Tag Archives: james-hamilton

Jolly West Part V

Reference: CIA Cult Creation, The Manson Family

After his 1971 murder conviction and death sentence, Charles Manson was sent to the “Adjustment Center” at California state prison at San Quentin. The center is aptly named as it is intended to adjust the prisoner into docility and conformance. Federal District Judge Alphonso J. Zirpoli described it as follows: “Despite its euphemistic title, the Adjustment Center is not a treatment or rehabilitation unit. It is a punitive isolation facility designed to ‘adjust’ disruptive prisoners by breaking their will through prolonged solitary confinement.” – Toussaint v. McCarthy preliminary injunction hearing (N.D. Cal. 1973)

The MK Ultra program taught the CIA that the separation from humans and sensory deprivation of total isolation was the most effective way to achieve a broken will, (The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, Naomi Klien, 2007 Metropolitan Books / Henry Holt and Company.)

Manson proved a tough nut to crack at the Adjustment Center. He was kept in solitary confinement for almost a decade. He was injected with heavy psychiatric drugs periodically. (Eye of The Beholder, Carrie Leonetti, Southwest Law review)

Manson also spent time in the California state prison system’s medical facility at Vacaville for psychiatric work (Eye of the Beholder, ibid.) Vacaville was the site of James Hamilton’s MK Search Project 3 (MK Ultra successor), where he set up facilities to experiment with prisoner psychiatric patients in the late sixties through early seventies. That included specifically, “clinical testing of behavior control materials.” (page 215, In Search For The Manchurian Candidate: The CIA and Mind Control, The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences, John Marks, W.W. Norton and Company 1979.) (See Jolly West Part IV for background of Hamilton and his pursuit of “obliteration of consciousness”)

Hamilton’s fellow MK Ultra/Search doctor Jolly West also had his fingers in Vacaville. According to journalist Alexander Cockburn’s The CIA’s House of Horrors:

The CIA funneled large grants to the University of Oklahoma, home to Dr. Louis “Jolly” West. West would later go on to head the Violence Project at UCLA, where he and Dr. James Hamilton, an OSS colleague of George White and a recipient of CIA largesse, performed psychological research involving behavior modifications on inmates at Vacaville state prison in northern California.

When West’s involvement with Vacaville began and when it ended is unclear – as are much of the activities of the career-CIA doctor’s movements. What we know for sure is that in 1973 West ignited a public uproar when it was discovered that he intended to experiment on the brains of Vacaville prisoners, including the use of psychosurgery and inserting electronic controls. see West at Vacaville. While the proposal was ultimately rejected, perhaps Mr. Cockburn – one of the last credible, old-school, non-programmed journalists of the late 20th century – had sources for his assertion that West indeed did get his fingers into the Vacaville mix.

On the heels of West’s brain-remote-control play, Manson checked in for a 7-month stint at the Vacaville prison medical center. Manson’s first stay would span March through October 1974 for more thorough mental adjustment (Daily Republic July 9, 2023). That was roughly three times the length of the typical Vacaville 90-day stopover. From at least that point forward the con man with hypnotic Svengali-like persuasive powers sufficient to create a cadre of MK-Ultra grade assassins, was a rambling incoherent mess. Jack Ruby redux? (See Jolly West Part III).

After years of systematic adjustment, they rolled out Manson for periodic nationally televised freak shows. The first prominent interviewer, NBC’s Tom Snyder, played the straight-guy act persistently trying to get a straight answer out of an incoherent rambling Manson. It, like all of the many repeat performances, played out like Jack Ruby’s show before the Warren Commission (see Jolly West Part III). One of the only meaningful, sincere-sounding quips from Manson, perhaps explaining his condition, apparently went unnoticed: Manson and the Nuthouse Treatment. No follow-up was forthcoming to that one from the incurious mainstream media.

For decades after the corporate media dosed us with periodic Charles Manson freak shows. It became almost a rite of passage for mainstream ‘journalists.’ So, after Snyder came Diane Sawyer, Charlie Rose, Geraldo Rivera, Ronald Reagan Jr., et al. The message was CIA project Chaos handy: beware of hippie, peacenik culture; and be terrified of ‘cults.’