CHAOS: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > CHAOS: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties

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Perry Mason Jar: Feb 24, 2006; "Della? Take a lid"

Can someone post the letter from West to S. Gottlieb where West claims MKULTRA success, from the glossy pages? Epstein-threaders need it and I loaned my copy. My memory is trash, as well. Thank you!

# ? Jul 7, 2020 17:14

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# ? May 5, 2024 00:52

Elderbean: Jun 10, 2013

Also, loving wow that there was a caretaker living on the grounds who was up late and didn't hear anything.

# ? Jul 7, 2020 19:38

Centrist Committee: Aug 6, 2019

Perry Mason Jar posted:

Can someone post the letter from West to S. Gottlieb where West claims MKULTRA success, from the glossy pages? Epstein-threaders need it and I loaned my copy. My memory is trash, as well. Thank you!

quote:

Sidney Gottlieb, West�s handler at the CIA, wrote to him under the pseudonym Sherman Grifford, using letterhead from �Chemrophyl Associates,� a front company. Their correspondence, which confirms West�s participation in MKULTRA, has never before been published. (Author collection)

# ? Jul 7, 2020 20:09

MonsieurChoc: Oct 12, 2013; Every species can smell its own extinction.

I got a copy of the book and I just hit the part where loving Otto Skorzeny is mentionned.

What the gently caress.

# ? Jul 31, 2020 04:34

Ramrod Hotshot: May 30, 2003

MonsieurChoc posted:

I got a copy of the book and I just hit the part where loving Otto Skorzeny is mentionned.

What the gently caress.

drat, I forgot that part, but just listened to the incredible recent trueanon episodes where he features heavily. in what context is he mentioned in chaos?

# ? Jul 31, 2020 05:19

MonsieurChoc: Oct 12, 2013; Every species can smell its own extinction.

Ramrod Hotshot posted:

drat, I forgot that part, but just listened to the incredible recent trueanon episodes where he features heavily. in what context is he mentioned in chaos?

He was connected to Reeve Whitson.

# ? Jul 31, 2020 05:22

e-dt: Sep 16, 2019

This thread convinced me to read this book.

On the topic of shady three letter organisation poo poo, I recently read "Heavy Radicals: The FBI's Secret War on America's Maoists" and the follow-up book "A Threat of the First Magnitude: FBI Counterintelligence & Infiltration From the Communist Party to the Revolutionary Union 1962-1974". They show the FBI having thoroughly infiltrated communist & New Left organisations up to the top ranks, and using those infiltrators to sow division, encourage adventurism such as the Weather Underground, heighten personal conflicts and keep the FBI informed of their every move. The FBI even concocted nonexistent political groups such as the Maoist "Ad-Hoc Committee for a Marxist-Leninist Party", publishing inflammatory bulletins aimed at splitting the Communist Party. Honestly it shocked me just how prevalent the infiltration was - it gave me a lot more sympathy for those people who call people feds for the slightest provocation, because that paranoia was and probably still is very justified. People tend to focus more on the MK-Ultra poo poo and the wiretapping and all that, both because it's fascinating :crackping:

-crazy spy movie villain stuff and because it's illegal even by bourgeois laws, but IMO people should also look more into the infiltration, which was (and probably is) actually much more common than that poo poo and very destructive. Anyway thats my post on FBI poo poo to contribute to the thread

# ? Jul 31, 2020 08:24

e-dt: Sep 16, 2019

Just found a reddit q&a the author did: https://old.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/hehti6/took_me_20_years_but_i_wrote_a_book_about_what/

Some of his speculation: https://old.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/hehti6/took_me_20_years_but_i_wrote_a_book_about_what/fvrf52b/

e: lol @ his username on his site

e-dt has issued a correction as of 11:44 on Jul 31, 2020

# ? Jul 31, 2020 11:38

nut: Jul 30, 2019

e-dt posted:

This thread convinced me to read this book.

