Approved For Release 2000/08/08V
8R001 700360003-3
nib wrtOiunvivn
Monday, March 30, 1981
im
jack
\
In James Bond
circles,
nothing
is
too
farfetched
to be
dismissed. The
Central Intelligence Agency, for exam*
pie, has been toying for years with the
idea of using extrasensory perception
in
its work — spurred by the
suspi-
cion that the Russians have somehow
succeeded in opening an ESP gap.
I’ve already reported on the Penta-
gon’s $6-million-a-year research to de-
velop ESP weapons
that can
brain-
wash or incapacitate enemy leaders by
thought
transfer,
deliver
nuclear
bombs,
instantaneously
thousands
of
miles away by psychic energy, or even
create
a
protective
“time
warp”
to
make incoming Soviet missiles explode
harmlessly in the past
These wacky projects have support
from the Defense Intelligence Agency,
which reports the Russians have been
doing
intensive
research
in the
field
for
nearly
years. The DIA even
credits the omnipotent Kremlin scien-
tists
with
successfully demonstrating
ESP’s
deadly
potential on
insects,
a.
possibility
that
should
bring joy
to,
farmers
and
backyard
gardeners --,
and strike terror in the insecticide in-.
.
dustry.
The
CIA,
though
historically
less;
alarmist about the Red Menace than
i
the
Pentagon
spooks
are,
has
: also
been monitoring Soviet ESP research
and pondering the
possibility of
less
bizarre psychic weapons. A top-secret
report on the subject by a CIA scien-
tific expert has been examined by my
associate Dale Van Atta.
The
analysts
estimated
that
“the
Soviet military and KGB have had a
covert
applied
parapsychology
pro-
gram since the mid-1960s.” This was
the period when the CIA was experi-
menting with halludnogeriic drugs on
unsuspecting Americans and with foot
powder that would make
Fidel Cas-
tro’s beard fall out
The CIA warns the. Soviets may be
“ahead of the U.S. in parapsychology."
Evidence of Soviet progress is sketchy
because the Kremlin’s voodoo scien-
tists, the QIA suspects,’.have gone un-
dercover. Intelligence sources estimate
* that
at
least
200 Soviet
experts
in
various
disciplines
are
working
on
ESP weapons development
-
The CIA
report
identified, several
areas of suspected Soviet study:
• “Electrostatics
of
telekinesis,”
or
the ability to move objects by mental
concentration.
^
v.
^
:
• “Extremely
low
frequencies
of
electromagnetic radiation for informa-
tion
transmission.”
This
may
have
been what the KGB was up to when
it bombarded the
U.S. Embassy in
Moscow with microwave radiation' for
nearly 20 years.
;
^ —
'
• Application
of
theories
involving'
links
between
the way
the human
brain and
electronic computers oper-
ate.
• Remote monitors and stimulators
to determine or influence another per-
son’s physical condition by telepathy,
like a Haitian witch doctor might fry.
• High-frequency
analysis
of
!
an
elecfroencepMogram/a sort of wire-
,
tapping of someone’s brain waves.
The
area
of Soviet ESP
research
that really has the CIA’s mouth wa-
tering
is
the
possibility' of “remote
viewing” by telepathy from thousands
-
of miles away. Who’d need a. mole in
the Kremlin, if a psychic- sittmg^at a
desk
in Washington
; could
, zoom
,in
mentally on a super-secret Soviet nus;
ab.site.m»4‘Pditbgrolnaetih^^
'
Under the'Dome: HbuseMinori-
ty. Leader Robert
. Micbel'. ^-lilj -’ap-
pears' to be’ cracking tinder ’fee strain
of his job. He has token to composing
such
literary gems
as “Unde
Bob’s
Primer
.for
Big
Spenders.”
Excerpts:
“See Big Spenders run .in
1980. ' See
Big
Spenders
lose,- in
;
1980..-,
. .See
Big Spenders forgetting the lesson of
, 1980, See Big Spenders run
-
iri'1992.
Itose, Big Spenders, lose ” Another ef-
fort, inspired by the old song, “Is Ybu
Is
or
Is You Ain’t My Baby?” goes
like
this:
“Is
the Democrats or
ain’t
the Democrats backing the mandate
the people gave Reagan?” Mercifully,
Michel didn’t fry to sing it
•"Rep. Jack Kemp (R-N.Y.)
is the
man who introduced Budget Director
David A. Stockman to then-candidate
Ronald Reagan, and Kemp says he’s
glad he did. “Stockman
is an intellec-
tual giant who can get along with peo-
ple,” Kemp claims.
