CHAOS: Tom O'Neill's book on the Charles Manson murders

Niall

Niall

Administrator
Administrator
Moderator
FOTCM Member
This is the book I referred to at the beginning of the show:

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


Brilliant book. It's been mentioned on the forum before, and we published a review about it on Sott when it came out in 2018 or so, but it deserves its own thread. It's similar to Dave McGowan's Laurel Canyon series, only written by someone more serious and conscientious about his research.
 
Niall said:
This is the book I referred to at the beginning of the show:

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


Brilliant book. It's been mentioned on the forum before, and we published a review about it on Sott when it came out in 2018 or so, but it deserves its own thread. It's similar to Dave McGowan's Laurel Canyon series, only written by someone more serious and conscientious about his research.
Click to expand...
Seeing this book being mentioned on Candace Owen's show I finally decided to buy it and started reading. I've now read ca 20% of it, and I agree with others who've commented on it that it's brilliantly written, a page-turner and a 'nail biter' for sure! And one is amazed about to what length and how much effort and time O'neill put into his decades long investigation, that's some reporter! Owen is right in saying that the book is cumpulsory reading to understand how the 'evil underworld' works and behaves.

So, I did a search for the book on the forum and Niall's post was the latest on it. I guess the dedicated thread has not yet been created? At least, my search didn't give any results. :read:
 
aragorn said:
Seeing this book being mentioned on Candace Owen's show I finally decided to buy it and started reading. I've now read ca 20% of it, and I agree with others who've commented on it that it's brilliantly written, a page-turner and a 'nail biter' for sure! And one is amazed about to what length and how much effort and time O'neill put into his decades long investigation, that's some reporter! Owen is right in saying that the book is cumpulsory reading to understand how the 'evil underworld' works and behaves.

So, I did a search for the book on the forum and Niall's post was the latest on it. I guess the dedicated thread has not yet been created? At least, my search didn't give any results. :read:
Click to expand...
Agree with everything you wrote! I also bought the book last week and finished it the other day; a real page turner.
It´s amazing how much information O´Neill managed to dig up after all this time.

I´ve read about COINTELPRO, but now I realized that I knew only a small bit of MKULTRA project.

At moments, this all Manson thing reminded me of Andrew Tate and his "enterprise" on OnlyFans and how he snatches those women and how he lures them in, then isolates them and eventually how he makes them do what he wants.
 
aragorn said:
So, I did a search for the book on the forum and Niall's post was the latest on it. I guess the dedicated thread has not yet been created? At least, my search didn't give any results.
Click to expand...
It was discussed a bit on the Joe Rogan thread after he interviewed O'Neill - Joe Rogan

And a SOTT article - Joe Rogan interviews award-winning investigative journalist Tom O'Neill about his mindblowing book on Charles Manson and the CIA

It's one of the best books written in the last 10-15 years.
 
I read it recently as well and also thought it was a real page turner. The guy has a knack for storytelling and it helps that he had such an interesting story to tell. Good on him for struggling through decades of obsession and strife to bring out all that he could.

Even though he's not able to get smoking gun evidence for a lot of things, there's enough smoke coming from particular directions to get a rough idea about how it all went down. There's just so many unanswered questions that we'll only ever get kinda sorta in the rough approximate ballpark towards answering that it's annoyingly unsatisfying, as he even said himself.

Still, a lot of good research that's put together really well.
 
I thoroughly enjoyed the book. The author seemed to put his all into it, which led him down many fascinating rabbit holes. A dedicated thread discussing the book might be a great idea. Interestingly, Candace Owens has a book club, and they are currently reading Chaos.

O'Neill has an Instagram page that he updates semi-regularly with tidbits: Login • Instagram, his Twitter/X account is more active: x.com
 
New Netflix documentary, featuring Tom O'Neill's research, and the man himself, on the Manson murders:

CHAOS: The Manson Murders

It's pretty good, providing lots of visuals of the places and people referred to by O'Neill, although it's of course nowhere near as rich and jaw-dropping as the book itself.

O'Neill, as cautious as ever, is nonetheless still leaning towards Manson having himself been a puppet of government scientists.

The 'boomers' in the documentary, God help them, can't see what the fuss is all about, given that MKUltra 'wrapped up in 1973' and 'never succeeded in actually producing mind-controlled assassins'.

Yeah, apart from the dozens if not hundreds of assassinations and murders that have been committed by mind-controlled assassins since then! 😭
 
Navigator said:
Very impressed with the book, opens wide the panoramic view of the era and the area. Its mind programming all the way down! Ah, after listening on Rogan I was made aware that McGowan actually made a book about Laurel Canyon.
Click to expand...
Yes Dave McGowan was definitely on to something. I don't think he's mentioned in O'Neill's book though, did you think this book was written by him?

SOTT put up his entire Laurel Canyon series back in 2008. Here's part 1

www.sott.net

Inside The LC: The Strange but Mostly True Story of Laurel Canyon and the Birth of the Hippie Generation Part 1

©UnknownFrank Zappa: Pro-war, authoritarian, and what else? "There's something happening here What it is ain't exactly clear" Join me now, if you have the time, as we take a stroll down memory lane to a time nearly four-and-a-half decades...
www.sott.net www.sott.net
 
What kind of surprised me about the documentary was the way in which they left the different possible motives for the murders as all being equally plausible instead of providing the details as to how they're impossible given the details O'Neill uncovers.

I know it's standard practice to leave the viewer to make up their own minds, but in order to make up your own mind you really need to know all the important details.

Such as, how Manson had been told about Melcher moving before the murders and so Manson couldn't have sent the people to Melcher's old house to kill the guy. How Bugliosi's accounts relayed via Helter Skelter as well as his prosecution during the trial were full of holes and omissions that destroyed the "Manson was just trying to start a race war" narrative.

Seemed like they wanted to make money from the Zeitgeist but wanted to keep people from learning so much that it becomes problematic. Knowing there may have been some tenuous Manson/CIA connections is one thing, letting O'Neill detail so many of them that it's impossible to ignore is another.

That said, it was pretty good overall and I also like the old pictures, videos, and recordings of the various individuals so that I now have faces and voices to put to the names from the book.
 
Beau said:
Yes Dave McGowan was definitely on to something. I don't think he's mentioned in O'Neill's book though, did you think this book was written by him?

SOTT put up his entire Laurel Canyon series back in 2008. Here's part 1

www.sott.net

Inside The LC: The Strange but Mostly True Story of Laurel Canyon and the Birth of the Hippie Generation Part 1

©UnknownFrank Zappa: Pro-war, authoritarian, and what else? "There's something happening here What it is ain't exactly clear" Join me now, if you have the time, as we take a stroll down memory lane to a time nearly four-and-a-half decades...
www.sott.net www.sott.net
Click to expand...

Just checked, it was on Ian Carroll's appearance on Rogan, pretty recent, that both books are mentioned. Read McGowan's Laurel Canyon originally on Sott back in the day.
 
I wouldn't put O'Neill and McGowan in the same category. As we realized when McGowan went full 'actors theory' after the Boston Bombings in 2013, he imagines a lot of connections that either aren't there, or have no relevant significance. His Laurel Canyon series must therefore be critically interrogated. Many of the 60s musicians and actors McGowan suggested were 'instrumental' in government control/influence programs were 'guilty-by-association' in McGowan's eyes. O'Neill does what McGowan does not: drill down to the facts, and only then propose a tentative theory.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Trending content

Back
Top Bottom