Echoes Of Laurel Canyon - Part Fifteen

Meet Reeve Whitson, the CIA Agent That Ties It All Together

Not many of us know a Nazi assassination ringleader like Otto Skorzeny, let alone work for the CIA or with the FBI. But Reeve Whitson, the central figure surveilling the Cielo Drive house where the Manson Murders occurred, worked with all three.

Summary of the Article

This article by George Webb explores how CIA operative Reeve Whitson acted as a linchpin between U.S. intelligence, ex-Nazis like Otto Skorzeny, Mossad-connected mobsters like Sidney Korshak and Charlie Baron, and Hollywood elites during the 1960s. Whitson is implicated in surveillance operations at the Cielo Drive home before the Manson murders, connections to the Phoenix Program in Vietnam, and the creation of domestic "fusion centers" modeled on counterinsurgency strategies. The story frames Hollywood, Las Vegas, and Cold War intelligence operations as tightly interwoven, funded in part by laundered Nazi gold and Teamster pension money. The piece challenges conventional narratives about the Manson murders, suggesting they were psychological operations designed to justify domestic militarization.

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👤 Person Profiles (4-Sentence Each)

Reeve Whitson

• A CIA asset who had personal ties to Sharon Tate and monitored her home before the Manson murders, Reeve Whitson is described as a handler of operations blending intelligence, organized crime, and counterinsurgency.

• He worked with the LAPD SIS unit and General Curtis LeMay to implement Phoenix Program tactics domestically, particularly through RAND Corporation's CHAOS program.

• Whitson co-authored a book with Col. Paul Tate (Sharon Tate's father) and collaborated with prosecutor Vince Bugliosi on the Manson narrative.

• His ties to both Nazi financier Otto Skorzeny and Jewish mobster Charlie Baron suggest Whitson served as a state-sponsored facilitator of multi-national covert programs.

Otto Skorzeny

• A former Nazi commando turned Mossad collaborator, Skorzeny helped smuggle Nazi assets—both financial and technological—into U.S. industries like aerospace and casinos.

• He is portrayed as a middleman between fugitive Nazis in South America and Mossad- or CIA-linked investment channels in Vegas and Hollywood.

• His transformation from Nazi assassin to Western asset exemplifies Cold War pragmatism.

• Skorzeny's partnership with Whitson indicates that postwar U.S. intelligence welcomed Nazi operatives into key infrastructure projects.

Charlie Baron

• A Jewish mobster and early casino magnate, Baron was one of the first to open a casino under Nevada's 1960 gaming reforms, allegedly with help from Meyer Lansky.

• He was a close friend of both Sidney Korshak and General Curtis LeMay and had business ties to Patrick Hoy of General Dynamics.

• Baron is implicated in laundering Nazi gold into Las Vegas casinos, providing covert financing for intelligence operations.

• His close ties to the Kennedy assassination suspects and Israeli intelligence hint at a complex web of cross-national loyalties.

Sidney Korshak

• The "Mossad Godfather" of Hollywood and Las Vegas, Korshak was the Chicago Outfit’s lawyer and served as a bridge between Jewish organized crime, Mossad, and U.S. intelligence.

• He allegedly engineered the transfer of Teamsters pension funds into Vegas casinos and used IATSE to control Hollywood studios.

• Korshak’s connections to Les Wexner and Jeffrey Epstein suggest he helped found a generational network of kompromat-based influence.

• His manipulation of labor, finance, and entertainment made him a foundational figure in Cold War-era covert infrastructure.

Curtis LeMay

• A cigar-chomping Air Force general and head of the Strategic Air Command, LeMay played a behind-the-scenes role in both the JFK autopsy and RAND’s militarized research.

• He is said to have supported Whitson's implementation of Phoenix Program tactics domestically.

• His inspection of JFK’s corpse and defiance during the autopsy adds to speculation about military involvement in the assassination.

• LeMay’s ties to RAND, Vegas, and the LAPD SIS unit place him at the heart of Cold War paramilitary operations on U.S. soil.

Dr. William W. Herrmann

• A RAND scientist who helped design the CHAOS program, Herrmann was also involved in Vietnam’s Phoenix Program torture tactics.

• He worked alongside Whitson to transfer counterinsurgency techniques from Southeast Asia to urban U.S. policing.

• Herrmann represents the academic-technocratic wing of covert intelligence programs.

• His collaboration with RAND facilitated a systemic approach to domestic surveillance and psychological operations.

Jimmy Hoffa

• Infamous Teamsters president who was eliminated in the 1970s after helping redirect pension funds into Vegas casinos under Korshak’s guidance.