.
i
Approved For Release 2000/08/08
: CIA-RDP96-00788R001 700360003-3
'v'. .'lOIUll .Seem
,
I
-•
e-c
viip.ih
<i
.
i a .scric .%
unusual cx
to-it
! r/
<
.•
.
i
m
<•
A ^ iii v
|>ji
in
...
,
.-iflfis'liTat cer
Um
j .-..i -if have psychic- abilities. The results SRI repor-
ted v ere astonishing.
, The SHI investigators, physicists Harold E. Puthoff (a
former NSA research engineer) and Russell Targ. set out
t
> demonstrate to their CIA sponsor that their subjects a
/noted
jr ychic nam$d Ingo Swann and .a middle-aged
businessman named Pat Price, could describe distant lo-
cations merely by knowing which geographic coordi-
nates to "look at” Some parapsychologists call this ah'
ieged ability "astral projection," or "out of body experi-
ence.
Puthoff and Targ prefer the term "remote view-
%
To check such startling claims, a"rigorous test under
control of the sponsor" was conducted, according to the
experimenters' report, entitled 'Troject Scanale." The
geographic coordinates of target sites“Chosen‘by the
NSA monitor were encoded
to ensure their security
then transmitted from his Washington-area location to a
CIA scientist in Menlo Park, Calif., where SRI headquar-
lers is located. The CIA man decoded the. coordinates,
passed them to Dr. Puthoff, who then presented them to
the subjects. In one case, Swann described and sketched
with reasonable accuracy a target island in'the South In-
‘
chan Ocean. In another instance, Pat Price gave an in-"
credibly
detailed description
of a supposedly secret
underground military installation in Virginia. But there
was more. According to the SRI report;
‘‘°a a
!k
?
er
.date Pat was asked to return [mentally] to
he Virginia site with the goal of obtaining codeword in-
•'
formation, if possible. In response, Pat supplied the fol-
lowing information:
rtnrmrftags
^’^|toP96-00788lftJ^iM600f^"7
Top of desk had papers labeled:
Flytrap
•
•
'
"Minerva
* File cabinet on north wall labeled:
Operation Pool — (2nd word unreadable)
Folders inside cabinet labeled:-
Cueball
14 Ball
4 Ball
8 Ball
Rackup
.\ame of sil«p vaguely seems like Hayfork or Haystack
Personnel:
Col. R. J. Hamilton
Maj. Gen. George R. Nash
Major John C. Calhoun?? [sic]"
Hell, there s no security left," a government security
officer exclaimed upon hearing of Price’s alleged sue-
•
C{f
s at psychlc spying- According to a military source
,
who requests anonymity, the site Price described was a
\ l
3te
.Ujte
lnlerrogation
station
which
• eavesdrops
on
. Soviet space vehicles, and the code words referred to
those operations. A security investigation was launched
to determine whether the
sensitive information had
been leaked to Price or others involved in the tests. "The
security men wouldn’t buy the idea of remote viewing ”
he says. Neither would CIA psychologists who have exa-
mined the evidence Nvilh considerable skepticism.
But Price had more surprises in store. He volunteered
to scan "the other side of the globe for a [Soviet] Bloc
ZVCLMUfie C
:
i he CIA, the Peiitagoii
Ail(L the Russians Pro hi
The Military JP.ote/it£a|
Of Parapsychology
‘.3
ByJohn L, Wilhte
WiUidm is a former national science correspo
-
;
for Time magazine: His book on psychic research "21
Search forSuperman," was published last year
'
equivalent, and found one in the Urals,” continues the
n add,t,
0n 10 giving geographic coordinates
for this Soviet installation, Price described it in minute
detail, including visions of helipads, rail tracks leadhln
into a mountainside, radar antennae and even the ob er-
.
hIgh "» 01 W0^ea
.
t0 «S?t
,
The CIA scientist monitoring the tests, a physiologist
from the research and development side of the aeenev
believed he had a potential class A espionage agent who
could roam psychically anywhere in the world, ferreting
.secrets undetected— in effect, the perfect spy!
•
'
E
A Murkv Business
F
OR T1IE PAST 25 years, various branches of the mil-
—
nary and intelligence communities have activelv m.
vestigated this highly controversial field of parapsychol-
ogy. Their interest, which parallels recently revealed ac-
counts of drug and mind control experiments, ranges
rj
Approved For Release 2000/08/08
: CIA-RDP96-00788R001 700360003-3
Approved For Release 2000/08/08
: CIA-RDP96-00788R001 700360003-3
from intelligence reports on foreign developments and
theoretical background studies to funding of original ex-
periments and even semi-operational tests of psychic es-
pionage abroad.
