rrol Morris’s new documentaryChaos: The Manson Murdersis out on Netflix. The documentary starts out with an admission of how, even years after the Tate-LaBianca murders, the world remains interested in the incident and in the Manson family. Somebody in the documentary says it is so because the American people love horror, they love to be scared.

I disagree. I do not think that alone is sufficient reason. Personally, I am interested in the documentary for the same reason I am interested in Rasputin. It is deeply curious and intriguing to find someone having such a deep hold over a group of people. The reason for continued interest in Manson is also because of the times and place of which he was a product. The hippie movement, the black panthers, the summer of love, the explosion of drugs.

The documentary borrows part of its title from Tom O’Neill’s book from a few years ago,

CHAOS: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties.The book has been groundbreaking in offering an alternative view of how Charles Manson became who he was and was able to do what he did. This revisionist view is explored in the documentary, which makes it stand out from those that preceded it, including one where Vincent Bugliosi, chief prosecutor in the Tate-LaBiancamurders, takes a key role in narrating the series of events and makes a case against cults, ensuring Manson is seen as a cult leader.

The documentary borrows part of its title from Tom O’Neill’s book from a few years ago. CHAOS: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties. The book has been groundbreaking in offering an alternative view of how Charles Manson became who he was and was able to do what he did. This revisionist view is explored in the documentary, which makes it stand out from those that preceded it, including one where Vincent Bugliosi, chief prosecutor in the Tate-LaBiancamurders, takes a key role in narrating the series of events and makes a case against cults, ensuring Manson is seen as a cult leader.

The truth may be stranger than the fiction people interested in the case have been led to believe for decades. Tom O’Neill certainly believes so and, in the new documentary, Errol Morris takes into account the new evidence and perspectives that have emerged. This includes the exploration of some evidence that suggests Charles Manson could have been part of a covert CIA operation under the title MKUltra, a human experimentation programme exploring the effect of psychedelics.

It is a matter of debate what the exact aims of this were since much of the documentation around these experiments seems to have been intentionally destroyed. The speculation is that people were intentionally being induced with mental disorders. The theory is that Charles Manson was possibly very directly involved in this programme.

It’s not a secret any longer how the CIA under Hoover was bent upon stifling any sort of freedom. The documentary looks into claims about how when the anti-war movement started and Hollywood celebrities joined these it, the CIA made it its goal to send a message.

With this goal CHOAS was initiated and what unfolded with Manson and in his vicinity, gruesome and unbelievable as it may seem, was possibly part of a CIA scheme. Whether or not the murders were planned cannot be ascertained, however, there is a lot of reason to believe that Manson was a product of the operation.

As I said at the outset, a dissection of what makes a person have such power and influence over people is reason enough but the murders and events preceding those include many fascinating stories of hippie culture in the sixties; CIA running experiments on hippies with agents posing as hippies themselves; the way Manson and ‘his girls’ were living on a ranch that was an old film set; how close Manson came to becoming a popular recording artist; his proclamations about how the New Testament prophesied the coming of the Beatles and claiming the White Album was about the impending race war; his relationship with Dennis Wilson of The Beach Boys; as well as the fact that the people he eventually became responsible for killing included Sharon Tate, Hollywood actress and wife of director Roman Polanski who was eight and a half months pregnant with their son and was stabbed 16 times by two of the Manson girls. Need I say more?

The author writes about culture, art and identity. More of his work can be found on  instagram.com/un.eeeb