The Charles Manson Conspiracy

Recently, while I was plotting a book that included my villain trying to perfect the CIA’s failed MK Ultra mind control experimentation, I ran into a podcast episode that made my fictional concept parallel a little too close to reality for my comfort.

Let me give you a little backstory on MK Ultra if it’s not something you’re familiar with. In the 1950s and 1960s, the CIA was big into all kinds of less-than-kosher experiments. In my opinion, they tended toward unethical practices, because many of the high-ranking officials were former Nazis. After WWII, an intelligence program called Operation Paperclip brought many top Nazi scientists to the United States.

Instead of punishing these homicidal maniacs for their crimes against humanity, they were given top positions with NASA and the newly founded Central Intelligence Agency. Though their location changed, their ideals and value for human life did not, and they implemented some horrific practices in the name of science. MK Ultra was one of their brain children. The goal was to wipe the mind of the victim completely clean, so that new thoughts could be programmed into the person. They hoped to create an army of humans who wouldn’t experience fear, conscience, or anything else that might get in the way of whatever their assignment might be.

The main subjects of this experimentation tended to be prison inmates and people who were institutionalized for mental health issues. It’s hard to fathom what kind of people would take advantage of those who were unable to advocate for themselves, but remember, Nazis tended to have a very casual relationship with morality and human decency, so all of this was on brand for them. After pumping the patients full of drugs (LSD seemed to be the drug of choice) the CIA agents subjected them to terrifying images. Aside from scarring those poor people’s minds for life, they never succeeded in forming their emotionless army of drones.

This is where the podcast comes in, and the weirdness happens. Charles Manson appeared on the scene toward the end of the MK Ultra experiments. I won’t try to glorify anything he did. He was a bad dude, and he was sentenced to death for the Tate and LaBianca murders even though he ended up dying in prison in 2017. Still, despite the part he played in those crimes, Charles Manson never personally killed anyone. It’s not normal for a death sentence to be passed to someone who never performed the act of murder.

What made Mason different?

Charles Manson spent a lot of time in and out of prison during the years the CIA was testing MK Ultra on prison inmates. The way the conspiracy theory goes, Charles Manson was a victim of the MK Ultra Project. Not only might he have been a CIA guinea pig during one of his stints in jail, but he might have actually figured out how to create the human machine the government couldn’t.

When you think about all the drugs consumed on Manson’s Spahn Ranch and the dead-behind-the-eyes look his followers exhibited on camera after they committed their atrocities it leaves a lot to the imagination. Had Manson perfected mind control? It’s possible. At the very least, he’d influenced a group of displaced youths to kill for him, shave off their hair, and carve swastikas into their foreheads.

But maybe he’d done more than that. And maybe the CIA wanted to make sure their dastardly deeds never came to light.

Whatever Manson did—however he did what he did—the punishment he received for his background involvement in the heinous murders kept him behind bars. All his appeals were denied. Was he punished more severely to ensure CIA secrets he may have been privy to were never leaked?

We’ll never know. But it’s fun to think about.

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