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Charles Manson and the CIA
30 Plays5 years ago
A few days late because Josh and M have suffered from malaise (and you can hear it in their voices), our (ig)noble podcasters look into Tom O'Neil's theory that Charles Manson might have been working with or for the CIA.
—
Josh is @monkeyfluids and M is @conspiracism on Twitter
You can also contact us at: podcastconspiracy@gmail.com
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Transcript
Introduction to Vulgar Vulgarities
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Vulgar Vulgarities, the show that has its death finger on popular culture.
Ringo Starr on Beatles' 'Helter Skelter'
00:00:07
Speaker
I'm Bottom Thomas, and tonight we're joined by musician, writer and human being Ringo Starr, who's here to tell us all about the latest track by the Beatles, Helter Scouter. Hello Ringo.
00:00:22
Speaker
Do I have to do the accent? Because I can't promise you Ringo, I can have a stab at Wacko from the Animaniacs. Of course you've got to do the accent. Just pretend that everything you're saying is going to mention Thomas the Tank Engine. So, Mr Star, what's this new song about? Well, you'd have to ask Paul.
Inspiration and Interpretation of 'Helter Skelter'
00:00:43
Speaker
I can tell you about the writing of Don't Pass Me By, Fat Controller.
00:00:46
Speaker
I think our listeners, Mr Star, are much more interested in the scout from the housing. Is it true it's named after an amusement park ride? I believe so. It's on Sodor, I think. Now, could I get you to tell me what is meant by the following?
00:01:03
Speaker
When I get to the bottom, I go back to the top of the slide, and I stop, and I turn, and I go for a ride, till I get to the bottom. Well, once again, you'd have to ask the fat control... I mean Paul McCartney, which is his name. Now, the song also features the following lyrics.
00:01:24
Speaker
Will you, weren't you, make me make you want you? I'm coming down fast, but don't let me break you. Tell me, tell me, tell me the answer. You may be a lover, but you ain't no dancer.
00:01:39
Speaker
Is this a coded message about a coming race war? No, no, not at all. Now, when I was narrating... Because certain people seem to think it is, Mr Stuhr. What do you say to them about that? It's just a song about a rollercoaster.
Clarifying 'Helter Skelter' Misconceptions
00:01:51
Speaker
So it's not a coded message about a coming apocalypse in which racist and non-racist white people will be maneuvered into killing one another over the treatment of African Americans. No, it's about sitting on an amusement park and maybe getting off or riding the big dipper.
00:02:06
Speaker
So, do you, don't you, want me to love you? I'm coming down fast but I'm miles above you. Tell me, tell me, tell me. Come on, tell me the answer. Doesn't refer to a disused mineshaft outside of LA. No.
Show Teaser: Next Episode
00:02:21
Speaker
Well, I'm unconvinced and we've run out of time. Join me next week when I press Benny Anderson to explain the metaphysics of how someone can be more than a woman.
Podcaster's Guide: Introduction and Film Festival
00:02:41
Speaker
The Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy, brought to you today by Josh Addison and Dr. M. Denton.
00:02:50
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the podcaster's guide to the conspiracy. I am Josh Addison, sitting next to me hydrating, hydrating responsibly on a sunny Auckland day, as Dr. M.R. extended. It's true, I am filled with liquid. Ooh, it's summer all of a sudden.
00:03:05
Speaker
It really is. It's gone from being miserable to being quite warm and delightful. And then to being briefly freezing again and then warm again, which is why I had a head cold last week, which is why we were recording this episode a little bit late. But it's sunny now, which is why I'm wearing short trousers. Now, short trousers aside, we should probably explain what happened last week, because last week's episode was a bit different. It was a little bit.
00:03:30
Speaker
Why was last week's episode so different? Because you and I were at the movies. We were, what were we watching? We were watching, what was it? It was Thursday, so we were watching Ready or Not, which is an excellent film that you should all go and watch. Now this was part of the Terrify horror science fiction thriller movie festival happening out in Avondale, and it's true, Ready or Not was a very good film, except that I would say was probably
00:03:55
Speaker
the, not the worst film of the festival, but the second worst film, because the other films were so good.
