San Francisco on a gloriously sunny afternoon. He was close to being dead broke, but he still felt reenergized.

As the weeks turned into months of research, O'Neil's conviction only grew stronger. The official narrative surrounding the Manson murders simply wasn't adding up. 1 glaring discrepancy involved Vincent Bugliosi, the lead prosecutor whose best selling book had captivated the public. O'Neil had found major discrepancies between Bugliosi's account and the official police reports, suggesting Bugliosi's book contained errors. He even found a document in Bogleosi's own handwriting saying that a key prosecution witness had lied on the stand, yet no 1 had bothered to question the prosecutor's story.

O'Neil knew he wasn't ready to challenge Bugliosi just yet. He needed to build his own case, and his instincts kept drawing him back to Manson's home away from home in San Francisco, the Haight Ashbury Free Medical Clinic. In O'Neil's mind, the evidence was pointing to a disturbing possibility. Somebody powerful was using Manson as part of an experiment, and the clinic was at the center of it. O'Neil wasn't sure what it all meant, but he decided to visit the clinic in person and find out.

After walking through San Francisco's hilly streets, O'Neil turned a corner and found what he was looking for, the Haight Ashbury free medical clinic. The clinic was founded and run by David Smith, simply known as doctor Dave. Doctor Dave and Manson's parole officer Roger Smith weren't related, but they shared the same last name and the same interest in drugs, youth culture, and psychology. When the clinic opened in 1967, the building was painted with swirling Dayglobe murals. The place quickly became a mecca for hippies in need of free medical treatment.

But now, when O'Neil went inside, the walls were bare, except for some framed old articles about the clinic's history. After looking around for a minute, O'Neil left. Whatever secrets he was looking for had been painted over a long time ago. Back at his hotel, O'Neil pulled out a book he had brought, a 1971 memoir about the clinic called Love Needs Care, written by doctor Dave. The book was mainly self promotional, but there were some intriguing bits, particularly doctor Dave's discussion of the clinic's financial backing.

1 of the clinic's biggest donors was the National Institute of Mental Health. Something about the name triggered O'Neil's memory. He opened his computer and searched his files and found it. In 1976, the National Institute of Mental Health was forced to admit that it had been frequently used as a front by the CIA. The CIA was the same agency that employed Manson associate Reeves Whitson, the guy who somehow knew about the Tate murders before the police.

O'Neil's mind began racing. Did the CIA bankroll the clinic when Manson was a patient there? Doctor. Dave's book revealed that the clinic's federally funded research primarily focused on the effects of drugs, such as hallucinogens like LSD, and stimulants, like amphetamines. The book also made clear that Manson's former parole officer, Roger Smith, was in the thick of the action, heading up something called the amphetamine research project.

Unfortunately, O'Neil knew that he could never check the original reports from the research project to see if Manson was involved. That's because in 1969, someone broke into the Haight Ashbury Clinic and stole every file documenting the amphetamine research project. Interestingly, nothing else in the clinic was stolen. O'Neil couldn't help but think that this burglary was no coincidence. It had happened immediately after Manson's arrest and Manson family members had confessed to police that they'd taken amphetamines just before committing the cold blooded murders.

O'Neil was more convinced than ever that Manson and his followers had been guinea pigs in some larger project. But for what exactly, O'Neil didn't know yet. 3 weeks later, on an overcast weekday morning, O'Neil sat at his desk in his home office. He sipped some coffee, and scanned a file filled with the research he had gathered so far on David Smith, aka doctor Dave, the mysterious founder of the Haight Ashbury Free Health Clinic. 1 of O'Neil's sources told him that doctor Dave absolutely used hippie patients, including Charles Manson, as test subjects for drug research.

Not only that, but doctor Dave considered Manson so crucial to his work that he sent an assistant to continue documenting Manson after he moved from San Francisco to Los Angeles. But that was just part of the puzzle. O'Neil had been reading doctor Dave's research articles that described a phenomenon the doctor had witnessed when groups of people use LSD together over a period of time. Those shared drug experiences could gradually shape a distorted alternate reality for the participants. Smith called it the psychedelic syndrome.

Susan Atkins, 1 of Manson's cult members who participated in the Tate murders, freely acknowledged the mind warping long term effects of LSD in a 1976 prison interview. She had taken LSD more than 300 times.

