wd wae tte AP dee ee ais wy Approved For Release 2000/08, . / . : : . . . , {08 :'CIA-RDP96-00788R001700360003-3 “Hawker here’s © - convinced the dam’. Commies have invented a — secret brain-washing ray __ that’s beamedinon . a "Jimmy Carter.” oo Langdonin Punch os Dy « ‘ye Electronics Systems Command, explaining the reversed himself completely: “Prom what I have seen it Navy's interest. “Pye thought for 20 years that ESP is the owas a valid test as far as the investigators aré con- way to fight submarines.” In fact, one of Ingo Swann’'s cerned.” The excuses Tange from: (1) the NSA or CIA remote viewing demonstrations at SRI was to pinpoint man “souldn’t read a map” and therefore the coordl- the location of Soviet submarines around the world. _ nates got confused; and/or (2) the psychic subjects 20- Within the past few weeks, Swann and five other SRI - omed in on the nearby Sugar Grove space communica- - subjects descended some 2,000 feet pelow the Pacific in- tions center (which does have a few similarities to the side a tiny submersible to try to their remote viewing on described target, but is in West Virginia, has public the sea floor. According to a scientist from NASA's Jet . tours through it and so is not secret, and is manned by Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, who also made the Navy, not Army, personnel); and/or (3) the subjects read dive, the psychics correctly predicted — prior to diving the mind of the NSA officer rather than the coordinates. _ where to find various man-made objects such as all _ Says Foote: “There may have been a slight exaggeration, chors and parts of sunken ships. but it was a.matter of degree rather than a deliberate ° Dot a ie . falsehood.” . . ; Mind Prips to Jupiter - The CIA, NSA and SRI have not responded to requests to clarify the discrepancies. Puthoff and Targ continue .- to stand by the “Project Scanate” report, and maintain secretary of the Navy. Dr. Sam Koslov, received @ rou- that their investigations “are among the most severely tine briefing on various research projects, including monitored in the history of science.”. .. ve SRr’s. As the briefer flashed his chart onto the screen The Scientology Link - and began to speak, Koslov stormily interrupted: “What , the hell is that about?” , ‘4 BOUT THE SAME time that the second Navy con- tract was given to SRI, the scientific assistant to the NE ITEM that continues to trouble those in govern- ranking Scientologist and has written defenses of his or- s. Scientology's beliefs Among the glowing words on the projected chart, the ment who follow the SRL work is the unusually | section describing SRI's work was labeled: “ELF AND large number of Scientologists involved with the psychic” ie 4. «pir stands for “extremely low frequency” elec: Ski's chief researcher, Dr. Harold puthoff, is a high- : Soa = ic waves, {rom the very slow brain frequen- 4 ai cics up to about 100 cycles per second. The Navy js inter- ganization’s methods and belief % M sted in ELF he ts Project Seafarer (formerly Pro- include the development of Rn 2 ee Age at yt vat ttt So Su a
haere va Eom oo agen maa pantie, 0 We abate Toth «was deta. din Moscow by the KGB, allegedly ior receiving "staic secrets” about parapsychology research. The paper giv to Toth by a scientist said to be labora- tory chief at the Moscow Institute of Medical-Biological Preparations described a theory of psychic functioning | called “mitugenctic radiation” which has been discussed ‘publicly for years and Jargely discounted by others in _ the field. One theory is that the Russians hope to mislead .- the United States into believing that they are far ahead in parapsychology research so that we will either (1) . waste scientific resources trying to find out what they are up to, or (2) do productive research which they then can tap into because of our more open system of scien- tific reporting. It is indeed a murky business. From ESP to Voodoo | , UT, FOR MANY YEARS, small groups within the U.S. government have taken seriously the specula- tions about using psychic powers for mind warfare: « Dr. J. B. Rhine, the dean of American parapsychol- - ogy, conducted extrasensory perception (ESP) tests for '_. the Army as far back as 1952. In the early 1960s, a team’ “of “Air Force scientists tested’ junior college coeds for ESP in an effort to develop a strict experimental method , _ that others might follow. ; ‘¢ During the Vietnam War, the Marine Corps tried _ dowsing or “water.witching” as a technique te uncover oo -hidden mines and tunnels in the mountainous I Corps area west of Hue. ° The National Institutes ‘of Health has supported a few studies i in 1 parapsychology. "Funding for one of these programs, experiments in dream telepathy