• Hoffa’s fall is portrayed as part of Korshak’s consolidation of Jewish mob control over previously Italian-dominated rackets.

• His disappearance remains unsolved but is linked here to internal power realignments.

• Hoffa’s removal exemplifies how the “Mossad Godfathers” removed dissenting or inconvenient players.

Jay Sebring & Wojciech Frykowski

• Friends of Reeve Whitson and victims of the Manson murders, their deaths are positioned as symbolic targets within a broader psychological operation.

• Their social connections made them suitable as pawns in a cult-driven false flag.

• They help emphasize Whitson's proximity to the crime, not as a passive observer but as an orchestrator.

• These murders were meant to shock Los Angeles elites and justify increased surveillance.

Paul Tate

• Colonel Paul Tate, father of Sharon Tate, co-wrote a book with Whitson about the Manson murders titled Five Down On Cielo Drive.

• His military background and collaboration with intelligence figures suggest he may have been more than a grieving father.

• Tate’s involvement with Whitson strengthens the case that official narratives were shaped by intelligence input.

• His book effort indicates an intent to control the post-Manson public discourse.

Vince Bugliosi

• Prosecutor of the Manson trial and author of Helter Skelter, Bugliosi worked closely with Whitson behind the scenes.

• Bugliosi’s version of events became the official narrative, despite evidence of intelligence interference.

• His bestselling book helped conceal the CIA’s psychological operations angle.

• His role was to validate the “lone-cult” myth and close the door on deeper investigation.

Les Wexner

• The billionaire founder of L Brands and Jeffrey Epstein’s financial backer, Wexner is portrayed as Korshak’s nephew and heir to the Mossad Godfather role.

• His Columbus, Ohio empire served as a modern base for Mossad-aligned influence.

• Wexner's ties to Epstein implicate him in kompromat-based operations stretching from politics to media.

• His wealth and discretion made him a long-term intelligence asset.

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🏢 Organization Profiles

CIA

• The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency is shown as a major backer of Whitson’s operations, from Phoenix Program torture in Vietnam to psychological operations in Los Angeles.

• CIA-funded programs like CHAOS used RAND’s computing power to model population control domestically.

• CIA is also tied to the Manson murders via Whitson, Bugliosi, and possible drug experiments.

• The agency’s hand is visible but hidden in narratives ranging from Hollywood to assassinations.

FBI

• The FBI is implicated in supporting the Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) model that evolved from SIS units and Phoenix tactics.

• It worked with Whitson and possibly LeMay to establish surveillance networks across major U.S. cities.

• The FBI’s lack of investigation into Whitson’s proximity to the Manson scene suggests complicity or willful blindness.

• In the post-JFK world, the FBI functioned as a domestic extension of Cold War counterinsurgency.

RAND Corporation

• RAND is portrayed as the intellectual and computational engine behind strategic air warfare simulations and domestic psychological operations.

• Working with LeMay and Whitson, RAND created the CHAOS program to bring Phoenix-style tactics to U.S. cities.

• It operationalized surveillance and control under the banner of “systems approaches.”

• RAND’s pivot from nuclear scenarios to domestic policing marks a critical inflection point in American governance.

LAPD SIS (Special Investigation Section)

• A secretive LAPD unit connected to the Manson surveillance and broader counterinsurgency policing.

• The SIS worked with Whitson and Hamilton to monitor Sharon Tate and related figures.

• The SIS is a forerunner of fusion centers and JTTF.

• It institutionalized military-grade surveillance in local law enforcement.

Phoenix Program

• A CIA-run assassination and torture campaign in Vietnam, the Phoenix Program was exported back to the U.S. via RAND and Whitson.

• Phoenix tactics included waterboarding, intelligence mapping, and population control.

• Its “systems” model inspired domestic fusion centers.

• Whitson helped facilitate its transition from jungle warfare to urban policing.

Teamsters Union

• Under Jimmy Hoffa, the Teamsters became the primary laundering mechanism for CIA and mob funds into Vegas.

• After Hoffa’s disappearance, control of the funds shifted to Mossad-aligned figures like Korshak.

• The union’s pension was used to finance Hollywood studios and Vegas casinos.

• Teamsters were both a financial conduit and a power base to be neutralized.

Introduction

Even fewer of us also worked with the first mobster to obtain a casino license in Nevada in 1960, after Nevada revised its gaming laws, Charlie Baron, but Reeve Whitson did. Charlie Baron was a Jewish mobster who owned the Sands casino in Las Vegas, and one of the first Meyer Lansky hotels in Vegas after the fall of Cuba.

Charlie Baron was also a close associate of Patrick Hoy of General Dynamics of IB Hale and Robert Oswald fame, the firm that got Lee Harvey Oswald two jobs in Dallas and that planned Kennedy’s route in Dallas the day of the assassination.