On the topic of shady three letter organisation poo poo, I recently read "Heavy Radicals: The FBI's Secret War on America's Maoists" and the follow-up book "A Threat of the First Magnitude: FBI Counterintelligence & Infiltration From the Communist Party to the Revolutionary Union 1962-1974". They show the FBI having thoroughly infiltrated communist & New Left organisations up to the top ranks, and using those infiltrators to sow division, encourage adventurism such as the Weather Underground, heighten personal conflicts and keep the FBI informed of their every move. The FBI even concocted nonexistent political groups such as the Maoist "Ad-Hoc Committee for a Marxist-Leninist Party", publishing inflammatory bulletins aimed at splitting the Communist Party. Honestly it shocked me just how prevalent the infiltration was - it gave me a lot more sympathy for those people who call people feds for the slightest provocation, because that paranoia was and probably still is very justified. People tend to focus more on the MK-Ultra poo poo and the wiretapping and all that, both because it's fascinating -crazy spy movie villain stuff and because it's illegal even by bourgeois laws, but IMO people should also look more into the infiltration, which was (and probably is) actually much more common than that poo poo and very destructive. Anyway thats my post on FBI poo poo to contribute to the thread

in hopes of feeling more knowledgeable about my own country i've started seeking out domestic spying lit in Canada and, in doing so, u quickly learn that Canada had organized secret intelligence agents infiltrating left wing and immigrant groups like the Fenians and pretty much any group of Indian immigrants (even though this was during the Raj and so they were, too, british empire citizens and should be able to freely travel among colonies) even before it became Canada proper via Confederation

# ? Jul 31, 2020 12:07

Helsing: Aug 23, 2003; DON'T POST IN THE ELECTION THREAD UNLESS YOU JOE BIDEN

Another tale from late 1960s Los Angeles with many weird parallels to the topic of the thread:

The Washington Post posted:

CIA may have used contractor who inspired �Mission: Impossible� to kill RFK, new book alleges

Was Robert Maheu, an aide to Howard Hughes, responsible for Bobby Kennedy�s assassination?

By
Tom Jackman
Feb. 9, 2019 at 7:00 a.m. EST

Robert A. Maheu was such a colorful character that it�s widely believed the television show �Mission: Impossible� was based on him and his private investigative agency.

As an ex-FBI agent, the CIA asked him to handle jobs it wanted to steer clear of, such as lining up prostitutes for a foreign president or hiring the mafia to kill Fidel Castro. For more than 15 years, Maheu and his Washington-based company were on monthly retainer to �The Agency,� CIA records show. And during much of that time, Maheu was the right-hand man to Howard Hughes as Hughes bought up vast swaths of Las Vegas and helped finance CIA operations.

Now, a new book alleges that Maheu may have performed another mission for the CIA: the assassination of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (D-N.Y.).

A spokeswoman for the CIA declined to comment on the book�s allegations, though she acknowledged that Hughes did finance some CIA operations.

Maheu would have had access to the CIA�s experiments in hypnosis and mind control, which were being conducted at the time in California and elsewhere. That would have enabled him to frame Sirhan Sirhan as a patsy for the slaying of Kennedy, while other gunmen actually fired the fatal shots, argues author Lisa Pease, who spent 25 years researching her book, �A Lie Too Big to Fail."

Pease is not the first person to link the CIA to the June 1968 assassination of Kennedy, in the pantry of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Sirhan�s lawyers in 2010 accused the CIA of hypnotizing Sirhan and making him �an involuntary participant.� The agency may have feared Kennedy because he opposed the CIA�s expansive use of power and would have pressed the agency for answers in the assassination of his brother, President John F. Kennedy, five years earlier, Pease theorizes.

With Maheu�s contacts throughout the CIA and organized crime, he is �the most credible high-level suspect for the planner of Robert Kennedy�s assassination,� Pease wrote. Maheu died in Las Vegas in 2008 at age 90, after a career that the New York Times once described as having �aspects of a novel jointly written by Ian Fleming and Harold Robbins.�

Pease�s book builds on the work of numerous prior authors who concluded that Sirhan did not kill Kennedy but was convicted by the misdeeds of the Los Angeles police and district attorney, and the ineptitude of his defense lawyers, who never challenged any of the physical evidence. Chief among that evidence is the autopsy finding that Kennedy was shot point blank in the back of the head, while Sirhan was in front of Kennedy. Witnesses at the scene of the shooting were adamant that Sirhan never got close enough to fire at close range � he was pinned down by a hotel ma�tre d� after two shots from in front of Kennedy, and emptied the rest of his eight-shot pistol wildly while he was held down.

The courts in California have rejected such claims, and Sirhan has repeatedly been denied parole, most recently in 2016. He is serving a life sentence in a prison outside San Diego and has maintained since his arrest that he does not remember firing any shots at Kennedy. The Los Angeles District Attorney�s Office and police declined to comment for this story. A former Los Angeles assistant prosecutor has testified against Sirhan at parole hearings, but he, also, declined to be interviewed.

