@MrMoKelly & ‘The Rahner Report’

ICYMI: ‘Later, with Mo’Kelly’ Presents – Mark Rahner's deep-dive into a “conspiracy of mind control, CIA experiments and murder” captured in the new Netflix Documentary ‘Chaos: The Manson Murders’ in the Rahner Report - KFI AM 640…Live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listening to. Later with Moe Kelly on Demand from
KFI A M six.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
Forty Nature Kelly Mark talks about pontificates about pop culture,
Ron and Report with Mark Ronner.

Speaker 3 (00:29):
KFI AM six fortyears later with mo Kelly. Let's get
to Mark Ronner and the Runner Report.

Speaker 4 (00:33):
All right. I was reading the book about the Manson
killings called Chaos by Tom O'Neill, and he was on
my shirt list of people to invite as a guest
whenever I filled in again as host, if that ever
happens again. I'd always been interested in that stuff. And
before I moved to La I was visiting and a
friend drove me to where the house on Clo was
where Sharon Tate and the others were murdered, just because
he knew I'd like that. I wasn't finished with the

(00:55):
Chaos book. The library yanked it from me on my
iPad because it was do we're living in the future,
then I see Chaos. The Manson Murders is a documentary
on Netflix and directed by Errol Morris. No Less, no
Brainer front of the line. Here is the trailer.

Speaker 5 (01:11):
It's one of the scariest true stories out there. Eight
and a half month pregnant, beautiful woman getting stabbed to death.
Manson was able to gain control of his followers, but
he could get them to go out and kill on
command without remorse. How did he learn how to brainwash

(01:32):
those kids and turn them into monsters?

Speaker 1 (01:38):
These people were on LSD.

Speaker 5 (01:40):
Manson was preaching all the time Race wars.

Speaker 4 (01:44):
The murder was okay.

Speaker 1 (01:46):
When a story did start.

Speaker 4 (01:48):
To emerge, it was managed very carefully.

Speaker 5 (01:51):
To manage and manipulate it. I know that what we
were told isn't what happened. Were these research sciences You
were working secretly for the government.

Speaker 2 (02:03):
One of the most bi itself in CIA history.

Speaker 5 (02:07):
Plant of false memories and people without their awareness.

Speaker 4 (02:11):
My was.

Speaker 2 (02:15):
Manson was really into mind control and I'm underessting what
I was doing. You just mentally difference.

Speaker 5 (02:22):
Manson became exactly what the CIA was trying to create.

Speaker 4 (02:28):
Well, you're suggesting your Manson was a puppet. Now, Morris
won an oscar for the Fog of War back in
two thousand and four, and if you haven't seen that,
you're in for a treat. He's also done the Thin
Blue Line. And none of this is dull homework stuff.
It's totally absorbing. Morris is seventy seven now, and not
only has he not lost a step, but Chaos is
such an immersive documentary that it really added layers to

(02:50):
my understanding of this Manson case. And I wish it
had been twice as long. It's just ninety six minutes.
You could fit like two and a half of them
into one brutalist. If you're like me, you've gone to
sleep plenty of time with true crime documentaries on TV
because they're soothing, and the guys with the deep voices
are also very soothing to listen to while they're talking
about horrific stuff. But you're not dozen off during this

(03:10):
documentary with the graphics and the editing. This like documentary
adderall we know. The Tate LaBianca killings back in nineteen
sixty nine were so horrifying that they more or less
ended the Swinging sixties, and they had an effect similar
to what I understand about the Charles Starkweather killing spree
a decade before that. People were freaked out and scared.
Maybe you loved Quentin Tarantinos once upon a time in

(03:31):
Hollywood like I did, for giving us the fantasy ending
we wished for a lot like the one in Inglorious Bastards.
Here's a spoiler, they smoke Hitler. Chaos does a thorough
and like I indicated, a hyperactive job of explaining who
everyone was, where they were, how they were related to
each other. The thing just barely stopped short of showing

(03:52):
charts with red strings showing who gave each other chlamydia.
It's extremely thorough. If you've read Helter Skelter, the Chaos
book and documentary are a whole different ballgame in that
it sort of craps all over Helter Skelter and Vincent Boliosi,
the Manson prosecutor who wrote it or co wrote it
or had a ghost written that was the all time
best selling true crime book. I wouldn't say I knew

(04:15):
or was friends with Buliosi, but I interviewed him around
two thousand and eight for his book called The Prosecution
of George W. Bush for Murder. Whatever you want to
say about the guy, he had balls roughly the size
of the Goodyear Blimp. In twenty twenty five, not a
lot of people are going to argue that our invasion
of Iraq was righteous or had anything to do with
the nine to eleven attack. It's an objective, non partisan

(04:37):
fact at this point, and if you got a problem
with it, go pick an argument with a historian. Not me,
but back in two thousand and eight putting out a
book about prosecuting a president for lying US into a
war and the American soldiers who died from that, let's
just say that it took some nerve. In fact, it
got him blackballed from national media. If you look at
the reception section for the book on Wikipedia, that's blank.