at Brooklyn’s Maimonides Hospital, now has been taken over by the. ‘ McDonnell Aerospace Foundation, founded by James ‘ McDonnell of McDonnell Douglas Corp., one of the coun- try's largest defense contractors. ¢ Three years ago, NASA paid $80,000 to see it “machines could teach ESP (they could not) and for some pilot studies that measured brain waves during alleged ' telepathic/clairvoyant communications. - * Last year, the Defense Department's Advanced Re- ° search Projects Agency (DARPA) sponsored a $145,000 contract tu determine whether. the Soviet-discovered - Kirlian photography really depicted the glowing “aura” - of a person's “etheric body.” The study found that Kir- Han pictures are related to the moisture content in a per- . . son's skin, a conclusion which is scientifically interesting ; but certainly not grist for occult Jovers. * One West Coast Veterans Administration hospital harbors secret biofeedback/telepathy experiments; an- other VA hospital in the Midwest conducts “out of body" investigations. Whether these are officially sanctioned projects ér just bootstrap investigations is undeter-° mined, since the investigators refuse to discuss their re- - search publicly. CIA psychologists are swamped with proposals for psy- chic studies, including one this spring which offered to study a Trinidadian voodoo specialist who reportedly . flattens automobile tires — and presumably people — -merely by sticking pins in their photographs. - -Rton Robertson, a security officer at Lawrence Liver-_- more Laboratory in California, one of the country's -pri- mary nuclear weapons arsenals, has acknowledged that “some of the [government's] interest in psi [psychic stu- t dies] ties into classified intelligence areas, for example, . - jhe.security of nuclear weapons.” Robertson, who has followed psychic developments onan official basis, seri- ously foars that a talented psychic might trigger or dis- able a warbead merely by psychokinetic force of mind. “All it takes is the ability to move one-eighth of an ounce a quarter-of an inch at a distance of one fot,” he has warned. Physicists at Livermore, the University of California and elsewhere believe that psychic functioning — in- cluding Robertson’s fears of nuclear sabotage by psycbo- kinesis — can be explained by electromagnetic, quan- tum mechanies or relativity theories. The scientists at Livermore have conducted psychokinetic tests with the young Israeli ye aetna Uri Geller, all on an “in- formal” basis, excité proved Fy ced it to such an extent that they were usaig it furs. i: :ligence monitoring. They seemed to think that psy-. chic intelligence gathering was not beyond the realm of possibility,” continues Van de Castle, adding quickly: * “They gave more serious weight to that possibility than! 4 would asa parapsychologist. . “Remote Vi iewing” ERHAPS the CIA investigators were just better in- - formed. About the same time that Van de Castle . was being interviewed, the CLA was closely monitoring SRI's “remote viewing” experiments with Ingo Swann, . . and Pat Price. Specialists from the operational side of the agency were brought in to attempt to confirm the “remote viewing” effect, and did so, according to two { ' sources, by testing both Swann and Price, and others, } apart from SRI. For example, Swann and Price were J “given foreign targets to focus on, including some in.Rus- ‘ sia and China: Though there were frequent misses, enough accurate information was gleaned to please the |}. ° CIA, according to the reports. How did the monitors’ ‘know ‘that the information was accurate? Sometimes, the answers were not known until after the remote |. viewing descriptions had been given and “ground truth” . checks were made by agents operating abroad. ~ an According to Robertson, the Jal Belg aaenghOUQS{0 8 :ielp2DP96-OOZRBRA BOUENGOB son Jr, technical director Swann denies ever having worked for-the CIA, and : may have been unaware of the identity of the tests’ yl Sponsor. “Tf_anybody gets the idea that there's e's_ psychic . 