Pease believes Sirhan had been hypnotized and was firing blanks, and she quotes witnesses who told police they saw shredded paper fluttering through the air as the shots were being fired, indicative of casings containing an explosive charge but no bullets. Pease cites witnesses, such as the wife of author George Plimpton, who said they saw gunmen behind Kennedy. One of those, an armed security guard named Thane Cesar, had previously worked for Maheu in Los Angeles, Pease found.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the son of the slain senator, said he thought Pease was �a great researcher.� He said he had done �a lot of research on Robert Maheu, talked to his friends,� and read Maheu�s autobiography, �Next to Hughes: Behind the Power and Tragic Downfall of Howard Hughes by His Closest Advisor.�

�I don�t think there�s any doubt he had the means, opportunity and the motive,� Kennedy said of Maheu. �The question is, how much was he involved?� Kennedy said that his own investigation, which included meeting with Sirhan in prison in December 2017, showed that �Sirhan could not and did not fire the gun that shot and killed my father.�

But in an interview with The Washington Post, Maheu�s son, Robert G. Maheu, denied that his father had any role in the case.

�He had nothing to do with any assassination,� Robert G. Maheu said of his father. �He knew them [the Kennedys] all very well. I was at functions where the Kennedys always ran over to hug my dad and kiss my mom. There was no animosity toward them at all. . . . There�s all kinds of lies and stories and conspiracies that are all made up.�

He agreed that the 1960s show �Mission: Impossible� was based on his father. �That is true,� the son said. �His detective agency handled all the cases that the CIA couldn�t handle.�

Others disagree about Maheu�s role in the Kennedy case. Among the skeptics is John Meier, who worked with Maheu in the Howard Hughes organization in the late 1960s and was one of the few people actually to work with Hughes in person. (Maheu never did.)

In 2015, Meier published his decades of diary entries detailing his suspicions about Maheu and Hughes�s connections to the assassination. Meier is now in poor health, but his son, Jim Meier, spoke to him for this story.

�My father did confirm,� Jim Meier said, �that he absolutely knows that Hughes was supporting Maheu�s operation to assassinate RFK.�

John Meier wrote in his June 1968 diaries that Maheu was ecstatic upon learning of Kennedy�s death, and that Maheu was �furious� when Meier began asking about the connection between Maheu and the security guard Cesar, the former Maheu employee who escorted Kennedy into the hotel pantry. John Meier also told Pease that FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover �knew that Robert Maheu was behind the assassination of Robert Kennedy,� and said so to him.

Author Jim Hougan interviewed Maheu at length for his 1978 book �Spooks,� about ex-CIA agents who ran private operations after leaving the agency. �If Lyndon Johnson was correct when he complained,� Hougan told The Post, �shortly after assuming the presidency, that the government �had been operating a damned Murder Inc. in the Caribbean,� then Robert Maheu was surely that firm�s chief operating officer.� The evidence Pease presents about Maheu�s involvement in RFK�s assassination �deserves serious consideration,� he said.
�Too many holes�

On June 4, 1968, Robert Kennedy won the California Democratic primary for president. Shortly after midnight, on the morning of June 5, he gave a victory speech at the Ambassador Hotel. He then was shot in the adjacent pantry, as were five other people standing behind him, all of whom survived wounds inflicted from the front. But Kennedy�s shots were from the back: One shot went through his jacket without hitting him, one went into his back and stopped below his neck, one went through his armpit and one went into his brain and fragmented. The neck bullet was recovered, as were bullets from two of the wounded victims.

Kennedy survived for a day and died June 6, 1968, with his wife and children by his side. They had flown out from the family home in Virginia.

Sirhan was captured in the pantry, but seemed unusually calm in police custody and seemed to have no idea why he was arrested, authors who have listened to his taped statements have said.

In addition, his .22-caliber pistol could hold only eight bullets. But in addition to the four shots into Kennedy and five into the victims � one bullet was theorized to have hit two people � other bullets were found in the wood frames of doors in the pantry. Los Angeles police criminalist De Wayne Wolfer would later say that there were no bullets in the frames and that the holes had been made by the impact of kitchen carts. In 1969, the police destroyed the frames, even though the case was on appeal.

Pease and others argue that there were simply �too many holes� in the pantry for Sirhan to have been a lone gunman, and that witnesses were certain the holes in the frames were caused by bullets. She even found a video in an archive at the University of California at Los Angeles that appears to show bullets in the frames. Wolfer�s work as a crime scene analyst was later harshly discredited by California authorities.

