Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA and the Secret History of the Sixties

[David Andrews]

2 hours ago, Cliff Varnell said:

From the testimony of William Garretson, emphasis added:

https://www.charlesmanson.com/testimony/william-garretson-testimony/

QUESTION: Did you fall asleep around dawn at all?

ANSWER: Yes.

QUESTION: But throughout the night you were awake?

ANSWER: Yes.

QUESTION: Listening to your stereo?

ANSWER: Yes, and writing letters.

QUESTION: Did you hear any gunshots during the night?

ANSWER: No.

QUESTION: Did you hear any loud screams during the night?

ANSWER: No.

QUESTION: Did you hear any loud noises of any kind whatsoever?

ANSWER: No, I didn’t.

QUESTION: How loud were you playing your stereo?

ANSWER: It was about medium. Something like that. It wasn’t very loud, you know. It was just enough so that I could hear it.

QUESTION: Well, if you were in another room of your guest house, could you have heard it?

ANSWER: Faintly.

QUESTION: You had it on about medium, is that correct?

ANSWER: Yes.

QUESTION: Do you have a volume control on that stereo?

ANSWER: Yes.

QUESTION: Is there a #4 on the volume control?

ANSWER: Yes, there is.
QUESTION: Do you recall whether it was on #4 during the night?

ANSWER: No.

QUESTION: It may have been?

ANSWER: It may have been, yes.

</q>

What the hell kind of leading question, and badly put, is that about the #4 on the volume knob?

[Joseph McBride]

David, the theme of Asian-bashing is a major theme in the film, 

and it's rather obvious, as I note. 

 

Edited August 19, 2019 by Joseph McBride

[David Andrews]

19 minutes ago, Joseph McBride said:

David, the theme of Asian-bashing is a major theme in the film, 

and it's rather obvious, as I note.

Because he got an Angelino of mixed race to play Susan Atkins, and also took a comic swipe at Bruce Lee?  Fah!  Sell it to Slate.

As John Carradine used to say, "My card, sir":

https://www.merwinasia.com/south-fukien

 

Edited August 19, 2019 by David Andrews

[Ron Bulman]

Well phooey.  I was hoping I'd finish the book before Jim did this article.  I've got a little over 100 pages to go.  I started not to read the article until I finished but couldn't resist just a few lines.  As it wasn't giving away much about the book that I haven't read thus far I kept reading.  I'm not going to read part two though until I'm done.

 Regarding Garretson not hearing the shots the police supposedly tested this possibility.  It doesn't go into detail but I guess someone would have gone into the guesthouse and turned the stereo up to medium while another detective fired shots in the living room, front yard and near the front gate.  It was a 22, I.E. not quite the boom of say a 45 or 357 but I still have to wonder.  It just seems strange that none of the murderers would have at least looked out back, and alt least seen a light on across the pool.  Was Garretson writing letters in the dark?  Watson supposedly knew the layout, he'd been there before, wouldn't he have somebody check out back.  Manson had supposedly been sent to the guest house when he came there looking for Melcher.

As for Helter Skelter being written in blood at one of the murder scenes I've begun to wonder if that wasn't just to confuse or throw the police off, a distraction.  Kind of like the eyeglasses that belonged to no one.

Edited August 19, 2019 by Ron Bulman

[Anthony Thorne]

Asian bashing would seem a bit odd for Tarantino, given that he's, just off the top of my head, recorded video introductions for Takeshi Kitano's films, paid homage to the LADY SNOWBLOOD movies, lifted Ringo Lam's CITY ON FIRE plot direct for RESERVOIR DOGS, encouraged Chow Yun Fat to work with Miramax, and filled the KILL BILL films with elements of Japanese pop culture. But who knows - I haven't seen the film yet and will eventually but am not rushing to do so.

[Cliff Varnell]

15 minutes ago, David Andrews said:

I believe that the Nuel Emmons book that Cliff favors, Manson In His Own Words, has Manson copping to going to Cielo later that night.

Indeed.  Said he went with an unnamed member of the Family to wipe prints.

[Cliff Varnell]

7 minutes ago, Anthony Thorne said:

Asian bashing would seem a bit odd for Tarantino, given that he's, just off the top of my head, recorded video introductions for Takeshi Kitano's films, paid homage to the LADY SNOWBLOOD movies, lifted Ringo Lam's CITY ON FIRE plot direct for RESERVOIR DOGS, encouraged Chow Yun Fat to work with Miramax, and filled the KILL BILL films with elements of Japanese pop culture. But who knows - I haven't seen the film yet and will eventually but am not rushing to do so.