HP Lovecraft and Australian Politics Clarification
00:04:01
Speaker
It kind of paled in comparison. All I saw was the adaptation of HP Lovecraft's The Colour Out of Space, starring Nicholas Cage, which is less racist than the original.
00:04:11
Speaker
And that's always going to be positive. Is that one so racist? I mean, there's the undercurrent of racism and all of HP Lovecraft's stuff, but I don't remember that one being particularly... There's a little bit of talk about how certain people can't settle in those woods out in the back of...
00:04:26
Speaker
around the Miskatonix band to have the right kind of temperament. So there's a little bit of anti-Italian, anti-Spanish racism going on there. But anyway, the point is we were off seeing a movie, but fortunately we had one in the can. And a couple in the can. And there may be more in the can. We'll put some more in the can after we finish putting this one in the can. Once you take one out of the can, you have to put another one back in the can. Because otherwise we get the Dread God.
00:04:54
Speaker
very very angry yes no we operate on the take one leave one policy without with our can yes it's a very it's a very special cat but enough about can read a correspondence actual people talk to us now one of these is a correction when we talked two weeks ago now
00:05:13
Speaker
And this was, I think, in the news episode. Yeah, the news episode. And talking about the interesting case of the Australian politician attacking the Australian mayor about a discrepancy in the budget, which turned out to be fake.
Surprise Subscriber Growth and Feedback Impact
00:05:28
Speaker
Now, we actually didn't realise that Clover Moore, the Lord Mayor of Sydney, identifies as a woman. And also, we weren't aware that the Daily Telegraph in Australia is not the Daily Telegraph in the UK.
00:05:43
Speaker
Because we're merely unaware of what happens in Australian politics. And don't really care to know, to be honest. But we do care to be corrected when we get things wrong. So thank you very much, Eric. Precisely. And we've had a comment left for us on Breaker. I don't know what Breaker is.
00:06:00
Speaker
appears to be a podcast app. Right. Because I have noticed that we sort of made a point of sticking this podcast on a few of the more well-known ones, but then it just, everyone scrapes everyone else. And so it ends up... Yeah, and it seems that Breaker as a podcast app service also records the number of subscribers on the service. So we know there are two subscribers on Breaker. One of which is...
00:06:22
Speaker
Maria, who left us a very kind comment, and also noted that she really liked the sketch at the beginning of the previous episode, the one that we took from the can, that we're putting a new one in the can, so the dream god doesn't need to get angry with us.
00:06:37
Speaker
So sketches might be coming back due to one positive comment.
Reflections: 1960s, Manson, and Murders
00:06:42
Speaker
That's literally all it takes. That is how slim and fragile our egos are. Yeah. A single bit of positive feedback. Every single listener and listener feedback is to us and our fragile, fragile egos. Yes. So anyway, let's, I think that's all we had to say. Up the top in the front, up the front.
00:07:02
Speaker
Up the bottom. Up the kyber. So we should move on to the main part of the episode. We should indeed. Going to go back to the swing in 60s slash early swing in 70s. And talk a little bit about murder. Because that's what the 60s was all about. Swinging and killing. Should have tried to make that rhyme. Swinging and killing. Swinging and... No, there's no one. On with the show.
00:07:32
Speaker
The sixties, Josh, what do you remember about it? I remember mostly being sort of negative 14 to about negative four years old. Those are the worst years in a person's life. Negative six years old. I did the wrong way. Um, yes, no, I was not actually around for any of the 1960s and only part of the 1970s. So I did not witness firsthand anything to do with the Charles Manson family murders, which is what we're talking about today. Or at least say Josh Clams.
00:07:59
Speaker
At least so, I claim, yes. As I believe people like to refer to them, the Tate-LaBlanca murders, because I think they sort of want to say, you know, the victims are the important ones, not the psychotic assholes who actually killed them, yes.
00:08:14
Speaker
But so you probably know, late 1969, Charles Manson had formed himself a nice little cult, talked a bunch of his followers into running off and quite nastily murdering a few people over the course of a couple of nights, including sort of the one who gets the most press, obviously being actress Sharon Tate, who was very heavily pregnant with Roman Polanski's child at the time. So it was a particularly, particularly gruesome and grisly crime.