But Sirhan�s defense team elected not to challenge any of the physical evidence, ignoring the autopsy report by famed coroner Thomas Noguchi showing the Kennedy shots were fired just inches from his back and head.

Pease found witness statements from people who saw men with guns behind Kennedy, and who saw other men flee the pantry, including one woman who suffered a broken front tooth from a man�s crashing into her while running out of the hotel. But Los Angeles police and the defense team did not pursue those leads.

Sirhan�s lawyers instead conceded his guilt and tried to avoid a death sentence by focusing on Sirhan�s mental health. This failed, and Sirhan was sentenced to death, a sentence later commuted when California invalidated the death penalty.

Not long after the trial, a ballistics expert examined the three bullets recovered from the scene and found that they did not match Sirhan�s gun. A subsequent retesting was done, but the bullet removed from Kennedy�s neck by Noguchi had vanished, and no ballistics match was ever made between the bullets and Sirhan�s eight-shot pistol.

Though many authors have argued that Sirhan is innocent, Pease�s book goes further and tries to answer the question: If not Sirhan, who?
Howard Hughes�s �alter ego�

Robert Maheu was born in Maine in 1917 and joined the FBI during World War II. After the war, Maheu set up his own company in Washington, Robert A. Maheu and Associates.

According to a memo written in 1975 for a Senate committee investigating CIA abuses, �In 1954 Maheu was recruited by the CIA for use by the CIA�s Office of Security for �extremely sensitive cases.�� The memo recounts projects Maheu undertook for the CIA including providing �female companionship� for a leader of another country, and also wiretapping Aristotle Onassis�s phones in New York, part of a larger harassment campaign that led to Onassis�s losing a massive oil shipping contract with Saudi Arabia. Maheu told The Post in 1978 that the Onassis job wasn�t initiated by the CIA, but �I wouldn�t take the assignment until I cleared it with� the agency.

From 1978: Maheu admits '54 anti-Onassis drive

In 1957, Maheu took on Howard Hughes as a client and �agreed to be his alter ego,� Maheu told an interviewer in 1992. But he communicated with Hughes only by phone or handwritten memos, never in person.

�As early as 1960,� authors Larry DuBois and Laurence Gonzales wrote in 1976, �Maheu had Hughes�s blessing in taking on one of the agency�s most sensitive assignments: the assassination of Fidel Castro.�

That year, according to a CIA internal memo, the agency set out to hire the mafia to kill Castro.

The CIA contacted Maheu, the memo states, who enlisted West Coast mobster Johnny Roselli. Roselli organized a meeting for Maheu and a top CIA official with Sam Giancana of Chicago and Santo Trafficante Jr., the former mob boss of Cuba, CIA records show. Giancana suggested using a friendly contact in Cuba to poison Castro, and the CIA provided �pills of high lethal content.� But Castro suddenly changed restaurants, and the pills were never tried.

The plot was revealed, along with other CIA excesses, in 1975.

�Radio Man�

By 1968, Howard Hughes had moved from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, and Maheu was his frontman as Hughes bought the Desert Inn and numerous other casinos. Maheu moved into a mansion called �Little Caesars Palace,� where he entertained senators and celebrities, maintained a yacht in Newport, R.I., and flew around the world in Hughes�s jets, according to a 1971 profile in The Post.

At the same time, the CIA was experimenting with programs such as �Bluebird� and �Project MKUltra,� tests on unwitting people to see whether their minds could be manipulated by drugs, torture or hypnosis. Colleges, hospitals, prisons and pharmaceutical companies participated in the project, records revealed in the 1970s showed, with the CIA hoping to be able to manipulate foreign leaders and other important figures, or program others to commit acts of espionage.

During this time, Sirhan was working as a horse walker at the Santa Anita racetrack, which Robert Kennedy Jr. said was owned by Roselli, and then began riding horses at a ranch in Corona, Calif. He said Sirhan told him he had no experience riding and took several falls, including one that required minor medical treatment. But Sirhan�s family said he disappeared for more than a month, and Pease found a long list of doctor�s appointments Sirhan had that were inconsistent with a minor horse fall.

Kennedy, who has come under attack for his ties to the anti-vaccine movement, said this was the period when Sirhan may have been hypnotized. He was repeatedly introduced to a man he knew only as �Radio Man.� Some have theorized that �Radio Man� hypnotized Sirhan into repeatedly writing �RFK must die� in a journal found in his room, words Sirhan said he did not remember writing.