That's how I feel.  I've let too many spoilers cross my screen.  I'll probably wait for it to come on cable.

Is a half-Asian Sadie Atkins getting flame-thrown any different than Adolph Hitler getting gunned down in a Paris cinema?

Tarantino makes neo-exploitation entertainments, not historically significant docu-dramas.

 

[Cliff Varnell]

37 minutes ago, Joseph McBride said:

That's a savvy review by Jim DiEugenio of the vile Tarantino

film. I might add that the part-Asian actress who is burned alive

with the flamethrower is playing Susan Atkins, the most evil

of the Manson girls.

Bingo!

37 minutes ago, Joseph McBride said:

 

My film critic friend Jonathan Rosenbaum (whose

book MOVIE WARS: HOW HOLLYWOOD AND THE MEDIA

CONSPIRE TO LIMIT WHAT FILMS WE CAN SEE coined the term "media-industrial complex")

refers to the underlying metaphorical agenda of the Tarantino film as "napalming the hippies."

Casting a part-Asian actress as Atkins reinforces that connection, which

is not even subtle in the film, with its blanket aspersions on hippies by

traditional Hollywood characters and its mockery of Bruce Lee, etc.  Another

reason this theme is disturbing is that the agenda behind the murders

themselves (on the part of US government agencies involved, probably including the CIA

and Army Intelligence) may well have been to discredit the hippie and antiwar movements.

Manson had no connection to the anti-war movement. 

The original center of the hippie counter-culture -- the Haight-Ashbury -- was an amphetamine infested hellhole by the summer of '69.

Did Manson make his living getting help from the CIA and Army intelligence -- or was he a male prostitute who sold his ass for acid, cash and grass?

 

Edited August 19, 2019 by Cliff Varnell

[Joseph McBride]

Read CHAOS. I never said Manson was connected with the antiwar movement.

There's such emotion and denial in the discourse surrounding this film -- it taps a nerve, and

not for good reasons. And as often happens in discussions of controversial

topics today, people chime in who haven't seen the film or read the book(s) in question. 

It's easier to opine that way, and it makes it much easier to be snarky rather than serious.

Edited August 19, 2019 by Joseph McBride

[Cliff Varnell]

25 minutes ago, Joseph McBride said:

Read CHAOS.  Is tghis Guardian review accurate?

 

Maybe.  Into the Nightmare is higher on my to-read list.😎

Is this Guardian review accurate?

The CIA becomes involved when O’Neill starts to wonder why Manson’s parole officers were so lax in the years before 1969, allowing him to decamp to San Francisco. It turns out that while living in the psychedelic gulch of Haight-Ashbury, Manson may have been used as a guinea pig or lab rat by a bent doctor who recommended LSD to the government as a means of mind control that could penetrate the heads of informants or prepare so-called Manchurian candidates for service abroad as spies or assassins. Back in Los Angeles, did Manson employ the same methods to programme his murderous surrogates?

As it develops, O’Neill’s tale embroils an increasingly stellar cast of accomplices or enablers. There’s even a walk-on by Doris Day, the embodiment of the sanitised America ravaged by Manson. Day’s son, Terry Melcher, used her beach house to host orgies for a club of priapic buddies known as “the Golden Penetrators”; Manson, a wannabe rock star, supplied groupies to the revellers in exchange for a promised recording contract with a label Melcher managed for his mother.</q>

Quote

I never said Manson was connected with the antiwar movement.

Then how could he be groomed to discredit the anti-war movement?    Does O'Neill explain this?

Quote

There's such emotion and denial in the discourse surrounding this film -- it taps a nerve, and

not for good reasons. And as often happens in discussions of controversial

topics today, people chime in who haven't seen the film or read the book(s) in question. 

It's easier to opine that way, and it makes it much easier to be snarky rather than serious.

Some of us are choosy how we spend our book/movie money.

Have you read Manson In His Own Words yet?

Edited August 19, 2019 by Cliff Varnell

[David Andrews]

52 minutes ago, Joseph McBride said:

Read CHAOS. I never said Manson was connected with the antiwar movement.

There's such emotion and denial in the discourse surrounding this film -- it taps a nerve, and

not for good reasons. And as often happens in discussions of controversial

topics today, people chime in who haven't seen the film or read the book(s) in question. 

It's easier to opine that way, and it makes it much easier to be snarky rather than serious.

Seriously, let's all just leave the film go.  It doesn't satisfy our interests or agendas, and it wasn't meant to.  Rehashing it just keeps us from other Manson business.