00:08:43
Speaker
Matson himself was clever enough, I guess you'd say, to not actually participate in any of those killings. Apparently he had had a hand in an earlier murder or something like that, but he was sort of at arms length. But nevertheless, because it had all happened at his behest, he ended up going down along with the rest of them and remained in prison until his death a couple of years ago. So you didn't commit the murder?
00:09:09
Speaker
But you were the motivating force, so you basically co-conspired in the crime, and we can get you on that particular chart. So the trial, I think, was 1970. You had a trial in 1970. In 1974, a man by the name of Vincent Bouliosi, who was the prosecutor in the case, then wrote this sort of tell-all book called Helter Skelter about the killings.
00:09:35
Speaker
And in this book he talks about sort of Manson and his wacky views and all of that, and it's called Helter Skelter in reference to the Beatles song Helter Skelter, which Manson claimed had hidden messages. Yes, which has always been a kind of very contemptuous part of this, because Helter Skelter as a song, as the opening sketch indicates, is actually about an amusement park ride.
00:09:57
Speaker
Paul McCartney's interest was in writing a really aggressive, raucous song for the actual lyrics themselves, which is actually kind of powerful the course for McCartney, actually fairly banal. It's the composition is interesting, the lyrics not so much. But Charles Manson heard the song.
00:10:18
Speaker
And for him, there was a kind of resonance here that basically talked about a coming race war, which would be predicated on racist white Americans fighting with non-racist white Americans about the treatments of African Americans in the US, which would be engineered
00:10:41
Speaker
such that when the race war ended, Manson would be able to present himself as being the one true ruler, or at least have a role in what happened afterwards.
Manson's 'Helter Skelter' Interpretation
00:10:52
Speaker
And that rather than wait for the coming race war, Manson wanted to start it now. So the murders that the Manson family engaged in were all designed to kick the race war off,
00:11:06
Speaker
So that Manson could get his end goal of them being able to have power after the race war. Yes. And he all gets this from a song about riding an amusement park ride. Yes. I'm not sure if he specifically got it from the song, but he thought the song had contained coded messages, which meant that the Beatles were thinking on the same wavelength as him.
00:11:27
Speaker
Although, of course, there's always been suggestion that maybe this was a convenient excuse, because it was a point in time where people were willing to blame music for, and actually, it was a point in time, people still blame music to this day. Completely underrated to this, but the most recent season of Sloper, the podcast that dealt with the Watergate affair, and then the Clinton impeachment
00:11:50
Speaker
trial, the third season is dealing with Tupac and Notorious B.I.G., which means we may need to do a review of this podcast. I think we will. And that's once again blaming music for cop killing in the U.S. Yes. Yes. I mean, according to the book Hell to Skelter, Manson and his followers were all out of their skulls on LSD. They were drugged up lunatic cultist crazy people who believed in this insane plan, which I mean, yeah, he sort of
00:12:20
Speaker
He thought there's going to be a race war, white Americans versus racist white Americans, non-racist white Americans, and also African Americans, and he seemed to think that
00:12:30
Speaker
African Americans would win the war, but then they would mention and his followers, who were all white, would emerge from their bunker in the middle of the desert and then they would naturally rule over the African Americans to whom they were superior despite the fact that they would also obviously win the war. It did make a lot of sense, but that was to be expected because they were all crazy LSD nutcases.
Tom O'Neill's Book and Manson Investigation
00:12:51
Speaker
Especially when you're getting your plans from popular music. Yes.
00:12:55
Speaker
Now, that's the quote-unquote official story. More recently, earlier this year, a journalist by the name of Tom O'Neill released a book called Chaos, Charles Manson, the CIA, and the secret history of the 60s. Now, I found out about this because I was listening to radio. Yes, he gave an interview on RNZ.
00:13:15
Speaker
This befits my bourgeois nature and I actually came in halfway through this particular interview with the journalist in question and when this seems like it's right up our alley and then several months later we're recording a podcast about it.
00:13:33
Speaker
So O'Neill first started looking into the Manson murders 20 years ago. I think he said he worked for a music magazine, I think, and they wanted to do a story. He started investigating it. The story he originally was going to write never got published, but he sort of got sucked into weird inconsistencies or illogicalities that he kept finding.