An expert in hypnosis from Harvard Medical School, Dan Brown, began meeting with Sirhan in 2008 and found him not only easily hypnotized, but also still easily triggered to re-create aggressive shooting moves out of nowhere. Brown submitted affidavits for Sirhan�s appeal stating that he believed Sirhan was an actual �Manchurian Candidate,� manipulated to perform bad acts against his will.

In 1994, Sirhan told journalist Dan Moldea, �It�s probably too diabolical to suggest that I was controlled by someone else � but I don�t know. I only know that I don�t remember anything about the shooting.�

In rejecting the theory, a federal judge wrote, �Whether or not the theory that a person can be hypnotized to commit murder, and then to lose his memory of committing that murder is scientifically credible � [Sirhan] has not provided any reliable evidence that this actually occurred.�

Robert Kennedy Jr. also believes the CIA was involved in the Los Angeles police investigation, to quash any hints of conspiracy.

�It�s undisputable by rational people,� Kennedy said, �there were invasive connections between the CIA and Special Unit Senator,� the investigative team assembled by the LAPD to handle the assassination. Two Los Angeles officers in particular, Sgt. Enrique Hernandez and Lt. Manny Pena, appeared to have CIA backgrounds, though both denied it, and they helped run the daily operations of Special Unit Senator.

�The guys running the SUS, they were full-blown CIA agents who had been involved in really ugly stuff,� Kennedy said. Both men have since died.

Could Maheu have arranged for both the hypnosis of Sirhan and his placement at the Ambassador Hotel that night, and for other actual gunmen to be there as well? Pease argues that Sirhan served as a distraction in front of Kennedy, firing blanks and drawing witnesses� attention, while the actual shooters shot Kennedy from behind and escaped. Audiotapes uncovered in 2004 seem to reveal 13 shots being fired, rather than just eight.

It doesn�t appear that anyone ever asked Maheu about his role in the Kennedy assassination, though Meier, his colleague in the Hughes organization, always suspected him. Maheu, who was in Las Vegas when the shooting occurred, does not mention it in his autobiography.

Sirhan is reading Pease�s book now, said his brother, Munir Sirhan. The Sirhan family always accused the defense team, led by Grant Cooper, of not fighting hard enough to prove Sirhan�s innocence, his brother said.

�The poor guy�s been stuck in jail for almost his whole life,� Pease said of Sirhan, �for something he didn�t do. And that�s just not right.�

Pease and Kennedy both signed a recent petition calling for a �Truth and Reconciliation Committee� to reexamine the assassinations of Robert and John Kennedy, Malcolm X and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. �It all stinks,� Kennedy said. �It�s the whole country that�s getting screwed. These assassinations put us down an ugly road.�

Note: An earlier version of this story reported that author Shane O�Sullivan also alleged that CIA operatives were at the Ambassador Hotel, but O�Sullivan subsequently withdrew that claim after further investigation.

# ? Aug 5, 2020 13:52

Ghislaine of YOSPOS: Apr 19, 2020

lol their acronym is literally SUS

# ? Aug 11, 2020 07:20

Helsing: Aug 23, 2003; DON'T POST IN THE ELECTION THREAD UNLESS YOU JOE BIDEN

Associated Press posted:

After learning of Whitey Bulger LSD tests, juror has regrets

By MICHAEL REZENDES

February 22, 2020

EASTHAM, Mass. (AP) � One of the jurors who convicted notorious crime boss James �Whitey� Bulger says she regrets her decision after learning that he was an unwitting participant in a covert CIA experiment with LSD.

Bulger terrorized Boston from the 1970s into the 1990s with a campaign of murder, extortion, and drug trafficking, then spent 16 years on the lam after he was tipped to his pending arrest.

In2013, Janet Uhlar was one of 12 jurors who found Bulger guilty in a massive racketeering case, including involvement in 11 murders, even after hearing evidence that the mobster was helped by corrupt agents in the Boston office of the FBI.

But now Uhlar says she regrets voting to convict Bulger on any of the murder charges.

Her regret stems from a cache of more than 70 letters Bulger wrote to her from prison. In some, he describes his unwitting participation in a secret CIA experiment with LSD. In a desperate search for a mind control drug in the late 1950s, the agency dosed Bulger with the powerful hallucinogen more than 50 times when he was serving his first stretch in prison � something his lawyers never brought up in his federal trial.