Baron was best friends with Sidney Korshak, who laundered racket money for the mob in the 1960s and was the mouthpiece for the Jewish mob in Hollywood.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/1997/04/The-Man-Who-Kept-The-Secrets

Korshak convinced the Teamsters to drain their money of their pension funds into Las Vegas casinos and then proceeded to eliminate one regional leader of the Teamsters after another, including the most famous Teamster leader, Jimmy Hoffa.

Almost all the mobsters tied to Los Angeles came from the Chicago Outfit, including Sam Giancana, Johnny Roselli, Charlie Baron, and Sidney Korshak.

Gus Russo wrote about Sidney Korshak’s control of Hollywood in his book, “SuperMob”.

In 1958, the first FBI eavesdropping devices were planted in the Chicago Outfit’s headquarters on 620 North Michigan Avenue, not far from where Rahm Emanuel's office is today, the heir apparent of the Mossad empire.

Sidney Korshak was not only a close friend of Chicago Outfit Mobster Charlie Baron but also the uncle of Mossad-connected Lex Wexner, Jeff Epstein's mentor.

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/124877950/minnie-wexner

The Korshak - Epstein - Wexner Connection

Reeve Whitson was also close friends with the Head of the Strategic Air Command, Curtis “Bombs Away” LeMay. Curtis LeMay, you may remember, personally inspected the dead body of John F Kennedy and blew cigar smoke all over the hospital room during the forensic examination of Kennedy’s body despite being told he was contaminating evidence.

Why did LeMay fly in for a forensic autopsy of a murder investigation of the President?

Why would you smoke a cigar at a forensic murder investigation and blow smoke into the face of the pathologist when he asks you to put it out?

If it seems like Reeve Whitson connects all the same players who are the top suspects in the JFK assassination, you would be right.

Whitson is also closely connected to Dr. William W. Herrmann, who ran “Fusion Centers” in the Phoenix Program in Vietnam.

Whitson also connects to the LAPD’s “Death Squad” or SIS Unit. Does it seem like Whitson’s job is to put SIS units in every major city like our current JTTF Fusion Centers like Fusion Centers in Vietnam?

The paid portion of this substack will explore this topic in depth. Click below to read more.

George C. Scott played General Curtis LeMay in the movie “Dr. Strangelove” as the head of the Strategic Air Command.

Reeve Whitson is also a good friend of Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate, and has their Cielo zdrive under surveillance. Despite all the assassination rings Teeve Whitson was intimate with, even fewer of us had the Sharon Tate home under surveillance during the Manson Murders. Reeve Whotson also had personal friendships with several of the victims before the murders like Jay Sebring and Frykowski. But that is CIA Agent Reeve Whitson, making him an essential linchpin in the 1960s CIA’s activities pushing LSD into the antiwar movement.

Reeve Whitson also wrote a book about the Manson Murders with the father of Sharon Tate, Colonel Paul Tate, called “Five Down On Cielo Drive.” Whitson worked closely with Vince Bugliosi, the lead prosecutor in the Manson case and the author of the best-selling book Helter Skelter.” Whitson was also involved with a crime analysis scientist named William W. Herrmann, who worked for the RAND Corporation and the Phoenix Program in Vietnam.

The metadata analysis reads out that Reeve Whitson was bringing the Phoenix Program to Los Angeles for Curtis LeMay, funded through laundered Nazi funds through Las Vegas casinos. Various agencies were created in the Vietnam era to take a “system approach” to counterinsurgency and domestic policing The Office of Public Safety create in 1962 in the State Department at USAID is one example.

In his book, “Badges Without Borders”, Stuart Schrader talks about the blurred line between domestic policing and foreign counterinsurgency during the Vietnam era at the Office of Public Safety. The euphemistically named OPS conducted counterinsurgency cross training between US police forces and 52 foreign police force battling uprisings.

Phoenix Program water torture interrogation in Vietnam.

It seems Reeve Whitson was at the center of this “systems approach” effort in Santa Monica, California with the RAND Corporation and one Dr. William W. Herrmann.

Whitson had been closely involved with General Curtis Lemay at RAND with the Strategic Air Command in Santa Monica, and RAND was stretching its computer wings into counterinsurgency with a “systems approach”.

The RAND Corporation think tank in Santa Monica along with the System Development research and development prototyping arm had tackled the Strategic Air Command problems of massive air attack simulations, and now RAND was ready to turn their computers onto domestic “counterinsurgency”.

Building on the NAZI concept of tracking populations with IBM punch cards, and new computerized “systems approach” to foreign and domestic counterinsurgency was now possible.

