LOS ANGELES, Dec. 14 – Charles Manson, leader of the hippie cult charged with the murder of actress Sharon Tate and six other persons, is being held under maximum security precautions in an isolated cell pending trial, it was disclosed Saturday.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s department was forbidden under court order to give full details of the incarceration of the 35-year-old Manson who is scheduled to reappear in court again Dec. 22 to enter a plea to the murders.

A spokesman would say only that Manson is being kept separate from all other prisoners at the county central jail to prevent any communication and also, presumably, as a safeguard for the bearded cultist.

Before his transfer to Los Angeles this week from the Inyo County Jail in Independence, Calif., where he had been held on auto theft charges, Manson was in a cell with six other men including two members of the hippie group.

The next legal action in the case of the “Manson Family,” charged with the slayings of five persons at the Tate residence and wealthy grocery Leno LaBianca and his wife, will come next Tuesday when one of the girls in the group, Susan Denise Atkins, will enter a plea to the charges.

Miss Atkins broke the case when she went before a grand jury and told what her attorney said was a full story of the slayings.

Extradition proceedings were expected to be pressed next week for the transfer back to California of two other indicted members of the group—Charles “Tex” Watson, who is being held in McKinney, Tex., and Patricial Krenwinkel, held in Mobile, Ala.