00:13:53
Speaker
Logicality is a new word and I like it. Made sense to me. He has been investigating and investigating and coming up with questions that people don't seem to want to answer and so on so he's finally got his book out which he hopes might maybe bring a little more attention to it and maybe bring what he believes might be closer to the truth.
00:14:16
Speaker
uh... to light uh... so basically he he says we actually not noted the book's name down in our notes at all yeah i just said it chaos Charles Manson the CIA and the blah blah blah can't be able to listen to you when you're talking well obviously yeah so o'neill o'neill claims that the bulliose's book helter skelter is is basically not true that's that it uh... is a load of uh... a bunch of lies at the very least about Manson himself uh... he certainly believes that Manson
00:14:45
Speaker
while his followers were drugged out crazy people, believes that Manson himself probably wasn't. O'Neill refers to an interview Buliosi did years ago. Buliosi is now dead, I think.
00:15:01
Speaker
He gave an interview. Someone asked him, did the Manson family really believe all that Helter Skelter stuff? And he replied, well, at least the woman did. So from some time ago, there's been insinuations that maybe Manson wasn't the drugged-out lunatic that Helter Skelter portrayed him as.
00:15:19
Speaker
And so O'Neill was looking into some things that just stuck out as being difficult to explain in the whole Manson case. So first of all, there were a few different things. One of them is the fact that Manson seemed to keep getting away with stuff. Yeah, so prior to the murders, he'd been jailed for almost half his life for crimes such as burglary, car theft, prostitution, sexual assault, and yet after his release in 67,
00:15:46
Speaker
He never got called up on the numerous parole violations that he engaged in. Yes, I mean at the time of the murders he was on parole. Breaking laws all over the damn place, yeah. So O'Neill points to a few weird things. One of them is that apparently his parole officer, whose name I did not note down,
00:16:07
Speaker
was it was a person who at one point had had sort of 40 parolees that they were looking after but eventually that dwindled to just one there was just this one this guy was purely looking after Charles Manson and not doing anything about Charles Manson
00:16:22
Speaker
But if you don't understand, if you had 40 parolees, and one of your parolees turns out to be Charles Manson, and is breaking a parole all the time, you go, I don't have time for this. I've got 39 other people. I mean, yes, you jaywalk, don't do that again. I don't want to see your name in my files. Oh, God, Charles, you're in it again. Oh, you've robbed a convenience store. Oh, for the love of God, I've got 39 other people I've got to be dealing with. But when it goes to, so, you're my,
00:16:51
Speaker
only charge. Yes, it makes it harder to explain. Yeah, it really does. And also, I think possibly the insinuation was that this guy had been specifically assigned to Manson to turn a blind eye, or I don't know what. But I mean, because there are things like, before the Tate LeBlanc killings, the entire Manson family, the entire compound had been raided, they'd all been arrested.
00:17:12
Speaker
and they were all on charge of Grand Theft Auto and a few other things, and they were all released without charge. Now, in Hell to Skelter, apparently Bulliossi claims that they were released because the warrant for their arrest was improperly dated. I think it hadn't been filled incorrectly, so they had to release them. O'Neill claims that he went back and went through the archives and found this original warrant and that it was not dated incorrectly, that it was perfectly
Manson, Authorities, and Conspiracy Theories
00:17:35
Speaker
fine. So he claimed that
00:17:37
Speaker
That excuse doesn't hold water. And he also claims that the time Manson was picked up, he had on his person a bunch of stolen credit cards and credit card theft is a federal crime, I think. So even though the initial arrest might not, even if it hadn't been legit, they still had the ability, they could have charged him on the spot with those crimes or even just ignored those crimes, but not charged with anything new, but pulled him back to prison for violating his parole for the crimes he'd already been convicted of.
00:18:06
Speaker
And this does seem a bit weird when you start adding this into the story. You are going, so why was Manson getting special treatment? Now, conversely, we're dealing with one case here and what was probably a system of bad decisions being made across the county in general. So you would want to compare Manson's treatment with other criminals of a similar stature.