Was Reeve Whitson, CIA agent, involved in psychological operations of creating a hippy band of murderers to usher in an era of counterinsurgency against anti-war protestors. This certainly was the result of the Manson Murders with Phoenix program like counterinsurgency of Vietnam becoming the “fusion center” of our modern day JTTF Joint Terrorism Task Force.

Still, it is difficult to understand Reeve Whitson’s relationship with Otto Skorzeny, Nazi death square organizer along with a Jewish casino owner in Las Vegas like Charlie Baron.

From Tom O’Neill’s book, “CHAOS”. https://www.littlebrown.com/titles/tom-oneill/chaos/9780316477574/

Perhaps the Mossad intelligence agency of Israel was luring Nazi gold out of the shadows by investing in casinos and movies through Whitson; we are still researching that topic. In any case, Whitson appeared to be State Sponsored by many nation States.

Were the Helter skelter murders just the most efficient way to get America to accept a low intensity form of warfare as acceptable law enforcement? George Webb at the Rand Corporation in Santa Monica, California.

Peter Duke and I have done a deep dive on this topic on the Duke Report.

https://rumble.com/v4zljst-storytelling-industrial-complex.html?mref=1b8qxb&mc=26b0e

In 1962, the RAND Corporation was the subject of a popular folk song, poking fun at RAND’s enormous cataclysmic questions of nuclear war gaming and other doomsday scenarios.

But this series and the companion dramatizations of key points of the story have led to several exciting developments.

First, the Reeve Whitson character has inspired a whole new genre of Hollywood movies, which I can call Intel Truth or Intel-A-Truth, in which the true role of the CIA, which has been edited out of movies, is added back in. In the dramatizations of Reeve Whitson’s conversations with General LeMay at Rand Corporation, I highlight the ironies of a field CIA Agent trying to set up a drug cult to compromise the Los Angeles elite in Episode Four.

https://x.com/RealGeorgeWebb1/status/1797028328316313676

In Episode Five, Reeve Whitson returns from the grave to share what he would have done differently if he hadn’t died at fifty.

https://x.com/RealGeorgeWebb1/status/1797683442202882434

In Episode Three of Echoes of Laurel Canyon, Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys berates Reeve Wilson because he cannot locate his Rolls Royce that Charlie Manson has absconded yet again with a few of his women followers.

https://x.com/RealGeorgeWebb1/status/1796681012686340362

The incredible vortex that Reeve Whitson is in to try to build a credible cult is quite laughable but still fun to watch.

Episode Two covers the challenges Reeve Whitson is having finding someone who can play guitar who can also meet General LeMay’s daughter’s desire for the create cult band to be comprised of beach lifeguards.

https://x.com/RealGeorgeWebb1/status/1796650485480554761

Finally, in the first episode, we are introduced to the CHAOS computer program the RAND Corporation wants to implement to run the Phoenix Program in Los Angeles.

https://x.com/RealGeorgeWebb1/status/1796650485480554761

I hope you enjoy the vignettes of drama. Sometimes if you hear real human conversation on the subject matter, everything is so much simpler to understand. We will continue to narrate along the way as well, so you, the reader, gets the best of both worlds. Thank you!

Notes -

Reeve Whitson was trying to implement Dr. William W. Herrmann’s CHAOS Program at the RAND Corporation.

Reeve Whitson worked with Colonel Paul Tate, father of murder victim, Sharon Tate, on a book about the murders called “Five Down On Cielo Drive”.

Reeve Whitson’s family had an entertainment Background with her father being one of the top acrobatic acts in New York City.

Always running in the back of my mind is that all the Manson murders might have been a school play from beginning to end in order to shock Los angeles and the United States into accepting draconian low intensity warfare as a form of law enforcement.

That would explain all the low budget actors that seem to sprinkle themselves throughout the story. In any case, I have decided to be dedicated to writing the CIA back into the national history scripts that they have so carefully carved themselves out of.

I very much doubt we will ever see the day where Citizen journalism and truth telling in Hollywood gets an Oscar. But it was fun going to the Academy Awards museum and manifesting that possibility in any case for future Citizen Journalists.

I accepted an Oscar in citizen, journalism on behalf of researchers all around the world in a mock ceremony at the Academy awards museum.

if a small group of CIA actors can conduct a school played like Helter skelter to get us to onshore of Phoenix program of low intensity warfare as law enforcement, setting aside our 220 year history in constitutional government, perhaps it’s time that we fight back with some truth, telling and Hollywood.

A mock award may be the first necessary, visioning step we need to really recognizing Citizen Journalists in Hollywood.

Thank you for reading Echoes of Laurel Canyon.