2 SD yatarg, going on, I could get killéd"in™ the. s streets," 4 Swann has said. _ The project did suffer one notable failure. When an # Air Force officer was kidnapped by Turkish terrorists a-¥ few years back, Price and some others attempted to'$ | “see” where he was being held captive. Acting on their §. - psychic tipsters’ information, intelligence operatives - checked the site, but to no avail. But that did not deter the psychic spy enthusiasts. In a self-proclaimed “independent and somewhat critl- cal study of extrasensory perception,” intelligence con-* ’ sultant Joseph A. -Ball of Santa Barbara, Calif., con §- cluded in’1975 that the work at SRI. “produced “mani. festations of extrasensory perception sufficiently sharp § and clear-cut to justify serious consideration of possible = applications,” that is, psychic. spying. . Under a section headed “Practica! Applications, " Ball. # writes: “No matter how gifted the. patagnost [psychic}, f existing ignorance of the basis of paranormal phen- = _ omena together with the capricious and unreliable na- & ture of the channel dictate that information derived & from this source can never stand alone and must be used & with caution, Extrasensory information should at best [his emphasis} supplement normal information or guide § its collection, but should never serve in place of it.” But fe ’ his point is that espionage by ESP } is a reasonable expec- ¥ = Aation. SRI's highty advertised “Project Scanate” results #4 served the crucial purpose of garnering further govern- b% ment funding. Legitimized by the participation of CIA and NSA personnel in their tests, SRI’s Puthoff and Targ briefed “every government agency you can name” look- ing for further: support. One that bit was the Special. Ss “Warfare Branch of of. the |] Naval | Electronics’ Systems. Com- mand, The decision to fund was taken largely on the “basis of an impressive briefing on “Project Scanate" by FB 1” ded. In October, 1975, the Navy let a $50,703 contract to SRI for psychic sensing of remote electromagnetic sources, 2 . ae continuation of carlier work supported by NASA in which subjects allegedly used Lheir powers to detect re. motely flashing lights. Most of the experiments were carried out under subdcontroct to Lansley Porter § Neuropsychiatric Institute in San Frineseo -— and were a bust. Early in $976, Puthoff and Targ received $26,000 in supplemental money from the Navy to see if magne Pd tometers could be affected by human beings. The SRIE researchers already had reported that some of their subge jects could indeed affect the workings of a shielde : magnetometer. “We have a deep and abiding intcrest in mapnelom@ the SRI experimenters which their CLA monitor atten- Ea
Sew ules eg CHC Pestariess sre interesteu ai & becausd many thes-rists believe that radiation at the a, ELF frequencies is responsible for psychic commu: “AUONS. cut the “Mind Control” label really upset Koslov. He fered the SRI investigations for the Navy stopped, _ cancelled another $35,000 in Navy funds slated for ure remote viewing work. “We [Koslov's emphasis] do ~t fund programs in this area,” the outspoken scientist: tes. “If you ask me, ‘Do you think it’s a pile of crap?’ I , apd you can quote me.” In March of this year, Koslov nin insisted that the Navy is “simply out of this busi- ss. I don't believe jt's the function of the military to ‘pport parapsychology rescarch.” ; Contrary to Koslov's assertion, the Navy still is sup- “srting psychic research. An interdisciplinary team at . + Navy's Electronics Laboratory Center in San Diego ~ + been continuing some of the work begun-at SRI. Led an expert in bionics, the $100,000, two-year project ay be cut because of tight research money. Which is nfortunate, since the experiments seem far better de- ened than earlier ones elsewhere. - . This spring, SRI's Puthoff and Targ again made the " - -wmnds of Washington drumming up sponsorship. One - ~ jroposal that they hoped to sell to NASA was a $100,000 ‘fopram precognitively to predict eclipses of the four. yajor Jovian moons by having a subject fly his con- -. ziousness to the giant planet to “record the actual time - f. the eclipse as observed on Jupiter [SRI’s emphasis]. -:- ‘hough SRI’s proposal claimed that “pilot studies have . een encouraging,” NASA declined. The SRI investigators also sent feelers to. DARPA in -ypes of winning long-term support for their work. keptics at the agency quickly flew in an outside team _ £ debunkers to brief engineers in the strategic and tac- we o .val offices who were considering funding SRI's psychic oe ork. Just three days after the debunkers presented =. | dir case, DARPA spokesperson Jane Smith flatly de- . ' ited that the agency bad any interest in psychic re- “arch or in Puthoff and Targ. Queried repeatedly, she ‘.uod on the statement from DARPA Director George H. leilmeier: "DARPA bas not received and is not consider- ~ ‘<a proposal, formal or informal, on psychic research.” sveording to one of the paid consultants who briefed JARPA, SRI had proposed a $3.5 million program on remote viewing.” mo “Scanate” or “Bullpasture?” ¢ N THE SURFACE, all this government interest in parapsychology strongly supports the “believers” -.: Uneir Heated debate with the skeptics over the reality “£ psychic functioning. Price’s apparent hit on the al- .aped secret military installation in their demonstration iest for the CIA is particularly impressive — until one asks