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

by Tom O'Neill

Now I could tie West to the highest, most clandestine echelons of the Central Intelligence Agency. I could tie him to both of the Smiths, the authority figures from Manson’s lost year in San Francisco. And through his efforts to open the Violence Center, I could tie him to bigwigs in the LAPD and the DA’s office who’d helped to prosecute Manson. But I could never prove that he’d examined Manson himself—or even that they’d ever met. Nor had West taken part in Manson’s trial. His absence was conspicuous. One of the world’s leading experts on brainwashing and cults, he was hardly averse to publicity. He’d appeared as a witness many times before. Manson was tried in his own backyard; the proceedings were international news. Yet West went nowhere near them.