Charles Manson and the CIA (Part 1)
REDACTED: Declassified Mysteries with Luke Lamana
Wondery | Ballen Studios
4.3 • 668 Ratings
🗓️ 10 December 2024
⏱️ 46 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
When journalist Tom O’Neill set out to write a simple story on the anniversary of the Manson Family murders in 1999, he was pulled into an investigation that lasted 20 years. In the first part of this two part episode, we explore O’Neill’s findings about Charles Manson's relationship to the CIA, drug studies at a CIA funded medical facility that the cult leader frequented, and the alleged role CIA assets might have played the night of the Manson Family murders.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Wonderry Plus subscribers can listen to Redacted, declassified mysteries early, and ad-free right now. |
| 0:06.9 | Join Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts. |
| 0:20.6 | One afternoon, around the year 2000, a journalist stepped into a bustling cafe, a few blocks from the courthouse in downtown Los Angeles. |
| 0:30.1 | He was there to find out about a man, rumored to have played a key role in one of the most infamous crimes of the 20th century. |
| 0:39.8 | The crime had unfolded 35 years earlier when cult leader Charles Manson sent his followers to the Beverly Hills Mansion of a pregnant actress |
| 0:45.5 | and her movie director husband. By the end of the night, five people in the home were brutally |
| 0:51.2 | stabbed to death, seemingly for no reason. |
| 0:55.0 | The following night, Manson's cult struck again, butchering a married couple in a nearby neighborhood. |
| 1:01.5 | Though Manson and his followers were all sentenced to life in prison, the journalist suspected |
| 1:06.0 | that Manson was a pawn in a much larger game, possibly involving the U.S. government. |
| 1:12.6 | But he needed proof. |
| 1:15.3 | That was where the man in a dark suit sitting at one of the cafe tables came in. |
| 1:20.3 | He was a lawyer who had agreed to talk about a man named Reeve Whitson. |
| 1:24.6 | The journalist had repeatedly heard rumors about Whitson in connection with the murders, |
| 1:28.3 | and the lawyer was one of Witson's few close friends. |
| 1:32.3 | After some small talk and a few sips of coffee, the lawyer leaned closer to the journalist. |
| 1:38.3 | Then he dropped a bombshell. |
| 1:40.3 | Whitson was a CIA operative. |
| 1:47.5 | The journalist's eyes widened as the lawyer kept talking. |
| 1:52.6 | In the late 1960s, Witson was working on a secret CIA project where he befriended powerful people and celebrities in Hollywood. |
| 1:56.9 | This included at least one of the murder victims from that first night. |
| 2:01.3 | The lawyer said that Witson called people to let them know about the murders the next morning |
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