�Had I known, I would have absolutely held off on the murder charges,� Uhlar told The Associated Press in a recent interview. �He didn�t murder prior to the LSD. His brain may have been altered, so how could you say he was really guilty?� At the same time, Uhlar says she would have voted to convict Bulger on the long list of other criminal counts, meaning he still would likely have died in prison.

More Weekend Reads
Uhlar has spoken publicly about her regret before but says her belief that the gangster was wrongly convicted on the murder charges was reinforced after reading a new book by Brown University professor Stephen Kinzer: �Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control.� The book digs into the dark tale of the CIA�s former chief chemist and his attempts to develop mind control techniques by giving LSD and other drugs to unsuspecting individuals, including colleagues, and observing the effects.

�It was encouraging to know I wasn�t losing my mind, thinking this was important,� Uhlar said. �It told me, this is huge. I mean, how many lives were affected by this? We have no idea.�

Gottlieb�s secret program, known as MK-ULTRA, enlisted doctors and other subcontractors to administer LSD in large doses to prisoners, addicts and others unlikely to complain. In Bulger�s case, the mobster and fellow inmates were offered reduced time for their participation and told they would be taking part in medical research into a cure for schizophrenia.

�Appealed to our sense of doing something worthwhile for society,� Bulger wrote in a letter to Uhlar reviewed by the AP.

But nothing could have been further from the truth.

�The CIA mind control program known as MK-ULTRA involved the most extreme experiments on human beings ever conducted by any agency of the U.S. government,� Kinzer said. �During its peak in the 1950s, that program and it�s director, Sidney Gottlieb, left behind a trail of broken bodies and shattered minds across three continents.�

After Bulger was found guilty by Uhlar and the other jurors, a federal judge sentenced him to two life terms plus five years. But his life behind bars ended a little more than a year ago, at age 89, when he was beaten to death by fellow inmates shortly after arriving in his wheelchair at the Hazelton federal prison in Bruceton Mills, West Virginia. No criminal charges have been filed.

Although much had been written about the CIA�s mind control experiments before Bulger�s trial, Uhlar said she knew nothing about them until she began corresponding with the renowned gangster following his conviction.

Uhlar started writing Bulger, she said, because she was troubled by the fact that much of the evidence against him came through testimony by former criminal associates who were also killers and had received reduced sentences in exchange for testifying against their former partner in crime.

�When I left the trial, I had more questions,� she said.

After Bulger started returning her letters, Uhlar noticed he often dated them with the time he had started writing in his tight cursive style. �He always seemed to be writing at one, two, or three in the morning and when I asked him why, he said it was because of the hallucinations,� Uhlar said.

When Uhlar asked him to explain, Bulger revealed what he had already told many others: that since taking part in the LSD experiments at a federal prison in Atlanta, he�d been plagued by nightmares and gruesome hallucinations and was unable to sleep for more than a few hours at a time.

�Sleep was full of violent nightmares and wake up every hour or so � still that way � since �57,� he wrote.

�On the Rock at times felt sure going insane,� he wrote in another letter, referring to the infamous former prison on Alcatraz Island, in San Francisco Bay, where he was transferred from Atlanta. �Auditory & visual hallucinations and violent nightmares � still have them � always slept with lights on helps when I wake up about every hour from nightmares.�

The mobster also recalled the supervising physician, the late Carl Pfeiffer of Emory University, and the technicians who would monitor his response to the LSD, asking him questions such as, �Would you ever kill anyone? Etc., etc.�

That question struck a nerve with Uhlar. After hearing from Bulger about MK-ULTRA, �as if I should have known about it,� she visited him at a Florida federal prison on three occasions to discuss the experiments and started reading everything she could find about them.

At one point, she reviewed the 1977 hearings by the U.S. Senate Committee on Intelligence, which was looking into MK-ULTRA following the first public disclosures of the top-secret program.

The hearings included testimony from CIA director Stansfield Turner, who acknowledged evidence showing that the agency had been searching for a drug that could prepare someone for �debilitating an individual or even killing another person.�

�That�s just horrifying, in my opinion,� Uhlar said. �It opens up the question of whether he was responsible for the murders he committed.�

According to at least two of the several books written about Bulger and his life of crime, associates including corrupt former FBI agent John Morris said they assumed Bulger would use the LSD experiments to mount an insanity defense, if he were ever caught and tried.

