Sybil Leek, Ronald Reagan, MK-OFTEN and Manson

" A few months later, an English witch, Sybil Leek, was standing on the deck of a Dutch ocean liner sailing to the United States  A pleated chiffon scarf wrapped around her brown, frizzy hair billowed in the wind like a swirling sorcerers hat rocking her hulking frame back and forth in gold sandals with red tics looped between fleshy toes, she was an unforgettable sight to the other passengers-all 275 pounds of her Green mascara dripped from her eyes, snake bracelets curled up her chunky arms, and a crystal pendant heaved up and down on her enormous bosom. 

The high priestess of world witchcraft, as she referred to herself, was traveling with a young niece and a live snake.

She was the weirdest woman I ever saw in my life," said Virginia Lehman, one of the passengers. She introduced herself as a witch and said she was head of the European witches coven She talked casually about casting spells, incantations, goats feet, herbal brews, and the Devil She said she followed only white witchcraft-that is, witchcraft for good, not evil. She was very much against black magic and selling your soul to the Devil for money. She said she had recently moved from England and was now living in southern California.

"My daughter and I were absolutely fascinated so we stood there talking to her for a long time.

She asked me if I had ever heard of Ronald Reagan, who had been elected governor of California "

`Sure,' l said.

l'm his astrologer,' said the witch

"Really?"

"'I'm the one who told him he had to be inaugurated right after midnight facile west in a pan of the capitol that had never been used For a swearing-in before'

"You mean the television actor?"

"Mark my words," said the witch. "You're going to hear a great deal about him in the future. He's going to be a very important man"

l didn't pay much attention to that part of the conversation because I wasn't a big Ronald Reagan fan and I wasnt from California so I could not have cared less that the governor believed in witchcraft. I was more interested in what Sybil Leek was feeding her snake..." "

"Initially, Operation [MK-]OFTEN was a joint CIA/Army Chemical Corps drug project, based out of Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland and using inmates of the Holmesburg State Prison in Philadelphia as test subjects. It came under the aegis of the CIA’s Office of Research and Development (ORD), which was concerned with parapsychology and the application of supernatural powers for military purposes. 6Later, OFTEN would become a kind of grab bag of CIA investigations into the paranormal, and would include everything from séances and witchcraft to remote viewing and exotic drugs. Agents of Operation OFTEN would consult with such occult luminaries as Sybil Leek, the famous English witch who was interviewed constantly in the late 1960s on radio and television talk shows, and who had published a few books on the occult, astrology and associated themes. Although the CIA had been investigating ESP and the paranormal, and infiltrating occult groups, since 1952, when Andrija Puharich began contact with The Nine, someone at the CIA evidently felt that the occult underground in 1969 might have access to special techniques for the manipulation of consciousness and memory, and they took to their study with renewed vigor.

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You may remember Sybil Leek from the "Final Events" book - according to which, she allegedly channeled a demon for US intelligence personnel, to answer questions on the UFO phenomenon (note: Final Events was published after a Warm Gun, but Leek's work for Operation OFTEN was well established before now).

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In April of 1969, Bruce Davis had just returned to California and the sticky embrace of the Manson Family after having spent more than five months with either the Scientologists, the Process, or both. His lengthy mission in England is still a mystery, as is the funding for this junket. Documents seized by the US Government after a raid on Scientology headquarters in 1977 show considerable anxiety over the alleged connection between the Manson Family and Scientology; the Scientologists sent emissaries to try to find Steve Grogan (who was later convicted of the murder of Donny Shea), a Family member who had information concerning Manson’s Scientology background (they were unsuccessful). Then, an informant came to them with information on Manson’s 150 hours of Scientology auditing sessions in prison. The picture painted is frightening, for it shows a Manson at turns extremely enthusiastic about his training… and terrified to the point of demanding to be put into solitary confinement so he could escape his auditor.

