Continuing discussion of Tom O’Neill’s opus Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties, these programs illustrate the “post-democratic” state of American politics by presenting the career of a veteran CIA officer named Reeve Whitson.
Reeve Whitson:
1.–Was alleged by Iranian immigrant Shahrokh Hatami to have phoned him with knowledge of the killings of Sharon Tate, et al, before the crime was reported by the news media and before law enforcement even arrived at the crime scene!
2.–Was alleged by the LAPD’s top investigator and Sharon Tate’s father (a Colonel in Army intelligence) to have been deeply involved with the Manson investigation.
3.–Was alleged by attorney Neil Cummings to have maintained some kind of surveillance on the Cielo Drive home, as part of some sort of work he was doing for the intelligence community.
4.–Was confirmed as an officer of the CIA by his own ex-wife.
5.–Was known to have felt that he was–in the end–betrayed by the faction of the CIA for which he worked.
6.–Was able to pull strings in a pivotal way: “. . . . A British film director who himself claimed to have ties to MI5, [John] Irvin said that Whitson got meetings ‘with minutes’ at “the highest levels of the defense industry—it was amazing.’ ”
7.–Was apparently a close associate of retired General Curtis LeMay, George Wallace’s Vice-Presidential candidate in 1968.
8.–Was associated with LeMay when the latter became vice-president of a missile parts manufacturer, which was headed by Mihai Patrichi. Patrichi was a former Romanian army general and a member of the Romanian Iron Guard, whom we have spoken about and written about in many programs and posts. The Iron Guard was part of the Gehglen “Org,” the ABN and the GOP.
9.–Was associated, through his intelligence work with Otto Skorzeny and his wife Ilse.
10.–Was the special adviser to the chairman of the board of the Thyssen firm, also as part of his intelligence work.
Concluding the discussion, we present O’Neill’s discussion of Lawrence Shiller and Jerry Cohen, two journalists believed by many Warren Commission critics to be media “intelligence assets.”
Both Schiller and Cohen helped to shape the “official” version of the Manson Family operations and both cropped up in the context of the JFK assassination as well.
