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

by Tom O'Neill

As usual, I was anxious to find some way to verify everything I’d heard. With Whitson, especially, my reporting had crossed the line into conspiratorial territory, and I would be hard-pressed to convert skeptics on the merits of my interviews alone. Of course, clandestine intelligence agents are exactly the sort of people who don’t leave a lot of paper behind, and Whitson, by all accounts, was so savvy that he didn’t need to take notes. I’d filed a Freedom of Information Act request (FOIA) with the CIA, asking for any information on him. Their response said that they could “neither confirm nor deny” Whitson’s connection to the agency. FOIA specialists told me that this is the closest one can get to confirmation that someone worked for the CIA.