But in 2013 Bulger�s Boston attorneys, J.W. Carney Jr. and Hank Brennan, unveiled a novel defense in which they admitted Bulger was a criminal who made �millions and millions of dollars� from his gangland enterprise, but was enabled by corrupt law enforcement officers, especially those in Boston office of the FBI.

Neither Carney nor Brennan would comment on their decision � attorney client privilege outlasts a client�s death. But Anthony Cardinale, a Boston attorney who has represented numerous organized crime defendants, said he would have opted for an insanity defense, in part because of the abundant evidence against Bulger.

�I would have had him come into court like Harvey Weinstein, all disheveled, and in a wheelchair,� he said.

Still, Cardinale acknowledged there would have been challenges to presenting an insanity defense, including the fact that Bulger spent 16 years outwitting several law enforcement agencies, before he was captured in 2011 in Santa Monica, Calif., where he�d been living quietly with his longtime girlfriend while on the FBI�s Ten Most Wanted List.

�The problem is, he lived for a very long time on the lam in a very secretive and a very smart way,� Cardinale said. �But that doesn�t diminish the notion that, based on the LSD experiments, and the doses he was experiencing, he could have convinced himself of things that were not true, including that he had immunity from prosecution and could do whatever he wanted.�

To his dying day, Bulger insisted he�d received criminal immunity from a deceased federal prosecutor who once headed the New England Organized Crime Strike Force.

John Bradley, a former Massachusetts federal prosecutor and assistant district attorney, agreed that defense lawyers would have faced high hurdles waging an insanity defense, noting that most end in convictions.

�The flip side is that jurors are sometimes swayed by morality more than legality,� he said. �The whole shtick that the government played a role in creating this monster, uses him as an informant and then goes after him � that�s an argument that could affect one or two jurors.�

And it only takes one to vote not guilty on all the criminal charges to produce a hung jury, Bradley noted, forcing prosecutors to decide whether to retry a case.

Given Bulger�s decades as a crime boss who corrupted the Boston office of the FBI, paying cash and doing favors in exchange for information that helped him thwart multiple investigations, a retrial would have been a near certainty. Nevertheless, Cardinale said, a hung jury in the Bulger case �would have been a monster victory� for the defense.

Even if Bulger were convicted on the other criminal charges and received a sentence that would have kept him behind bars for life, a refusal to find him guilty on the murder charges would have meant anguish for family members of his victims.

�As in any case involving a tragic murder, a conviction of the perpetrator helps family member obtain closure and move on with their lives,� said Paul V. Kelly, a former federal prosecutor who has represented the family of one of Bulger�s murder victims. �An acquittal of Whitey Bulger on the murder charges would have just caused additional pain and anguish.�

Uhlar has written about the Bulger trial in �The Truth be Damned,� a fictionalized account she published in 2018 and advertises on her website. She also gives occasional talks on the trial at community centers and libraries.

During her correspondence and visits with Bulger, Uhlar said, she grew fond of the gangster, though he often warned her that he was a criminal and �master manipulator.� When asked if Bulger might have manipulated her, she said, �I�ve asked myself that many times. I�ll finish reading a letter and say, �Could he have?� �

Bulger often wrote to Uhlar as if she were a friend, even joking with her. But in one letter he also enclosed a more menacing message inscribed to her on the back of a photo taken of him on �the Rock,� at a time when he was fending off LSD-induced nightmares while contemplating his return to Boston�s violent criminal underworld.

�At end of Alcatraz, getting more serious and capable of about anything,� he wrote. �Hard time makes hard people.�

___

AP investigative researcher Randy Herschaft in New York contributed to this report.

Follow Associated Press investigative reporter Michael Rezendes at https://twitter.com/mikerezendes

# ? Aug 22, 2020 14:28

E Depois do Adeus: Jun 3, 2012; Nobody has better respect for intelligence than Donald Trump.

Helsing posted:

Maheu

This is Pete Bondurant, right? How much did James Ellroy get correct?

# ? Aug 22, 2020 15:20

bedpan: Apr 23, 2008

I had to put the book down for a bit when Otto Skorzeny entered the story

# ? Aug 22, 2020 23:49

Remulak: Jun 8, 2001; I can't count to four.; Yams Fan

bedpan posted:

I had to put the book down for a bit when Otto Skorzeny entered the story

E Depois do Adeus posted:

This is Pete Bondurant, right? How much did James Ellroy get correct?

goddamn time to reread all of American Tabloid again

# ? Aug 23, 2020 00:04

Malkina_: May 13, 2020; by Fluffdaddy

bedpan posted:

I had to put the book down for a bit when Otto Skorzeny entered the story

Having Nazi Germany AND Apartheid Israel on your resume is quite an accomplishment.