00:18:33
Speaker
at that particular point in time. On one level, it seems this is a very notable failing when it comes to famed mass murderer, Charles Manson, but it may turn out to be not a notable failure when you talk about parole violations at that particular point.
00:18:50
Speaker
I don't know, maybe, where the police just saw overworked. They're like, what? OK, whatever, get out of here. Got bigger fish to fry or something. So, yeah, we do. So, I mean, the implication O'Neill wants to put forward is that Manson was in some way being protected by the authorities, by the FBI, the CIA, the police, someone like that. But that claim is only going to hold water if Manson turns out to be a remarkable individual in that respect and not just someone who was being treated the same as other parolee violators at that time.
00:19:18
Speaker
But I mean, I guess it does. Just given the light of his history, as it said, he had spent almost half his life in prison. He had been committing crimes since he was very young. And any time he was out of jail seemed to be committing more. So yet, even if the system was overworked, it does seem like he's someone you'd want to give extra, an extra croissant on. Especially given what happened next.
00:19:42
Speaker
Well, exactly, yes. And so, as well as just sort of the idea that maybe the police were a bit slack at their job, he does get a bit more sinister and conspiratorial because he starts bringing in the CIA and things like good old MK Ultra. Yes, good old MK Ultra. I'm not a fan of the show. Certainly a theme we keep coming back to.
00:20:06
Speaker
MKUltra being the CIA's project to basically see how you could mess with people with drugs. We must read it out one of these days. There's that list of things that they were investigating in MKUltra, which is, what can you do with drugs? And it's all like making people more compliant, making people appear intoxicated, extending human life, making people soil themselves in a, there's this laundry list of things they wanted to see if they could do with pharmaceuticals.
00:20:35
Speaker
old brown note, but delivered in tailored form. And we have to be MK ultra did occur, unlike say the majestic 12 documents, which were fakes MK ultra was a process that was being undertaken by federal authorities in the US. It was illegal. They performed experiments on unknown, unwitting people without consent. And it was
00:20:57
Speaker
part of the Cold War, because they thought the Russians were doing similar experiments and even if it turned out people were doubtful that these experiments would lead anywhere, the fear was if the Russians were successful they would have an ability to implant agents in America you wouldn't be able to spot or tell, so they needed to do these experiments.
00:21:20
Speaker
That's what they claimed, to make sure that if they were successful, they would have the upper hand on the Ruskies. So what does this have to do with Manson? Well, a large part of the project of MKUltra was using drugs, in particular LSD, to break down a person's mind to the point that they'd become more susceptible to suggestion and possibly the MKUltra had all these ideas about this Manchurian candidate sort of thing. They could program to do some someone to do something without
00:21:48
Speaker
they're being consciously aware of it and what have you. And people sort of look at Manson's followers and say, you know, how did how did this guy take these? They were quite, they were quite sort of, you know, middle class people living fairly comfortable lives.
00:22:06
Speaker
And yet they wrote Manson was able to completely break them down and turn them into people who would kill at, you know, purely at his say so. And he did it largely by keeping them bombed out of their skulls on LSD while he sort of molded them
Manson's Charisma and Control
00:22:19
Speaker
in his image. And people sort of said, you know, the stuff Manson did to his followers is a lot like what the CIA was doing to people in MKUltra. And this was happening at the same time and in kind of in the same part of America as well.
00:22:31
Speaker
Yes. Now, admittedly, there are confounding factors here. Manton was apparently a very charismatic individual, so his ability to tell people to do things and people wanting to please him, and he kind of fits that kind of charismatic individual mould. And also, it wasn't a secret that people were playing around with drugs to control people's minds. It was the whole counterculture. That was Timothy Leary and all that business. So people knew that taking things like LSD
00:22:59
Speaker
had an effect upon the brain and people were experimenting both behind the scenes for government projects or in universities quite publicly with using drugs for a variety of different ends. So it's not out of the question that Manson would be aware that the stuff was going on and going, oh, well, if they're using LSD for these things, I can probably use it on the family as well.
