Chaos : Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties (9780316529211)

by O'Neill, Tom; Piepenbring, Dan (CON)

  7 “their potential for violence”: Quoted in Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the Press (London: Verso, 1999), 69.

  8 tripped on acid: Martin A. Lee and Bruce Shlain, Acid Dreams: The CIA, LSD, and the Sixties Rebellion (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1985), 223.

  9 arrange for the bloodshed themselves: Jack Olson, Last Man Standing: The Tragedy and Triumph of Geronimo Pratt (New York: Doubleday, 2000), 45.

  10 “power to determine the destiny”: Stephen Shames and Bobby Seale, Power to the People: The World of the Black Panthers (New York: Abrams, 2016), 12.

  11 Newton shot and killed: Newton was convicted of voluntary manslaughter in 1968 and sentenced to two to fifteen years in prison. An appellate court decision later reversed the conviction.

  12 a seventeen-year-old Panther was killed: While awaiting trial on attempted murder charges, Cleaver fled to Cuba. He returned from foreign exile in 1978 and pleaded guilty to a lesser charge in exchange for a sentence of 1,200 hours of community service.

  13 gunfights led to four Panther deaths: Three were killed by the LAPD on August 5, 1968, and one on October 5, 1968. See Edward Jay Epstein, “The Black Panthers and the Police: A Pattern of Genocide?,” The New Yorker, Feb. 13, 1971.

  14 suspected of being a snitch: Paul Bass and Douglas W. Rae, Murder in the Model City: The Black Panthers, Yale, and the Redemption of a Killer (New York: Basic Books, 2009), 20–34.

  15 a “hate-type organization”: James E. McKeown and Frederick Inglebrit Tietze, The Changing Metropolis (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1971), 86.

  16 the personal bodyguard for Fred Hampton: Much has been written about the murder of Fred Hampton, but nothing as thorough as Jeffrey Haas’s The Assassination of Fred Hampton: How the FBI and the Chicago Police Murdered a Black Panther (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2011), from which most of the information about Hampton has been taken.

  17 a small FBI field office in Media: Betty Medsger, The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret F.B.I. (New York: Knopf, 2014).

  18 only in 2014 did they reveal themselves: Ibid.

  19 “hastened the growth of a vine”: James Bovard, Terrorism and Tyranny: Trampling Freedom, Justice, and Peace to Rid the World of Evil (New York: St. Martin’s, 2015), 187.

  20 “injury or death to targets”: Associated Press, “Black Panthers Affected,” New York Times, May 6, 1976.

  21 “a staggering range of targets”: Church Committee, book 3, COINTELPRO: The FBI’s Covert Action Programs Against American Citizens, April 23, 1976, 19, 11, 15.

  22 exploits in Los Angeles: Ibid., 35, 58, 64, 67.

  23 Black Student Union meeting: Olson, Last Man Standing, 223–24.

  24 “The Los Angeles Division”: Church Committee, 3:189.

  25 “the bloodshed that occurred”: Ibid.

  26 “carnage as a positive development”: Ibid., 3:192.

  27 flirting with other women: Ibid., 3:158; Richard Gid Powers, Broken: The Troubled Past and Uncertain Future of the FBI (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004), 246.

  28 “a fraud, demagogue, and scoundrel”: William C. Sullivan to Alan H. Belmont, Jan. 8, 1964, FOIA no. 77-56944-19; Church Committee, 3:136.

  29 “Will it get us what we want?”: Church Committee, 3:135.

  30 “responsibilities to the American people”: Statement of Clarence M. Kelley, Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Cong. Rec., House of Representatives, Feb. 4, 1975, 2247.

  31 “simply because they are Negroes”: Joshua Bloom, Waldo E. Martin Jr., and Waldo E. Martin, Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015), 202.

  32 Hollywood’s liberal whites: [Redacted name], Field Agent, SAC, Los Angeles, to, Director, FBI, Nov. 29, 1968, quoted in Churchill and Vander Wall, COINTELPRO Papers, 132.

  33 under FBI surveillance: For Jane Fonda, see ibid., 159, 212, 214; Church Committee, 3:209. For Cass Elliot, see FBI File 62-5-38112, cited in Jon Johnson, Make Your Own Kind of Music: A Career Retrospective of Cass Elliot (Detroit: Music Archives Press, 1987), 99–124. For Warren Beatty, see Paul Young, L.A. Exposed: Strange Myths and Curious Legends in the City of Angels (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2002), 34.

  34 outspoken civil rights activist: LAPD First Homicide Investigation Progress Report, DR 69-059-593, 27. It reads, “In the past year, Abigail had been an active participant in Negro social work. She sponsored and attended rallies in the Watts area and is reported to have been an active participant in civil rights activities in the San Francisco bay area. This contention is borne out by several civil rights placards found at the Cielo address.”