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--- Quote ---Manson consciously used the drug as a tool in his arsenal, along with sex. In one instance, he told an interviewer that he would make a woman exhausted with physical work before he would have sex with her, so that she was in no mood to have sex at all. Then he would approach her and gradually work on her until the point where she began to respond to his sexual ministrations; at that point, Manson believed he had control of her mind and could convince her to do anything. That combination of sex and drugs and a kind of perverse operant conditioning are the basic working parts of what Ed Sanders calls “The Manson Secret.” It was what CIA psychiatrist Ewen Cameron was working on until virtually the day he died, except that Manson was much more successful. As documented in The Nine, Cameron created zombies; Manson created assassins

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--- Quote ---A few nights before the Tate slaughter there was a strange event at the house on Cielo Drive. A dope dealer from Canada was punished for selling Jay Sebring bad dope. According to actor Dennis Hopper, twenty-five people were invited to watch the dealer get whipped and to participate in the whipping. They videotaped the event, as they had other events involving—again, according to Hopper—“sadism, masochism and bestiality.”  Hopper claims that LA police informed him about some of this information. The tapes have never surfaced, but rumors in the Hollywood underground have always insisted that they exist. Some say that the LAPD has them in a safe place, much like J. Edgar Hoover’s famous “secret files,” to be used when necessary to coerce or persuade a celebrity to cooperate. This event cannot be considered in isolation from the Tate killings. According to Hopper, the public humiliation of the dealer took place three days before the murders at Cielo Drive, which would make it on or about August 5th. Manson had complained to Gary Hinman about a bad batch of mescaline on July 26th. The burn was worth two thousand dollars. Hinman was killed. Hairstylist to the stars (and former lover of Sharon Tate) Jay Sebring had complained about getting burned to the tune of the same two thousand dollars. He would die in the Tate house. Only the type of drug is in question: was Sebring talking about cocaine or mescaline? According to Ed Sanders, Sebring’s burn—and the subsequent whipping of the drug dealer—involved cocaine. That there were two dope burns for the same amount of money in each case, less than two weeks apart, is probably coincidence; but it got Gary Hinman murdered, got a dope dealer whipped on Cielo Drive in front of twenty-five eyewitnesses including many celebrities, and led up to the horrific murders in the same house only three days later.

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--- Quote ---Maury Terry raises an important point in his observation of the killings, one which cannot be easily ignored: if Helter Skelter was the true motive, then why did the killings stop after La Bianca? 

There was no evidence linking the Manson clan to any of the killings; they were still in the clear on Tate and La Bianca, although Bobby Beausoleil had been picked up for the Hinman murder. They could have continued their Helter Skelter murder spree much longer before being stopped. Why only that one weekend in August? Why only the five victims at the Tate house (six, if you count Sharon Tate’s unborn son) and two at La Bianca? 

The only reason that makes sense is that both murders were contract hits, and that Manson dressed it up in Helter Skelter for the benefit of his young female assassins. (It is presumed that Tex Watson knew of the real motive, or had a suspicion anyway, as it was he who drove the car to the Tate residence specifically; it was not a random selection.) Helter Skelter was Manson’s “program” for the brainwashed murderers; it provided a context, and it also influenced their choice of bloody graffiti at each scene, thus laying the crimes off on the Black Panthers. For Manson, it was two birds with one stone, so to speak. He could spread the evil message of Helter Skelter while meanwhile getting paid—in some form, since money seemed to be in short supply in the days immediately preceding and succeeding the murders—by the drug dealing establishment to rid them of some problems.

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--- Quote ---Then there was a substantial rumor pointing to what Ed Sanders calls a “voodoo cult” operating from Jamaica. Polanski went down to Jamaica to check it out, and again came up empty. The Jamaican angle is interesting because Canadian drug dealer Billy Doyle, who was beaten at the Tate house only days before the killings, was known to have flown drugs into the United States from Jamaica specifi- cally. The idea was that Doyle had arranged the killings as retribution for the treatment he received on Cielo Drive, and contracted a cult of killers from Jamaica to do the deed. This only fits what we know of the crime if we maintain that the Jamaican cult then sub-contracted the hit to a known local cult, the Manson Family. There is no evidence to support this, of course, and one suspects it would have been easier for Doyle to go direct to Manson with the contract.
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--- Quote ---Manson himself has said that the real motive behind the Tate killings would never be revealed (by him), but that it was so explosive it would rock the establishment.
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--- Quote ---These were either contract hits, taken on by Manson for reasons undisclosed to this time, or we have to believe that they were the opening salvos in Manson’s dream of igniting a race war. If the latter, then why did the high-profile murders suddenly stop? While many more murders were committed in the days and weeks to follow, they were low-profile attacks on members of the Family who knew too much… or on Scientologists for some strange reason also yet to be divulged.
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