other government funders touting the test, “Did vou ever check it out?” The answer is “no.” So on Sunday, March 13, with compass, topographic ‘naps and aerial photographs in hand, I drove to an area -omne 135 miles west southwest of Washington, the site identified by the coordinates given in the SRI report. A NASA official and his two sons accompanied me. From atl the secrecy surrounding this test we half-expected to cliscover the base camp of an extraterrestrial scouting jarty or, at the very least, the command center for ‘cord War IH. . No such luck. Just a sparse hillside, a lew flocks of ‘neep, and Jots of droppings. No “underground storage areas," no “computers, communication equipment” or ."Army Signal Corps” personnel, as reported by Price. The only “codeword” was the name of the place, Bull- pasture Mountain. Under the circumstances, it seems shat SRI's “Project Scanate” would be named more ap- prepriately, “Project Bulipasture.” ‘ When told of the results of our hike, James Foote, the Navy project manager for the SRI tests, was astonished: ‘lam just chagrined that we didn't catch this. ft wasn’t | sust SRI that told us this [the 1ést results] but the [CIA and NSA] sponsors, otherwise I wouldn't have taken it so much for granted. . . There's definitely some fallacy in this Scanate report.” Several days later, Foote abruptly changed his tune, ed-Far Rélease 2000/08/08 7 ClA-RDP96-00788RN0470836b003-3 . . et he ani ee ae cere LN VIL Upon stat Phelan, ae mignest ni. ment’s ce-nplex ladder of achievements; Pat Price, who | died twe.years ago, also was a high-level “Operating! Thetan.” The laboratory assistant to Puthoff and Targ during many of the Geller experiments was a Scientolo- gist married toa “minister” of Scientology. Some of the Initial funding for SRI’s experiments came from a ranking Scientologist who had established «| _ his Science Unlimited Research Foundation “at Hal Puthoff's suggestion,” according to the foundation's ex- ecutive director at the time. Ingo Swann helped to estab- _lish Scientology's “Celebrity Center” in Los Angeles, the headquarters recently raided by the FBI. At the time of - his original testing, Swann revealed that there are “four- | « teen Clears ja medium-high level of Scientology achievement], more than I would suspect,” working at The involvement of Scientologists in the tests.at SRI partially accounts for at least two government agencies pulling back from funding further work there. Sociolo- gist Marcello Truzzi, one of the consultants called in last “March to brief DARPA on Puthoft’s and Targ’s ‘experi- we ments, says Jetting Scientologists conduct ESP research |": is “like giving money_to a cardinal of the Church to do || ~ “experimentation ‘into the veracity of” transubstant{a-.! - “"On'the other hand, some within government argue. |; ~. that it makes sense to let Scientologists investigate the . psychic claims subscribed to by members of the organi- ' zation. But at best, this is questionable science. +. ; Bad Drives Out Good | - “NE EVEN MORE. confusing possibility is that the SRI experimenters may to some extent be unwit- ting participants in a deliberate put-on, a consideration they themselves have raised. Col. Austin Kibler, director of DARPA's human resources division in 1973, confided , ah to one of his consulting psychologists that “it could be that we are pretending to support this [psychic] wark to |.- throw off the Russians.” One ranking CIA scientist pri- vately voiced the same possibility just a few «months back, — ma But there is a core of dedicated believers inside ‘sev- , eral government agencies who are intensively reviewing parapsychology research, weeding though the mass of conflicting opinion, biased reports and inconclusive ex- . ' periments in an attempt to determine what next steps should be taken, if any. The authors of the CIA's two-volume study urge “that it is worthwhile for the United States government to in- ; itiate and support systematic research in this [psychic] | area. . . Thus, ft is recommended that a system in- tegration and research planning anlaysis team be fore med to evaluate research work completed, update an overall NBIT research system model, identify and out- line new areas of research and organize interdisci- Plinary meetings between different research groups so that they are continuously updated and educated about the state of the art.” . ; _ Those are strong recommendations for such flimsy ev- idence, at least such flimsy public evidence. Regrettably, most scientists operating within the mainstream refuse to involve themselves in the contorted debates over psy-: chic phenomena. And, if they do stir themselves to opin- jon, it is generally formed on the basis of emotion, not