Episode Transcript: #1459 - Tom O'Neill

We'll tell everybody what it's called right off the bat. It's called Chaos Charles Manson the CIA and the secret history of the 60s and I

Think it's safe to say that everything that most people believe that happened during the Manson murders is a

Tiny fraction of what was going on behind the scenes and this is what you have

Mean you've essentially been obsessed with this for how many years it would take you to do this? Yeah, not obsessed by choice

It kind of happened, but in the end exactly 20 years we turned in the final

manuscript I think a day to the

20th year and this wasn't a personal obsession with yours. You were writing an article

Let's fill people in that. Yeah, the beginning was I was in between magazines

and not working and I got a call from an editor I'd worked with for years and

She was a premiere magazine at that point which was a monthly movie magazine

And she wanted me to do a story on the upcoming 30th anniversary of the Manson murders, which was

1999 happened in 69

And I was like, yeah, no, no, thanks, you know never been interested hasn't the story been written, you know, right?

and she said look

Once we talk about it, you're gonna see Manson comes up much more often in popular culture than you're aware of

Just trust me on that and I think that if you look into it, you'll find an interesting story

I go, but you know, what about the 30th anniversary?

There's no angle and she goes you've done it before you'll find an angle

We worked together a lot and that began a spiral into kind of madness that finally ended last last year in March