  35 “The Peace and Freedom Party”: Churchill and Vander Wall, COINTELPRO Papers, 132.

  36 the framing of Gerard “Geronimo” Pratt: The information in this section is from Jack Olson’s Last Man Standing, unless otherwise noted.

  37 “the arrest of the militants”: Ibid., 231.

  38 “to serve the white man”: Vincent Bugliosi with Curt Gentry, Helter Skelter (New York: Norton, 1994), 303.

  39 “go pick the cotton”: Ibid., 330.

  40 planning an attack on him: William C. Gleason, Affidavit in Support of and Petition for Search Warrant, State of California, County of Los Angeles, no. 2029, Aug. 13, 1969, 6.

  41 with powerful telescopes: Ibid.; Bugliosi and Gentry, Helter Skelter, 344.

  42 Bernard “Lotsapoppa” Crowe: Bugliosi and Gentry, Helter Skelter, 372–73 (all Crowe information is taken from Helter Skelter, unless otherwise indicated).

  43 “speed along the race war”: Author interview with Vincent Bugliosi.

  44 Manson was already frightened: Bugliosi maintained that Manson began warning of an impending race war in February 1969 (Helter Skelter, 329).

  45 three more Panthers, one of them fatal: Olson, Last Man Standing, 225.

  46 infiltrate “subversive” groups and then “neutralize” them: Seymour Hersh, “Huge C.I.A. Operation Reported in U.S. Against Antiwar Forces, Other Dissidents in Nixon Years, New York Times, Dec. 22, 1974, 1, 26; Charles J. V. Murphy, “Assassination Plot That Failed,” Time, v. 105, Jun. 30, 1975, 28.

  47 born of Lyndon Johnson’s neurosis: Unless otherwise indicated, all the information in this section is taken from the Seth Rosenfeld 2002 investigative series, mentioned in the headnote to this chapter’s notes, or directly from the Rockefeller Commission.

  48 “bigger than My Lai”: William Egan Colby and Peter Forbath, Honorable Men: My Life in the CIA (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978), 15.

  49 Angleton resigned from the agency: Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA (New York: Anchor, 2007), 389.

  50 he ordered the destruction: Ibid., 375.

  51 Rockefeller, had worked with the CIA: Tad Szulc, “Why Rockefeller Tried to Cover Up the CIA Probe,” New York, Sept. 5, 1977. Szulc called the commission’s investigation “the most blatant cover-up since Watergate,” reporting that Vice President Rockefeller argued that “for national security reasons, it was not necessary for his commission to be told ‘everything.’”

  52 Gerald Ford fired him: Seymour Hersh, “Colby Says His Dismissal as CIA Chief Arose from His Cooperation in Domestic Spying Activities,” New York Times, Mar. 14, 1978, 12.

  53 “very much on its periphery”: Colby and Forbath, Honorable Men, 317.

  54 the New York Times revealed: Seymour Hersh, “CIA Reportedly Recruited Blacks for Surveillance of Panther Party,” New York Times, Mar. 17, 1978, A-1, 16.

  55 A longtime lieutenant with the LAPD: Herrmann retired on August 29, 1968, with the rank of lieutenant, according to my interview with a Public Information Officer in the LAPD Pensions and Retirement Office.

  56 he specialized in quelling insurgencies: William Drummond, “State Intelligence System: Stigma of a ‘Big Brother,’” Los Angeles Times, Mar. 18, 1970.

  57 predict violent outbreaks in cities: Charles Foley, “Reagan’s Plan to ‘Beat
Revolution,’” The Observer (London), May 17, 1970, 2.

  58 “genius,” praising his technical aptitude: Daryl F. Gates with Diane K. Shah, Chief: My Life in the LAPD (New York: Bantam, 1992), 163.

  59 yielded a collection of redacted documents: Eighty-three pages were released by the Washington, D.C., office of the FBI (FOIPA no. 0966502); a second request to the Los Angeles Field Office produced an additional thirty-eight pages (FOIPA no. 190-231795). Many of the redactions are preceded or followed by phrases like “project which was very sensitive in nature” or “Top Secret (The D.O.D. [Department of Defense] Clearances are still active).” One report revealed that Herrmann’s work for the White House Office of Science and Technology (at unspecified dates in the 1960s) was “so sensitive in nature” that the White House “was unable to provide any further information”—and the information that was provided to the FBI was then redacted by the agency. Other records revealed that Herrmann received his first “secret clearance” from the federal government on February 7, 1957. That was elevated to a “top secret security clearance” on April 16, 1965, by the Office of Security, Treasury Department (FOIPA no. 0966502).

