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

by Tom O'Neill

When it came time to decide on the death penalty, though, the defense called a series of psychiatric experts who disagreed. Manson had brainwashed his followers, they said, and those followers couldn’t be culpable for the murders. LSD had given him a portal to the most labile parts of the subconscious. The scientists explained how acid could break down and reconstruct someone’s personality—how a sober “guide,” intended to lead someone peacefully through the many hours of an acid trip, could abuse the role, inserting violent ideals and beliefs into their minds. With repetition and reinforcement, these beliefs took root and flourished even when the followers were sober. Throw in other coercive techniques like sensory deprivation and hypnosis—both of which Manson embraced—and it was possible to rewrite someone’s moral code such that she acknowledged no such thing as right or wrong. Dr. Joel Fort, a research psychiatrist who’d opened the nation’s first LSD treatment center, was one of the defense witnesses. He believed that Manson had used LSD to produce “a new pattern of behavior for the girls,” resulting in “a totally neutral system which saw death or killing in a completely different way than a normal person sees it,” free of “social concern, compassion, [and] moral values.”