The Manson case first reached my family through a cup of soda pop behind a fast-food counter. My brother came home angry after a boy he knew as “Charlie's kid” poured soup into his drink.
Later, while working at my first job, a coworker loaned me Ed Sanders's The Family and filled my next few evenings with stories about Charles Manson, his followers, and the murders that stained the country.
In the public record, that Wisconsin thread leads to Michael Brunner, born Valentine Michael Manson, the son of Manson and Mary Brunner, one of his earliest followers.
Brunner was raised by his maternal grandparents in Eau Claire, Wis., after his mother's life with Manson and later imprisonment left him with a name no child should have to carry.
Now Congress has pulled the old nightmare back into daylight. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), chairwoman of the House Oversight Committee's Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets, held a June 30 hearing titled “Mind Control and Accountability: Uncovering the Truth of the CIA's MKUltra Project.”
Witnesses included Stephen Kinzer, senior fellow in international and public affairs at Brown University, and Tom O'Neill, investigative journalist and author of Chaos: Charles Mansion, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties. From Newsmax:
Task Force Chair Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., said the American people deserve a full accounting of the program, accusing the CIA of illegally experimenting on U.S. citizens before destroying evidence to conceal its activities.
She also revealed the agency is declassifying newly discovered MKUltra documents involving a forgery program.
O'Neill, author of "Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties," testified he uncovered correspondence between CIA chemist Sidney Gottlieb and psychiatrist Dr. Louis "Jolly" West after reviewing hundreds of boxes of West's papers.
According to O'Neill, the documents describe proposals involving LSD, hypnosis, memory manipulation, and behavioral modification.
He testified that West later operated near a San Francisco clinic where Charles Manson and members of his group received free medical treatment in 1967, shortly before Manson emerged as the leader of the cult responsible for the Tate-LaBianca murders.
Still, O'Neill stopped short of claiming he had proven Manson was an intelligence asset.
MKUltra was real, not campfire chatter for true-crime addicts. The CIA created the program in 1953 to study mind-control techniques during the Cold War. Luna said the project subjected Americans, prisoners, hospital patients, veterans, and others to LSD, electroshock, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, and psychological torture without their knowledge or consent. She also said CIA Director Richard Helms ordered MKUltra files destroyed in 1973.
O'Neill's testimony brought Manson into the room. He told lawmakers that psychiatrist Louis Jolyon “Jolly” West came to the Haight-Ashbury Free Medical Clinic in San Francisco in 1967 to recruit subjects for a study. Manson and his growing group came through the same clinic for free medical care. Newsmax:
He also suggested psychiatrist West's involvement with Jack Ruby, Lee Harvey Oswald's killer, kept Ruby from publicly telling his story.
Those allegations have not been confirmed by official government investigations.
Kinzer, author of "Poisoner in Chief," described MKUltra as one of the CIA's darkest chapters, alleging it involved prisoners, psychiatric patients, and unwitting civilians subjected to LSD, hypnosis, and psychological experimentation.
He testified that CIA Director Richard Helms ordered most MKUltra records destroyed in 1973, leaving only scattered documents that later surfaced through Freedom of Information Act requests.
The hearing also examined allegations that people may have died during overseas MKUltra experiments and that additional records could shed light on unresolved questions, although historian David Barrett cautioned against expecting a "smoking gun" from the newly discovered files.
Luna pledged the task force will continue pressing the CIA to release additional records, saying lawmakers intend to determine the full scope of the program and ensure the American people have the complete record.
O'Neill said he couldn't prove West and Manson were ever in the same room.
A careful person has to stop there; suspicion can point toward a locked door, but it can't pretend to be the key.
But where's the fun in stopping there?
Manson was a killer who ordered other people to butcher strangers: Sharon Tate, eight and a half months pregnant, died along with four others in the Polanski home. The next night, Leno and Rosemary LaBianca were murdered.
Nothing about CIA secrecy softens those crimes or turns Manson into a victim.
Secrecy has a price. When government agents drug people, hide records, destroy files, and wait half a century before telling the whole story, people will fill the silence.
Joe Rogan, host of The Joe Rogan Experience, helped push O'Neill's theory into a much larger audience in 2020. The question keeps spreading because the CIA already admitted enough to make disbelief harder than it should be.
There's no proof Manson was an MKUltra asset. California prison officials said he died of natural causes in 2017. The CIA has disputed claims tying Manson to the program, but CIA Director John Ratcliffe now leads an agency still carrying old baggage from men who treated Americans like lab material. If new MKUltra records exist, they should come out clean, complete, and unredacted wherever possible.
The Manson story may fade one day, but another door keeps cracking open, and the old darkness breathes again. A free country can survive ugly facts; it suffers far more when powerful men decide the people can't be trusted with the truth.
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