  60 the company claimed that Herrmann never: FOIPA no. 0966502, July 21, 1972, 10.

  61 “neither confirm or deny”: CIA F-2002, 02097, March 7, 2003. I also received the same response from the CIA for records of the Systems Development Corporation (Systems Development Corporation, CIA FOIA F-2002-01413, Feb. 10, 2003: “Neither confirm nor deny any confidential or covert relationship…”), where, according to an article in the Honolulu Advertiser (“University Post Seen for Herrmann,” Mar. 26, 1971), Herrmann was “responsible for research, development and related activities connected with public order, counterinsurgency and security systems” between 1967 and 1971.

  62 training Thai police: FBI FOIPA no. 0966502; “University Post Seen for Herrmann”; CORDS Historical Working Group Files, NARA (National Archives), 1967–73, box 25, Folder—Pacification Task Force/General Correspondence, ARPA, DAHC04-69-C-0010.

  63 a scientific “advisor” to the army: CORDS Historical Working Group Files.

  64 CIA project called Phoenix: Unless otherwise indicated, the information in this section is from Douglas Valentine, The Phoenix Program (New York: William Morrow, 1990).

  65 “a set of programs”: Colonel Andrew R. Finlayson, USMC (Ret.), “A Retrospective on Counterinsurgency Operations: The Tay Ninh Provincial Reconnaissance Unit and Its Role in the Phoenix Program, 1969–70,” Central Intelligence Agency, Library (accessed via CIA website).

  66 a 1971 congressional investigation: Cong. Rec., Proceedings and Debates; Congress, vol. 117, pt. 4 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1971), 4240–49.

  67 the atrocities were the work of the Viet Cong: Ibid.

  68 “They wanted me to take charge”: Anthony B. Herbert, Herbert: The Making of a Soldier (New York: Hippocrene, 1982).

  69 “The good guys”: John Pilger, Heroes (Boston: South End Press, 2001), 258.

  70 prisoners were shot and their bodies burned: Cockburn and St. Clair, Whiteout, 210.

  71 later revealed as a CIA front: Seymour Hersh, Cover-up: The Army’s Secret Investigation of the Massacre at My Lai 4 (New York: Random House, 1972). Wrote Hersh, “By 1968, Phoenix Committees were set up in each of South Vietnam’s 44 provinces and directed by an agent from the CIA, who sometimes operated under cover as an employee of the Agency for International Development (AID).”

  72 he was a part of AID: CORDS Historical Working Group Files. In addition, Herrmann told two interviewers that he went to Thailand for AID in 1967: see James Wrightson, “Computer Replaces Spy-in-Street for Antiriot Sleuthing,” Sacramento Bee, Aug. 2, 1970, and “University Post Seen for Herrmann.”

  73 nicknamed “Blowtorch Bob”: Tim Weiner, “Robert Komer, 78, Figure in Vietnam, Dies,” New York Times, April 12, 2000.

  74 behind the program’s notorious kill quotas: Valentine, Phoenix Program, 98.

  75 series of “research” gigs: FOIPA no. 0966502; FOIPA no. 190-231795.

  76 to prevent future outbreaks of violence: Ibid. (both); “University Post Seen for Herrmann.”

  77 the task force was hardly: Foley, “Reagan’s Plan to ‘Beat Revolution.’” (All the information in this section is taken from this article, unless otherwise indicated.)

  78 depicting him as a pig: “Big Pig on Campus” (SDS document), collection of Cindy Hancock.

  79 more circumspect interview: “Computer Replaces Spy-in-Street for Antiriot Sleuthing.”

  80 the CIA had “operatives”: Gaeton Fonzi, The Last Investigation (New York: Thunder’s Mouth, 1993), 239. Fonzi, an investigator for the House Select Committee on Assassinations (which in 1978 examined the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy), reported that the committee discovered a CIA operative had also infiltrated New Orleans DA Jim Garrison’s 1966 investigation and prosecution of Clay Shay, an alleged CIA operative, for the John F. Kennedy assassination. In her Farewell to Justice: Jim Garrison, JFK’s Assassination, and the Case That Should Have Changed History (Dulles, Va.: Potomac Books, 2007), Joan Mellen alleges that two Garrison investigators, William Martin and William C. Wood, were secretly contracted by the CIA to “sabotage” his prosecution.

  81 “one of the top agents”: R. Harris Smith, OSS: The Secret History of America’s First Central Intelligence Agency (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972), 18.

  82 the Office of Strategic Services: Ibid., 18; Office of Strategic Services, Declassified Files, Record Group no. 226, National Archives, College Park, Md.