00:23:25
Speaker
But yeah, so I mean, is there any reason to think that he was involved with MKUltra? Is it coincidence or is there a smoking gun? No, I'm not aware of anything. And I don't think there was a concrete theory, is it? Was he involved in MKUltra? Had he been a subject of MKUltra? Was the Manson Family a sort of a test bed for MKUltra techniques or something? There's nothing sort of concrete. I think it's meant to be taken
00:23:52
Speaker
together with the other fact that someone upstairs seemed to be looking out for him, and so you've sort of got government project, plus people in the government seem to be looking out for Manson, sort of stick the two together, and there seemed to be more of an implication that maybe he had something to do with it. But yeah, I'm not aware of any sort of a smoking gun.
00:24:12
Speaker
But maybe they might be. Well, yes. I mean, I listened. I listened to the RNZ interview. And at the end, the interviewer sort of says, you know,
00:24:23
Speaker
It's kind of ending on a bit of a downer note. He's being blocked from investigation at various turns. And what do we know and what does it tell us about today? And so Mr. O'Neill ends the interview on sort of a kind of more of a hopeful note by pointing out the case of the Tex Watson interview tapes. Tex Watson being one of Manson's quote unquote family and one of the people who did most of the killing during the killings.
00:24:51
Speaker
He was picked up in late 1969 and apparently his conversations with his lawyer were taped and on these tapes he supposedly goes into sort of makes basically a fairly detailed confession to the murders saying exactly what happened and when and who and how.
00:25:11
Speaker
You know, these tapes were his confession to his lawyer, so they were sort of covered by lawyer confidentiality and what have you. They were never released. O'Neill himself wasn't aware they existed until apparently 2008, when he started trying to get, you know, because obviously Ted Watson, as he did, I don't know, Manson's Ted.
00:25:33
Speaker
But certainly the lawyer who originally recorded those tapes died some time ago, so they were owned by the law firm now, and he thought, you know, maybe these tapes, because it's coming straight from this guy's mouth,
00:25:49
Speaker
Maybe that would actually, you know, that's the closest we're going to get to knowing the real truth of what was going on there. So he went to the law firm and said, hey, I'm a journalist. Want to give me some recordings that you made confidentially with one of your clients back in the late 60s? And they obviously said no bugger off.
00:26:05
Speaker
So then he told the police and the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office about them, because they didn't know about these tapes either. He said to them, look, hey guys, a taped confession of Tex Watson exists out there. Surely you guys have enough pull to get your hands on it. And they said, yes, yes, actually we do want to see these things. And they also said to Anil, once we get the tapes,
00:26:28
Speaker
we will share the information with you. And so in 2013, they sued the law firm in question to get access to the tapes of the confession. They got access to the tapes of the confession. And of course, naturally, they then shared the information with O'Neill, didn't they?
00:26:44
Speaker
Yes, no, of course they do not. So yeah, I mean, O'Neill takes this to mean they got the tapes, they listened to them, whatever was on the tapes made them want to no longer share that information. They thought what's on here cannot be made public. So therefore we won't share it with Ted O'Neill. I mean, it's possible they were lying their asses off to begin with and they never intended to make them public because that's the sort of thing they do. It's quite convenient to have a journalist supporting us in this motion, but we're not going to give them the information whatsoever.
Tom O'Neill's Investigation Continuation
00:27:14
Speaker
Yes, because I mean, I understand he knew who had the tapes. So he sort of went to the authorities and said, these tapes exist. Share them with me and I'll tell you who to sue to get them. And so it's possible they would have said anything to get their hands on the tapes. We don't know. But I mean, so that's his note for the future that maybe this book comes out. Maybe it will inspire more journalists to start looking into this more closely. Maybe it will put pressure on the authorities. Maybe one day these tapes will be released.
00:27:42
Speaker
And maybe they will tell us what really happened with the Charles Manson murders and the general goings on around his cult. And maybe that will be different from what we've been there to believe so far.
