Hypothesis #7—A joint task force consisting of the FBI, CIA and possibly others within American Intelligence groomed Charles Manson and Charles Watson to embark upon a series of assassinations to discredit both African Americans and the youth of the countercultural left, i.e. the hippies.

Argument for: Mae Brussell, whose research into the Manson case developed into this hypothesis, gave a number of tantalizing details suggesting the involvement of US Intel in the development of both Watson and Manson, and in positioning them to play the roles they were bound to play.

She primarily focused on two aspects of the Helter Skelter murders, namely the political/legal connections and the financial backing. The former included a number of high-profile people extending back to Manson’s brief stint at Boys Town. The latter featured questions regarding the mechanics of the operation itself, and who might have paid for it. (Details about the money issue here.)

Manson’s connection to various financial backers—among them Washington socialite Charlene Cafritz, Sandra Good and Dennis Wilson—gives us a glimpse of Mae’s concerns. The connections’ true importance lay beyond the mere channeling of funds to establishing the dominant narrative that would become the Manson legend. This story arc began with the ex-con hippie guru who had, in the matter of a few years, mastered the art of brainwashing, The tale also entails the epitome of the counterculture, a hippie commune whose hedonism extended far beyond sex, drugs and rock & roll to include orgiastic murder and mayhem.

If the point were to discredit the counterculture, and the New Left (as the FBI and CIA referred to it) that it had attached itself to, then it would be paramount to (a) set Charlie up as the focal point of a stereotypical (at least to the casual observer) commune; and (b) establish some kind of bonafides with youth culture, a more challenging task given Manson’s advanced age (more than double that of slippies Dianne Lake and Ruth Ann Morehouse). Manson’s musicianship coud have solved both problems. In combination with his patented prison spiel laced with Scientology and other occult influences, Manson's looming stardom lured women, and some men, into a growing fold of admirers, who regarded Manson as Christ reincarnate, a savior seasoned by a hard, difficult life, but who still had a tender, sensitive side. Secondly, music became Charlie’s main entryway into the counterculture, in the end solidly connecting his legacy with two of the most iconic bands of their time.

It’s evident in the Beach Boys’ recording of “Cease to Exist” (or “Never Learn not to Love”) that the group put a solid effort into realizing Manson’s work in a mainstream venue. Moreover, they actively promoted the song on television.

Figure 1. The Beach Boys on The Mike Douglas Show



Charlie had not only Dennis Wilson and the other Beach Boys within his stable of contacts, but legitimate and highly esteemed music managers, executives and producers, among them Phil Kaufman, Gregg Jacobson, and Terry Melcher. While these connections are well known and documented, Manson's connections to some celebrities (e.g. Angela Lansbury**) are documented but relatively obscure. Some (e.g. Nancy Sinatra) are claimed by Manson, but denied by others. A number of relationships (e.g. Cass Elliot) are plausible, but rumored from many different sides. But even if only a fraction of the rumored acquaintanceships were true, then one is still left with a dazzling array of stars who somehow made their way into Manson’s orbit.

“Cease to Exist” established Manson as a somewhat legitimate part of the music scene, and his relationship to the Beach Boys came under considerable scrutiny in the years following the murders. But at the time of the trial, Bugliosi, Stephen Kay and the rest of the prosecution team developed a more intimate connection between Manson and the counterculture’s rock & roll soundtrack.

The Beatles song “Helter Skelter,” a metaphorical reference to the playground ride known to Americans as a ‘slide,’ began to dominate discussions of Manson. According to most sources, Charlie used the title of that track to describe what he believed, due to his OTO and Process influences, to be an imminent race war.** But the links between Manson’s beliefs allegedly went far beyond that one song, incorporating as they did virtually the entire White Album, and spilling into the group’s previous work and personal history.