  83 Trained in espionage and counterintelligence techniques: Office of Strategic Services, Declassified Files (multiple files); Steven Edington interview with Evelle Younger, “Evelle J. Younger: A Lifetime in Law Enforcement,” Oral History Program, Powell Library, University of California, Los Angeles, 1982, 6–7.

  84 becoming Los Angeles district attorney in 1964: John Balzar, “FBI: Ex-Atty. Gen. Evelle Younger Is Dead at 70,” Los Angeles Times, May 5, 1989.

  85 a friend of Governor Reagan: Ibid.; “Evelle J. Younger: A Lifetime,” 7–10.

  86 internal threats to the nation’s security: “Evelle J. Younger: A Lifetime,” 15–16, 17.

  87 “better training and equipment”: Steve Weissman, ed., Big Brother and the Holding Company: The World Behind Watergate (Palo Alto, Calif.: Ramparts, 1974), 29.

  88 “the General”: Balzar, “FBI: Ex-Atty. Gen.”

  89 absence of a black studies program: Ron Einstoss, “20 Found Guilty in Disturbances at Valley State,” Los Angeles Times, Nov. 19, 1969.

  90 deputy DA who tried the case: Ibid.

  91 Nor did his second in command: All the Compton information is from Lynn “Buck” Compton with Marcus Brotherton, Call of Duty: My Life Before During, and After the Band of Brothers (New York: Berkley Caliber, 2008) or from author interview with Lynn Compton. Compton also was an advisor to Herrmann’s Riots and Disorders Task Force, according to “California Council on Criminal Justice Records, 1968–74,” F3869, California State Archives, Sacramento, Feb. 7, 1969.

  92 role was “nonoperational”: “Computer Replaces Spy-in-Street for Antiriot Sleuthing.”

  93 next to a piece on the LAPD’s theory: Ron Einstoss, “Panther Killings Result of Power Play, Jury Told,” Los Angeles Times, Aug. 12, 1969; Lee Dye, “Police See ‘Copycat Killer’ in Slaying of Los Feliz Couple,” Los Angeles Times, Aug. 12, 1969.

  8. The Lawyer Swap

  1 ordered all three sets of slaughters: Stephen Kay, who joined the prosecution after the trial began, said as far as he knew there was never any thought to try the cases together, but he would’ve done it. “When you’re trying a conspiracy, you want as many cases as possible,” he explained. Hinman’s murder was also further “proof” of the Helter Skelter motive, Kay added; Manson wanted Hinman’s money to get the Family to the desert during “the race war.”

  2 a closed meeting with the judge: Bugliosi omit
s this episode from his book, mentioning only that the first Beausoleil trial ended in a hung jury because DeCarlo, “brought in at the last minute… hadn’t been a convincing witness” (Vincent Bugliosi with Curt Gentry, Helter Skelter [New York: Norton, 1994], 206–7). My account of the Beausoleil prosecution relies on interviews with Leon Salter and Ron Ross, the opposing attorneys, the trial transcript, and Jerry LeBlanc and Ivor Davis’s 5 to Die, which has the best rendering of the first Beausoleil trial (Los Angeles: Holloway House, 1970).

  3 already a convicted felon: United States v. DeCarlo et al., no. 37502-SD-Criminal, U.S. District Court, Southern District, March 28–June 30, 1967.

  4 facing new charges: DeCarlo, Case A058069, Los Angeles Superior Court Archives.

  5 “a long sword”: DeCarlo testimony, California v. Robert Beausoleil (I), A-057452.

  6 their daughter was in custody… Atkins agreed to speak: Guenther and Whiteley, LASO Supplementary Report, File 069-02378-1076-016, Arrested: Lutesinger, Atkins, Oct. 13, 1969.

  7 her role in the Tate–LaBianca murders: Bugliosi and Gentry, Helter Skelter, 117–30.

  8 “warm and sticky and nice”: Ibid., 126.

  9 On the evening of November 19: The information in this passage comes from ibid., 172–73.

  10 Atkins’s attorney was Gerald Condon: The account that follows is based on documents discovered in the files of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Office; the Los Angeles Superior Court Archives; the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office; the personal files of Paul LePage, the LAPD detective who supervised the LaBianca murder investigation (shared by his son, Paul LePage Jr.); the files of Mike McGann, the LAPD detective who worked the Tate investigation; as well as from interviews with Gerald Condon, F. Milton Condon (his brother, who assisted Gerald), and others, as noted.

  11 Beausoleil… was already represented: This public defender was Leon Salter.

  12 Condon was appointed on November 12: Susan Atkins, County of Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, Supplementary Report, Nov. 12, 1969.

  13 seven-page memo: “Hinman, Tate, et. [sic] al., LaBianca murder cases,” LASO Files. This document is undated and unsigned.