You'd have to understand what acid does to the mind in order to understand how a person didn't get confused behind drugs. And that's I would take a thesis writing a book on what LSD can do with the mind.

Doctor Dave had written plenty on the subject and O'Neil had finally convinced him to talk. O'Neil had been deliberately vague in his voicemail about the purpose of the interview. He didn't want doctor Dave to come to the interview with prepared answers and the doctor had a lot to answer for given what O'Neil had learned. O'Neil's heart beat faster as he dialed doctor Dave's number. Either he was about to learn the truth or he would run into another frustrating wall.

On the 5th ring, doctor Dave answered. O'Neil started by complimenting the clinic and describing his recent visit there. He mentioned that he'd even read the doctor's book about its history and found it fascinating. Doctor Dave said he was proud of the clinic's legacy, but didn't elaborate further. O'Neil cleared his throat and broached the subject of the psychedelic syndrome.

He said that to him, it sounded similar to brainwashing. Then O'Neil took a deep breath and asked him whether Manson had learned a technique like this during 1 of his many visits to the clinic. Doctor Dave didn't skip a beat. He flatly denied that Manson was involved in any of his studies. Smith was simply continuing the work he'd begun before opening the clinic.

O'Neil then mentioned that he had heard that the doctor ran studies in which rats were injected with LSD and amphetamines and confined in a small space. He asked if it was true that most of the rats ended up killing each other in fits of rage. Doctor. Dave grunted, then admitted that, yes, oftentimes the animals would turn hostile. O'Neil wondered if doctor.

Dave found it an odd coincidence that he was studying how LSD can alter behavior while Manson himself had been using those same drugs to manipulate his followers in the same city. Doctor. Dave didn't take the bait. He claimed that Manson had little connection to the clinic, coming by only occasionally for parole meetings or to get medications for his followers. O'Neil felt doctor Dave was lying, but he remained quiet for a minute.

He had been told by another source that the doctor became so fascinated by the Manson family that a few months before the murders, he wrote an academic paper about them. But when the Manson family was linked to the killing of Sharon Tate and the others, doctor Dave pulled the article just before it was set to be published. But when O'Neil brought this up, the doctor dismissed the whole incident. He claimed the article had been the idea of 1 of his assistants, not his. He was only a supervisor.

O'Neil kept pressing. What about that theft of the Amphetamine Research Project files? The files went missing right after the Manson family were named as suspects in the murders. Did it have anything to do with protecting 1 of the clinic's major sponsors, the 1 that was a front for the CIA? There was a long pause.

O'Neil imagined doctor Dave's mind racing with excuses. But again, the doctor didn't budge. He denied there was ever a burglary at the clinic, but also claimed he had no idea where the files were. Then doctor Dave abruptly stopped the interview. He told O'Neil to leave him out of whatever story he was writing.

There was a click and the dial tone hummed. Yet, O'Neil was encouraged. Doctor Dave's heated reaction told him he had touched a nerve. The doctor was definitely downplaying his connections to Manson. O'Neil walked outside to clear his head.

He now suspected that doctor Dave was potentially doing drug research for the CIA and working with Manson and his followers. Were they looking at how to use drugs to control the human mind? That could certainly help the spy agency prepare agents and assassins to do their bidding. Manson might have leveraged those same drugs to program his murderous cult. On a breezy June morning in 2001, O'Neil paced in his home office.

1 entire wall was filled with thumbtack photos, scribbled dates, and hand drawn lines connecting cops, criminals, celebrities, and events. Manson had fully taken over O'Neil's life. Almost 2 years had gone by since O'Neil first started digging into Charles Manson and the CIA. After blowing through so many deadlines, O'Neil no longer owed Premier Magazine an article. He felt a sense of relief because O'Neil knew this had outgrown just a magazine piece.

It had become a sprawling investigation, even the makings of a full blown book. O'Neil knew it would make him some enemies. Manson's former parole officer, Roger Smith, and Doctor. Dave, for starters. And definitely former prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi, author of Helter Skelter.

Bugliosi's entire book and the murder case he won centered on Manson's fantasy to control society after a race war. It was the bedrock of Bugliosi's career, and O'Neil was working to rip it in half. None of that mattered to him though. O'Neil believed this would be a story the world needed to hear. Today, on this breezy June morning, he was following 1 of the most promising leads he had found yet.