00:27:56
Speaker
Although I suppose the worry is, if the tapes confirm the official theory, you can always go, well yeah, but Tex didn't actually know what was really going on there. I mean, he wasn't Charles Manson. He was just told by Manson what was going on. So you can kind of see a rationale as to why you also might not release the tapes to the journalists in question by going, if you're so dead set to show,
00:28:21
Speaker
There's a government connection between Manson and the murders. The fear is no amount of evidence is going to dissuade you of that. And what you have is a new corpus of evidence that you'll be reading into in the same way that Charles Manson read into How to Scouter. Nice full circle there. I mean, I always like to swivel. Yes. So I mean,
00:28:47
Speaker
possibly the clever thing to do would have been to actually read through the entire book before we did this episode, but I'm not sure where it's available at the moment. One annoying thing was, though, we had a few articles about the book, plus this Radio New Zealand interview. One of the reviews of the book mentions that the book brings in the Kennedy assassination and makes it sound like it's sort of a fairly natural connection between the two cases and doesn't say any further than that. And I don't know how I'd be interested to see it. So what you're saying, George, is we have to do a
00:29:16
Speaker
Sequel to this particular actually have to do some first research of like primary sources Instead of secondary stuff like why you heard it here. There's good. This is just part one of what's going to be Wait a minute. Did I just volunteer to read a book you did shit?
00:29:34
Speaker
I like to set things up this way. Anyway, so, I mean, that's Mr O'Neill. He tells a good story. Yeah, I found about the RNZ interview.
00:29:48
Speaker
He just tells the story so well. And I mean, I mean, so she should ask, what do you think of this theory on the face of it?
Conspiracy Theories: Manson to 9/11
00:29:56
Speaker
I mean, the way he tells it, it certainly sounds convincing. Like you wonder, could it be that he's sort of focusing on these particular angles? Why did Manson never get picked up for his numerous parole violations?
00:30:10
Speaker
and sort of picking out elements and just weaving these selected ones together to make a story that fits together so nicely. But I certainly wouldn't write it off. Certainly, I mean, if there are genuine ties to MKUltra, we know how secretive the government was around that. We know how many records were, we don't know exactly how many records were destroyed because they were destroyed, but we know records were destroyed.
00:30:34
Speaker
So there could be, you know, there is a history of secrecy in this area. So I mean, if you can tie the two together, there's a lot that's sort of contingent. There's a whole bunch of things which if you can tie them together, all fit together nicely, but actually can you. I mean, I suppose, to my mind, what's really interesting about this particular hypothesis
00:30:52
Speaker
is that it kind of falls into the 9-11 spectrum of theories between the made-it-happen-on-purpose or mihop hypotheses and the let-it-happen-on-purpose or let-it-happen-on-accident hypotheses, the mihop ones.
00:31:10
Speaker
And the Leop theories have always fascinated me, because it does seem to be fairly good evidence that organizations like the CIA and the FBI actually did have sufficient information about the members of Al-Qaeda, if you take it that Al-Qaeda was responsible for the destruction of the Twin Towers, the attack upon the Pentagon, and the attempt to attack upon the White House. It does seem that they've got all of, it did seem that there was enough evidence at the time that they probably could have stopped the event.
00:31:39
Speaker
And maybe the Manson thing isn't necessarily the MKUltra thing. It's the fact that actually Manson was a known criminal, engaging in criminal behaviour after getting out of jail in 1967.
00:31:57
Speaker
And agencies completely failed to stop a crime that they could have stopped because they should have been watching it. Yeah, with the benefit of hindsight, we can look at all this and say, yeah, it should have been easy to prevent this from ever happening in the first place and the fact that we didn't prevent this in the first place therefore hints at something darker. But yeah, and sometimes you get cover-ups after fact.
00:32:19
Speaker
to make organizations look squeaky clean when they're not. So that's why I find fascinating about the Leop hypothesis, is that even if you think that 9-11 was an outside job committed by Al-Qaeda, you can still go,
00:32:34
Speaker
those agencies had the ability to know more. And was it institutional failings, which have been covered up? Or were they simply not doing their jobs properly? So was it a structural issue, which allowed the crime to be committed? Or was it a case of people who should have been doing things go deal with that paperwork tomorrow, tomorrow, and then boom, I mean, I mean, the that's the major conspiracy theory about the Oklahoma City
00:33:04
Speaker
bombing. The one that says that McVeigh was actually operating under orders by the BATF normally goes, well, the BATF thought he was going to perform the attack on this day, and they would swoop in and they would stop him, thus allowing them to show that they weren't actually messing things up post-Waco, and McVeigh basically acts a day in advance, thus destroying the BATF's plan, which then means the BATF has to cover up
Conclusion: Academic Analysis of Conspiracies
00:33:30
Speaker
what really happened. I'm not endorsing that particular conspiracy theory, but it's a really interesting hypothesis about the Oklahoma City bombings. We've talked about the Oklahoma City bombings. Have you done an episode? No, no. There was the Kenneth Michael Trento U story, the dude we did ages ago, about the guy who got picked up.