Edited August 19, 2019 by David Andrews

[David Andrews]

Is this Guardian review accurate?

The CIA becomes involved when O’Neill starts to wonder why Manson’s parole officers were so lax in the years before 1969, allowing him to decamp to San Francisco. It turns out that while living in the psychedelic gulch of Haight-Ashbury, Manson may have been used as a guinea pig or lab rat by a bent doctor who recommended LSD to the government as a means of mind control that could penetrate the heads of informants or prepare so-called Manchurian candidates for service abroad as spies or assassins. Back in Los Angeles, did Manson employ the same methods to programme his murderous surrogates?

As it develops, O’Neill’s tale embroils an increasingly stellar cast of accomplices or enablers. There’s even a walk-on by Doris Day, the embodiment of the sanitised America ravaged by Manson. Day’s son, Terry Melcher, used her beach house to host orgies for a club of priapic buddies known as “the Golden Penetrators”; Manson, a wannabe rock star, supplied groupies to the revellers in exchange for a promised recording contract with a label Melcher managed for his mother.</q>

 

This is accurate, though O'Neill misses a brass ring when he fails to associate Jolyon West with Sirhan in the RFK case, in an investigation that thus goes nowhere.  Other important investigations into MKULTRA-style personalities associated with Manson get better treatment, and are worth reading.  O'Neill's association of CIA and LAPD is also seriously innocent of relevant details of the RFK case coverup.  That said - there's still a lot to appreciate and be informed by in this mixed bag of a book. 

It's here, it's the only one this year, it's the only one in some time to go as far as it does, and it deserves a place in the Manson literature.  Recommended, with the noted reservations.  I wish the author good luck, but also wish for more.

Edited August 19, 2019 by David Andrews

[Ron Bulman]

1 hour ago, Joseph McBride said:

Read CHAOS. I never said Manson was connected with the antiwar movement.

There's such emotion and denial in the discourse surrounding this film -- it taps a nerve, and

not for good reasons. And as often happens in discussions of controversial

topics today, people chime in who haven't seen the film or read the book(s) in question. 

It's easier to opine that way.

Well Dern it.  I should keep reading, ignore this site and finish the book!  Your right of course, again, regarding Manson and the antiwar movement in particular.  If he was involved in anything it was quashing the antiwar movement.  That's a big if, but if so I'd guess he didn't know or didn't realize the depth of whoever might have been directing him.  Reeve Whitson is interesting to say the least.  Joe the barber being called by Baron of the Mob "before anyone knew about it" and Baron knowing or being affiliated with General Curtis Lemay is suspicious in itself.  But Whitson calling Hatami an hour and a half before the maid found the bodies is really interesting.  Especially considering "the most sinister of his friends was Otto Skorzeny and his wife.  Did Whitson go back to the scene with Charlie to stage it, re arrange the bodies, and drop off the glasses?

 

Edited August 19, 2019 by Ron Bulman

[Cliff Varnell]

12 minutes ago, Ron Bulman said:

Well Dern it.  I should keep reading, ignore this site and finish the book!  Your right of course, again, regarding Manson and the antiwar movement in particular.  If he was involved in anything it was quashing the antiwar movement.  That's a big if, but if so I'd guess he didn't know or didn't realize the depth of whoever might have been directing him. 

What's the proof the T/L murders quashed the anti-war movement?

Dis-crediting the counter-culture (Altamont + Manson charging) in early December '69 didn't have any impact on the anti-war movement, which transcended the hippies.

The T/L murders occurred one week before Woodstock; the changing of Manson et al occurred three days after Altamont.

I find it hard to believe the CIA/military intel could have anticipated/coordinated these events.

 

Edited August 19, 2019 by Cliff Varnell

[Ron Bulman]

4 minutes ago, Cliff Varnell said:

What's the proof the T/L murders quashed the anti-war movement?

Dis-crediting the counter-culture (Altamont + Manson charging) didn't have had any impact on the anti-war movement, which transcended the hippies.

The T/L murders occurred one week before Woodstock; the changing of Manson et al occurred three days after Altamont.

I find it hard to believe the CIA/military intel could have anticipated/coordinated these events.,

 

They didn't quash it, but that May have been the intent.  The CIA/military didn't coordinate Woodstock or Altamont.  But after the T/L murders, Altamont and Kent State the protests did die down.

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=four+dead+in+ohio&&view=detail&mid=D494CD0FE83D62C1127CD494CD0FE83D62C1127C&&FORM=VDRVRV