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

by Tom O'Neill

Within a year, I’d interviewed more than five hundred people: movie-industry players, friends and relatives of the victims, witnesses, journalists, cops, attorneys, judges, suspects, and hangers-on. My one-bedroom apartment in Venice had become a hoarder’s nest of Manson ephemera. I installed shelves above my desk to house a growing collection of books and binders—I bought the thickest ones I could find—with labels like “News Clips—1967–1969,” “Timelines,” “Trial Transcripts,” “Questions—Witnesses,” and so on. They multiplied as if they were breeding. When my friends visited, they’d stop in their tracks upon entering my apartment and cast worried glances my way. Above my computer was a whiteboard with “MANSON” circled in the center. Springing from his name like a psychedelic spiderweb were lines in erasable ink, leading to associates of the Family who’d never been publicly identified before, Hollywood drug dealers, and other names that had seldom been uttered in three decades.