# ? Aug 23, 2020 00:16

bedpan: Apr 23, 2008

I had to put the book down again when links to the JFK and RFK assassinations were (again) discussed.

# ? Aug 23, 2020 03:28

Helsing: Aug 23, 2003; DON'T POST IN THE ELECTION THREAD UNLESS YOU JOE BIDEN

E Depois do Adeus posted:

This is Pete Bondurant, right? How much did James Ellroy get correct?

I actually just acquired a copy of American Tabloid a couple weeks ago and am looking forward to reading it when I have a bit more spare time this fall.

bedpan posted:

I had to put the book down again when links to the JFK and RFK assassinations were (again) discussed.

Yeah the Jack Ruby suffering a complete mental break the same day that he met with Louis Jolyon West was one of the more ridiculous, shark jumping moments in this book.

# ? Aug 23, 2020 14:56

mistermojo: Jul 3, 2004

I read the book and it seems obvious to me that Manson was supplying underage girls for celebrities and politicians, with the cops permission and cleanup, and thats what they covered up. No one would need him to study effects of LSD or run guns or drugs

# ? Aug 23, 2020 15:06

Paffgen: Jul 13, 2009

mistermojo posted:

I read the book and it seems obvious to me that Manson was supplying underage girls for celebrities and politicians, with the cops permission and cleanup, and thats what they covered up. No one would need him to study effects of LSD or run guns or drugs

First part agree, but with the second they could use him to study the effect of repeated LSD and other drug use in an isolated setting paired with physical/sexual abuse, fake preaching, and bonding activities like shoplifting and other escalating crimes.

# ? Aug 23, 2020 19:39

PuErhTeabag: Sep 2, 2018

Has anyone else here read Deep Cover by Cril Payne? I'm about halfway through CHAOS and the discussion of Whitson reminded me of it.

There's a good synopsis here, but in short it's written by a former FBI agent who was trying to infiltrate The Weathermen.

https://gregnesteroff.wixsite.com/kutnereader/post/i-was-a-slocan-valley-hippie-for-the-fbi

I read it back when I was a high school bookworm reading anything that looked interesting and it definitely crack pinged me pretty hard.

# ? Nov 16, 2020 23:22

Danger: Jan 4, 2004; all desire - the thirst for oil, war, religious salvation - needs to be understood according to what he calls 'the demonogrammatical decoding of the Earth's body'

gently caress you. read this

# ? Jul 29, 2021 01:12

The Kingfish: Oct 21, 2015

it�s an insanely good book.

# ? Jul 29, 2021 01:15

dead gay comedy forums: Oct 21, 2011

The Kingfish posted:

it�s an insanely good book.

incredibly so

like, you can read it for pure entertainment value if you want to and still is absolutely great

# ? Jul 29, 2021 03:50

Danger: Jan 4, 2004; all desire - the thirst for oil, war, religious salvation - needs to be understood according to what he calls 'the demonogrammatical decoding of the Earth's body'

gently caress you. read this.

# ? Oct 5, 2022 22:23

croup coughfield: Apr 8, 2020; Can't post for 93 days!

baba booey

# ? Oct 6, 2022 02:36

TheSlutPit: Dec 26, 2009

im going to read the book

# ? Oct 6, 2022 10:22

MLSM: Apr 3, 2021; by Azathoth

I always found the narrative �Charles Manson is the most dangerous serial killer in American history� suspect as gently caress when he never even killed anyone

Charlie being an Mk-ultra victim by the intel boys simply makes it offensive

MLSM has issued a correction as of 11:45 on Oct 6, 2022

# ? Oct 6, 2022 11:42

500excf type r: Mar 7, 2013; I'm as annoying as the high-pitched whine of my motorcycle, desperately compensating for the lack of substance in my life.

MLSM posted:

I always found the narrative �Charles Manson is the most dangerous serial killer in American history� suspect as gently caress when he never even killed anyone

Charlie being an Mk-ultra victim by the intel boys simply makes it offensive

I remember being real confused about this around 6th grade or so and every adult i asked told me because he had the power to brainwash people into doing murders

# ? Oct 6, 2022 12:17

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? May 5, 2024 00:52

MLSM: Apr 3, 2021; by Azathoth

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lu9B-c4fM9M

# ? Oct 6, 2022 23:38

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > CHAOS: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties

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