O'Neil felt positive that the Haight Ashbury Free Medical Clinic was the smoking gun to Manson's transformation from small time Hood to mass murderer. As O'Neil zeroed in on how Manson was able to control his followers, he came across another name, doctor Louis Jolyon, aka Jolly West. West had worked at the Haight Ashbury Free Medical Clinic alongside Roger and David Smith during the years Manson was a regular starting in 1967. Information on West seems scarce till O'Neil came across his obituary. It's stated that West died in 1999 and that he had willed 265 boxes of archives to UCLA, where he was chair of the psychiatry department until 1989.

O'Neil headed straight to the UCLA library. A clerk behind the counter directed O'Neil down to the basement where the archives were stored. O'Neil passed dusty racks until he reached the counter. Moments later, a library assistant heaved a huge cardboard box onto the counter. This was the first.

264 more to go. As O'Neil scanned through folder after folder of yellowed papers at a desk, his brain struggled to absorb the sheer volume of information, much of it technical. There were dozens of press clippings on the Manson murders, even research papers by Roger Smith and David Smith. For the rest of the summer, O'Neil returned to the archive, sifting through 1 box after another. Then, he hit on something interesting.

He found letters between West and a man who was a prominent figure in CIA history, Sydney Gottlieb, the biochemist who oversaw 1 of the CIA's most infamous programs, a mind control research program called MK Ultra. The project, which operated in the 19 fifties sixties, involved experimenting with drugs, hypnosis, and other techniques to develop methods for controlling human minds, often without subjects' knowledge or consent. West wrote to Gottlieb detailing how they could conduct mind control experiments in secret. And in 1 particularly chilling letter, West claimed he had figured out how to remove real memories from a subject and replace them with permanent false memories. O'Neil was riveted.

Towards the bottom of yet another box, he flipped open a standard Manila folder to find a thick sheaf of papers. The top page was stamped in red, classified. As O'Neil skimmed its contents, he realized it was never meant to be saved, much less seen by a civilian. It was a letter to doctor West from Sydney Gottlieb. The letter discussed West's involvement with another notorious figure, Jack Ruby.

He was a small time nightclub owner with a history of minor run ins with the law until he suddenly shot and killed Lee Harvey Oswald on live TV in 1963, just days after Oswald had assassinated President John f Kennedy. O'Neil felt a chill run down his spine. What if, through the CIA's MK Ultra program, West played a role in shaping the actions of both Jack Ruby and Charles Manson? The shocking acts of violence committed by these 2 men could have been the result of the same twisted experiments in psychological manipulation orchestrated by West and the CIA. O'Neil ran upstairs to the library's computer lab.

He couldn't believe what he had read. His hands were shaking as he logged in and started typing an email to his agent about what he discovered. After clicking send, O'Neil sat there in silence. He knew his agent would probably think he had slipped over the edge into conspiracy nut shop nonsense. And maybe his agent was right, but another part of him trusted his gut even though there were still so many unanswered questions.

O'Neil couldn't see the end of the tunnel, but he could tell it was leading somewhere. That somewhere is where we're headed next week in part 2 of Manson and the CIA. Follow redacted, declassified mysteries on the Wondery app, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to every episode of Redacted early and ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at wondery.com/survey.

From Bollant Studios and Wondery, this is redacted, declassified mysteries, hosted by me, Luke Lamanna. A quick note about our stories. We do a lot of research, but some details and scenes are dramatized. We used many different sources for our show, but we especially recommend Chaos, Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties by Tom O'Neil, and the LA Times in-depth reporting into the Manson Family Murders. This episode was written by Britt Brown.

Sound design by Andre Clus. Our producer is Christopher p Dunn. Our associate producers and researchers are Sara Vitak, Teja Palakonda, Adam Malyan, and Rafa Faria. Fact checking by Sheila Patterson. For Bolan Studios, our head of production is Zach Levitt.

Script editing by Scott Allen. Our coordinating producer is Samantha Collins. Production support by Adri Siegel. Produced by me, Luke Lamanna. Executive producers are mister Bolan and Nick Widders.

For Wondery, our head of sound is Marcelino Villapondo. Senior producers are Lauradonna Palavoda, Dave Schilling, and Rachel Engleman. Senior managing producer is Nick Ryan. Managing producers are Olivia Fonti and Sofia Martins. Our executive producers are Aaron O'Flaherty and Marsha Louie for Wondery.