00:33:51
Speaker
because, seemingly, because he looked almost exactly like one of McVey's accomplices and then died mysteriously in prison. Cough, Epstein, cough. I should actually cough when I said that because I haven't got a cold and I've been suppressing a cough for ages, but anyway.
00:34:05
Speaker
We're wondering a little bit far afield at that. Although what's important about this is then, of course, the seminal article in my discipline of the philosophy of conspiracy theory is Brian Keeley's of conspiracy theories. And he may well be listening to this episode as he hears his name being read out in my slightly husky voice, because I also am slightly under the weather. And Brian published that piece in 1999.
00:34:33
Speaker
which of course is pre 9-11. And so the conspiracy theory that he references and talks through is the Oklahoma City bombings because that was the big conspiracy theory pre 9-11.
00:34:50
Speaker
Which is just quite fascinating. If Brian had published his paper only two years later, his choice of example probably would have been very different. Now that doesn't necessarily change the analysis. It's just interesting then how a once really prominent conspiracy theory has been almost completely wiped off the map by another one.
00:35:13
Speaker
So I think that's it for this episode, given that we've done our dash on Manson and are now taking a whistle stop through other American conspiracy theories. Although it is a promissory note, we're going to do another episode on Manson. We're going to do an episode on Oklahoma City bombings.
00:35:29
Speaker
which I've now said there's more than one. You heard it here first. That's going to be the podcaster's guide to Oklahoma City bombing conspiracies from now on. Nothing but Oklahoma. Every bomb that's ever gone off, we're going to explain. We're going to end up, I think, putting on a full production of Oklahoma the Musical. With a lot of bombs. A lot of bombs.
00:35:49
Speaker
But until then, until that happy day, I think it's time to let you find people, go about your business. And then, although, not the patrons, you're not off the hook, because patrons, they are legally obliged to listen to the patron bonus episode. Now they can listen to it before this episode or afterwards, although it makes no sense to listen to it before. Not really.
00:36:11
Speaker
episode and what they are legally obliged to listen to this week is an update on that Amy Robach Epstein story about ABC. We're going to be talking about Russia, the UK and election interference. We've got an update on that sonic weapon that was apparently being used against the US embassy in Cuba.
00:36:33
Speaker
There is of course the requisite Trump information and there's also a bit of information about Trump's son, Don Jr. and it's a doozy. So if you want to know about that, you better become a patron of ours if you're not already injured.
00:36:48
Speaker
required to listen to the patron bonus episode as well. You can do that by going to patreon.com and looking for the podcast's guide to the conspiracy or if you really want to you could go to conspiracism.podbean.com which is where this website is sort of initially hosted and they have their own patronage system there as well.
00:37:03
Speaker
You could also go to a crossroad and bury an item that you love to summon a crossroad demon to get access to the podcast. But that does also require giving up your soul. So it's probably just easier to spend. Probably easier to go to portrayal. Yeah. A dollar a month is actually probably worth less than your soul. Probably. Probably. Yeah. No promises. So I think that's all we have to say for this week. So goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye.
00:37:35
Speaker
you
00:37:41
Speaker
You've been listening to the podcaster's guide to the conspiracy, starring Josh Addison and Dr. M.R. Extended, which is written, researched, recorded and produced by Josh and Em. You can support the podcast by becoming a patron via its Podbean or Patreon campaigns. And if you need to get in contact with either Josh or Em, you can email them at podcastconspiracyatgmail.com or check their Twitter accounts, Mikey Fluids and Conspiracism.
00:38:43
Speaker
And remember, Soylent Green is Meeples.