Basing a motive on bizarre interpretations of Beatle lyrics might have been laughable in 1968. But the prosecution caught a tremendous break. During the fall of 1969, after the murders but before the arrests, the international public received a crash course, as it were, in the misinterpretation of Beatles’ lyrics. The Paul-Is-Dead rumor, prominent news at the time, demonstrated how easily intelligent, psychologically normal people could come to the most outlandish understandings based on innuendo and imagination. More to the point, the whole incident depicted rock and roll, the music of the counterculture, as somewhat ghoulish, or unwholesome. By the time the Manson trials commenced, the songs of the Fab Four began to seem even darker, as prosecutors and fans drew their own parallels between the “family” and the White Album.

More generally, the press constantly referred to the Mansonites as hippies, despite the group’s insistence that they weren’t. They despised hippies, and referred to themselves as ‘slippies,’ for they had slipped off the mainstream of society. The press regarded the slippies’ street antics during the trial with a bit of smug humor, as Fromme, Share and others crawled along the sidewalks, carved X’s into their foreheads, and shaved their scalps. Slowly by slowly, contemporary accounts began to define the group as under the thumb of Manson’s hypnotic spell—a comforting conclusion, actually, for it reduced all the id of the group to the evil of a single individual, namely Manson. Eventually, writers started using the term “family” in reference to them (hence the reason why I always spell it in lower case and add quotation marks).

By trial’s end, the false, but dominant narrative had formed: fiends like Manson preyed on the counterculture because of the latter’s naiveté. That made the youth movement not just dangerous to the establishment, but to everyone. As Bugliosi and others noticed years later associations to the counterculture went from innocent to villainous.

While the effect upon public perception of the counterculture might have weighed most heavily in the mind of Mae Brussell, the connections between Manson, Watson, and important people outside of the entertainment industry deserved considerable mention.

First off, Manson, a prisoner actively contesting his parole in 1966, received a visit from George Shibley, a noted lawyer with a track record of high-profile cases: from the Zoot Suit Murder to his representation of Sirhan Sirhan. At the time of Manson’s impending release, he had a rather comfortable legal practice in Beverly Hills, representing a host of wealthy clients, among them powerful oil companies. Manson, meanwhile, was simply another ex-con up for parole. Moreover, Manson didn’t even want the parole, and attempted to fight it. Mae posed the question of why would someone that high up the food chain take the time to consult with Manson pro bono, since Manson had neither fame nor infamy in 1966.

Once Manson got out, his parole officers treated him with kid gloves. Charlie missed some of his parole appointments with Samuel Barrett (for most people, a single missed appointment would land them back in the slam for the remainder of their sentence). Barrett hardly held him to task, and instead allowed him to build a small criminal empire out in the desert. And Manson’s previous parole officer (or someone who looks exactly like him and has a similar name) played guardian angel by taking Manson’s son, Michael Valentine Brunner, into foster care after the arrest of his mother for indecent exposure, and then returning the child to his parents upon Brunner’s release.

Manson wasn’t the only person to receive attention from high-powered, well-connected Beverly Hills attorneys. David DeLoach, a powerful man within California GOP circles, and his partner Perry Walshin risked jail time to defend Watson. More interestingly, they claimed at the time of Watson’s arrest that they had had approximately forty consultations with the young Texan. Again, Mae wondered why such prominent attorneys would defend Watson, especially since he had nothing more serious than a single marijuana possession charge against him. Moreover, high-powered attorneys don’t come cheap. Who paid these guys?

Bugliosi adequately documented the extraordinary legal actions that allowed the family to grow and prosper. But while he would attribute these to a series of coincidences, or sloppy law enforcement, Mae would see more a deliberate and systemic attempt to shape a Manson story into one that benefited defense contractors and everyone else threatened by peace and domestic harmony. And there were other events, some involving Manson, some not, that further attacked the reputation of the counterculture in the fall of 1969, some of which had more direct ties to Intel.