experiment. They fear loss of “legitimate” research grants and stigmatization for showing interest in such a taboo subject. Thus, bad science drives out the good. If there is reason to believe that psychic functioning performs according to the “mind war” scenarios de- scribed in the few classified studies that have leaked out, public debate can help shape safeguards to insure benign application. If there is the slightest shred of evi- dence that psychotronic weaponry is at all possible, it should be considered biological warfare and banned in accordance with existing agreements, . Whether psychic phenomena are nothing but hoax and Jaboratory artifact or the gateway to new dimen- sions of human experience are questions that should be pursued by the very best laboratories, basing their pub- licly reported conclusions on rigorous experiment, unal- ACAD BRAKE PURE ESR BS OBIE TORS EIA-RBP96-00788Rd0 TreDysGoad-thetoric. | | | t I
Approved For Relea eter WS ec L 6- 00788R001700360003- 3 s Rit J lind By RANDALL SHOEMAKER Tines Staff Writer WASHINGTON — Soldiers in the not-too- distant future may find themselves on the sending end or the receiving end of ; “‘psychotronic” weapons That’s the suggestion of Lt. Col. John B. Alexander in an article published in a re- cent issue of Military Review, the monthly magazine of the Army’s Command and. . General Staff College. In ‘The New Mental Battlefield,” Alex- ander described psychotronics as the inter- action of mind and matter. “There are weapons systems,” he said, “that operate on the power of the mind and whose lethal capacity has already been - . demonstrated.” The Soviet Union and its allies are gener- ally believed to be well in the lead in parapsychological research, and the: amount of paranormal phenomena they have verified is voluminous, Alexander said. He cited these examples: ‘@ The ability to heal or cause disease can’ be transmitted over distance, but while this has been demonstrated on lower organ- isms, flies and frogs, “the present capacity for human death is still debated.” - © Energy emanations from the body, reflecting changes in emotional condition, have been widely demonstrated vast radiation field photography known ast Kirllan effect. Vrain. ‘has been repeatedly demonstrated under scientifically controlled conditions. The extent of such research in the U.S. is not well known nor is it centrally organ- in known scientific terms, they often are discounted as nonexistent, he said. Researchers at Stanford Research Insti- . e The e ability to move objects mentally - tute have done the best ‘known SOURCE: ARMY TIMES ~ experimentation on “remote viewing,” the ability to collect data from afar, the officer ‘reported. He also discussed so-called out- of-body experiences, bending of metal by ’_ nonphysical means, acupuncture, biofeed- ized, the officer said. Because the phe- .. k ‘nomena are frequently beyond explanation back and meditation research. Two unclassified Defense Intelligence Agency reports dated in 1972 and 1975 were cited as sources of information on certain psychotronic weapons applications investi- ’ gated by the Soviets. bs a proved For Release 2000/08/08 : CIA-RDP96- OO7BERO MAGAZINE, MARCH 30, 1981 UTR: re . “great potential,” Mustration by Garnett Suifvan | “Certainly, with development, these weapons would be able to induce illness or, ’ death at little or no risk to the operater,"’, Alexander said.. pang may be a present problem, but this will probably be over-: ’ . come if it has not been already.” mit researchers have applied electro-|_ magnetic: radiation against the U.S. assy in Moscow, he pointed out. Also, fe cited researchers suggestions that extremely-low-frequency emissions ‘‘can be used to induce depression or itritability . in a target population.” The use of telepathic hypnosis holds Alexander said, and other mind-to-mind thought induction tech-_ niques are also being considered. Although the officer did not specify the extent or cost of U.S. military interest in . parapsychological research, other reports have claimed that investment in psychic warfare by the Pentagon has amounted to - about $6 million. Many people in the scientific community. remain skeptical of all claims for even partial success in psychic experimentation. , Among such doubters, some have suggest- ed that reports emanating from Soviet. sources about psychotronic accomplish- ments are’most likely a “disinformation” effort aimed at encouraging the U.S. to waste money on research. And, some say the U.S. spending may be a counter-disin- : formation ploy designed to make the Sovi- ets nervous. Alexander and official Army spokesmen declined to comment on the article or any further questions about psychic warfare ~ yesearch. TAB F