(05:00):
The guy who wrote the all time best selling true
crime book gets shut out of national media. And I
was the only person in major media at the time,
at the Seattle Times, in fact, to give him some ink.
And it involves sticking my own neck out a little bit.
I found boog Leosi to be sharp and impressive, not
just in the interview, but throughout the process that goes
with that stuff, the follow ups, the fact checks. It's

(05:22):
not like just sitting down for a tight five with
Jimmy Kimmel. It's an exhaustive quality control process, and you
don't really get it with a blog these days. After
the interview, finally Ran Bugliosi came to the old Seattle
Times Building to thank me and shake my hand in person,
which was one of those solid old school marks of class.
I really liked him. Now, to be clear, this isn't

(05:44):
some rambling bragathon about somebody famous I had a connection with.
I'm admitting to you how naive I was, and how
this new documentary and book have caused me to rethink
that whole scenario. Try to imagine how gobsmacked I was
reading Tom O'Neil's Chaos and watching the Morris Dots documentary
to be told that Bugliosi may have fudged some stuff
to shape the Manson story how he wanted it, and

(06:07):
the real story was likely different and larger. And what
that book goes into that the documentary doesn't is Bugliosi's
back and forth with O'Neil, which gets a little nuts
as O'Neil comes back to him with information that doesn't
add up about the Manson case and Bugliosi gets increasingly
bent out of shape. Now he's not around to defend himself.
He's gone, so I guess O'Neil gets the last word.

(06:27):
But O'Neil makes a compelling case at the very least
that Bugliosi was mainly interested in making himself a star
and then protecting his legacy. There's lots more in the
documentary that I'll point out but not completely spoil. One
thing is how close Manson was to break an into
the music industry and maybe becoming a star. You heard
a snippet of his singing in the trailer. One of

(06:47):
the Beach Boys was very involved with the Manson family,
Dennis Wilson. He died in nineteen eighty three, so I
guess O'Neil gets the last word on him too. But
some of Manson's music is played in the documentary, and
it almost pains me to say this. It ain't terrible,
It's of its time, and this drives home the concept
that things could have easily gone the other way for
him and lots of others around him. Something else O'Neil

(07:11):
gets into, which a surviving prosecutor disagrees with, is a
possible connection with Manson an MK Ultra, which was essentially
a CIA mind control program. How did Charlie go from
being a somewhat charismatic X con loser who nobody really
took seriously back in the hate Ashbury district to a
cult leader who could make women and men do anything

(07:32):
for him, including killing. Maybe it wasn't just the riz.
How did Manson get so many breaks from the cops
when he was on parole when they should have violated
his ass several times over. I don't know how much
I buy into the mk ultra angle, or even how
much Morris does as a filmmaker. He strikes some new
ground out himself and talks to people. It's not just

(07:52):
the straight adaptation of the book, but this is all
laid out plausibly, and I didn't feel like I was
listening to the babblings of some crank telling me that say,
breast milk is better than vaccines and science. This stuff
has lots of resonance in the present day, not specifically Mchaeltra,
but the way certain people can get their followers to
become radicalized and do what you and I might consider

(08:13):
to be the unthinkable. Based on my observation, people don't
need to be coerced. Now. There's plenty of footage of
Manson's family members then and later in their lives, and
that stuff is chilling to me. True believers who don't
blink when they talk to you when they speak, it's
in this patient, serene, even condescending voice while they're saying

(08:33):
things that are utterly deranged more than a half century ago,
but relevant now. Even if you don't have cable TV.
I am not a conspiracy whack job, and you don't
need to one hundred percent buy into everything you watch.
But this chaos documentary on Netflix is even more worth
your time than a trip to buy a horse paste
for your COVID MO. So it was compelling. It makes

(08:54):
a compelling argument. Is that fair to say? Very absorbing?
And O'Neil himself admitst some things where he doesn't have
conclusive evidence. I think the thing raises more questions than
it answers. But it's interesting stuff and it's not just
it's not like that UFO show with the guy with
the wild hair. What is that Ancient Aliens? Yes, ancient

(09:15):
alien I mean some of that stuff can be fun,
but I think this is serious and it's extraordinarily well crafted,
well put together.

Speaker 3 (09:23):
In fact, I'm going to take you up on that,
and I'm going to watch it this weekend on a
strength of your review and recommendation.

Speaker 4 (09:31):
You got to tell me what you think of it.
I'm really curious to see people's reactions. It doesn't have raves.
The last time I looked on Rotten Tomatoes, it was
somewhere down around to sixty five, and I just don't
understand that.

Speaker 3 (09:42):
Possibly because you and I are old enough to kind
of remember the evolution of the whole Manson saga. Even
though it happened right around when we were born, Manson
was still a resonant figure in popular culture for a
long time after that.

Speaker 4 (09:57):
It was a major pop culture touch stone, and so
was Helter Skelter Yes, and the Beatles album that Manson
got that from. He was a huge Beatles fan. The
whole thing is really interesting, and one of the people was,
I believe Doris Day's sun interesting rabbit hole to go down.

Speaker 1 (10:15):
You're listening to Later with Moe Kelly on demand from
KFI AM six forty