A week after authorities charged Manson and his associates for the Tate-LaBianca murders, rioting erupted during the Rolling Stones’ performance at the Altamont Free Concert. Melvin Belli, Jack Ruby’s former attorney, arranged for the Hells Angels to provide security, for reasons unknown. After all, the Angels are noted shitkickers, not peacekeepers. The Angels' unsuitability and bellicosity resulted in the death of four of the concertgoers, one of whom drowned in a puddle of water, and two who got run over by a car. As chronicled in the movie Gimmie Shelter, a number of Hells Angels pummeled Meredith Hunter to death in full view of the band and cameras. Media coverage of the incident left an impression of the counterculture that contradicted the peaceful proceedings at Woodstock four months earlier. And with the sudden thrust of Manson into primetime news, the associations between hippies and wanton, uncontrollable violence became axiomatic to many.

Adding fuel to the fire, Ed Butler, propagated an op-ed piece in August 1969 titled “Did Hate Kill Tate,” in which he blamed the deaths on the Black Panthers for the crimes. Writing for organs owned by right-wing razor magnate and Nixon supporter Patrick Frawley, Butler had previously recorded Lee Oswald’s declaration for the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, an organization in which he was the only member. Mae saw Butler as an agent provocateur:

Ed Butler worked with Lee Harvey Oswald. So it’s interesting that in 1969, the first person who has an opinion on who murdered these seven people would be Ed Butler....

Now this is what we call provocateurs. Agent provocateurs. Clandestine [unintelligible] where somebody is the first one in, and he’s tied to all these other people and links, and he is taking your brain, now, and your gray matter, in the event they don’t have a suspect....

So you see that Ed Butler has you in the palm of his hand. If they don’t have a suspect, it is—you’re going to think that the blacks come into fancy residential homes, and massacre these lovely white people.

Mae went on to point out that Watson et al deliberately left the LaBiancas’ credit cards in a black section of Los Angeles, so that police would suspect the Panthers of committing these killings. She believed that in the months before the public had a face to go with the murders, speculation such as Butler’s tried to condition the public to accept the arrest and conviction of innocent blacks--just in case the authorities continued to protect Manson. Indeed, this might have been a reality had Susan Atkins not told all to Veronica Graham.

Other links between the Tate-LaBianca murders and the JFK assassination abound. Attorney Joseph Ball, who once consulted for the Warren Commission, also consulted with Susan Atkins immediately after police charged her with the Tate-LaBianca murders. Writer Lawrence Schiller also worked with Atkins as a co-author for their 1970 book The Killing of Sharon Tate. Atkins reportedly received a $150,000 advance provided that she turn state’s evidence.  With an introduction by Marshal Singer, The Killing of Sharon Tate honed the Helter Skelter scenario. Three years earlier, Schiller, then working for Capitol Records***, recorded Jack Ruby’s (most likely fraudulent) “confession” two days before the nightclub owner’s death.

Mae found the overlapping of personnel between the JFK case and the Manson case almost bizarre beyond words. Ball, Schiller and Butler, who really seem to have worked some type of PSYOPS angle for the Kennedy assassination, have all the markings of Intel. For her, the fact that these men played critical roles in this case raised red flags ultimately leading to the conclusion that Manson was a creation, a patsy to take the fall for the real killer, Tex Watson, who obviously received some combat training (after all, he instructed the women, and carried out what police would describe as a “paramilitary style ambush” mostly by himself) despite having never served in the armed forces.


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*Lansbury’s thirteen-year-old daughter, Didi, frequently hung out with the family, and had written permission to do so. Didi claimed that she left after witnessing Manson’s rape of a child younger than herself, presumably the daughter of former part-time slippie Dennis Rice, but the particulars of this event are disputed.

**In a 2008 interview with MSNBC, ex-slippie Catherine Share disputed the often-quoted assertion that Manson referred to the cataclysmic race war as “Helter Skelter.” If she is correct, then this provides yet another example of someone dragging the Beatles’ into an association with the Tate-LaBianca murders.

***Both the Beach Boys and the Beatles recorded for Capitol/EMI