The frequently grandiose claims made for parapsy-
chology include reading or controlling people’s thoughts
telepathy!, gaining information about distant persons,
places and things (clairvoyance), predicting the future
(precognition), and influencing physical objects (psycho-
kinesis) —
all by unknown, extrasensory or psychic
means. Such claims are by no means well established
scientifically, and they have stimulated raucous debates
between "believers" and "debunkers” within the agen-
cies charged with evaluating whether parapsychology
holds any promise (or danger) for mind warfare.
By David Suttr lor The Washington Pott
dreams, biofeedback, human factors; biocybernetics and
non-ionizing radiation. For example, one $30,000 CIA
contract study published last year is ingeniously camou-
flaged by
the
title, "Novel
Biophysical
Information
Transfer Mechanisms (NB1T).” Funding officers prefer
to shelter these "high giggle factor" programs from Con-
gress (and sometimes their own bosses) to avoid public
embarrassment as well as to conceal what some project
managers fervently believe may be breakthrough mlll-
tary/intelligence capabilities equal to the discovery of
atomic energy.
.
There is particular concern about Soviet psychic capa*
'
bilities, including allegations that the Russians are abla
tclepathicaliy to influence the behavior of others, alter
their emotions or health’, knock them out or even kill by
directing a kind of psychic double-wbaramy at them. A
recent report by the Defense Intelligence Agency states;
Wading through all the dubious claims, conflicting re-
ports and deliberate disinformation is mushy business at
iest. Much of the research in this country is classified or
reye^lfififl Rfite?&§u2&91?/<®i8#)8riv^%Ri0lR9&fOO788ROO17OO36OOO3-3
See PSYCHIC, Page B5
ApproS^Ei)HR/ElfraseEQp0JM8/08
: CIA-RDP96
"Other Soviet tests included sending to the percipient
the anxiety associated with suffocation and the sensa-
tion of a dizzying blow to the head
•
.
.
Some Western
followers of psychic phenomena research are concern-
ed, for example, with the detrimental effects of sublimi-
nal perception techniques being targeted against U.S. or
allied personnel in nuclear missile silos. The subliminal
message could be ‘carried’ by television signals or by tel-
epathic means.
"The potential applications of focusing mental influ-
ences on an enemy through hypnotic telepathy have
surely occurred to the Soviets .
.
.
Control and manip-
ulation of the human consciousness must be considered
a primary goal."
.
A^W- ar^£ts_exen.iearJhaLth^residemj!.nh^h^
•
leaders, could. become,the.telepathic_targets_of . Soviet
mind control efforts. They argue, that defensive, meas-
ures need to be researched to prevent such apparent sci-
ence-ficiion' possibilities. One speculation voiced in sup*-
port of this thesis is that the decade-old microwave’sig-
'
•
nals beamed against the U.S. embassy in Moscow might
have been an operational experiment in behavior modi-
fication using “psychotronic” methods — that is, involv-
ing psychic powers amplified by special devices. Wild as
•
this sounds, the CIA’s “NBIT” study lends some credence
.
to the hypothesis: “The Russians may now be imple-
menting the next logical step [to experiments proposed
five years earlier], namely to reinforce, enhance, or aid
NBIT in certain
1 trained or gifted individuals after hav-
ing discovered the basic communication carriers.” And
the DIA reports:
“Soviet or Czech perfection of psychotronic weapons
would pose a severe threat to enemy military, embassy
or security functions. The emitted energy would be
si-
lent and difficult to detect electronically (although the
Soviets claim to have developed effective biological en-
ergy sensors) and the only power source required would
be the human operator."
Most
experts, publicly
discount
the
idea,
however,
countering with the argument that the Moscow signals
involve jamming devices or scanners that "see" inside
the embassy.
The Soviets have a special laboratory dedicated to par-
apsychology, according
to some
intelligence
analysts.
The CIA report estimates that the laboratory may have a
technical
staff
as
large
as
300
physicists,
doctors,
.biochemists and
electrical engineers,
all studying the
' theory and applications of psychic functioning. A Soviet
physicist now living in Paris, August Shtern, recently
claimed that he had worked for several years in a secret
laboratory in Siberia trying to find a physical basis for
psychic energies. Shtern also said
that, before leaving
Russia two years ago, he had heard that an even more
secret laboratory under direction of theKGB now is pur-
suing similar research in Moscow.
In June, Los Angeles Times correspondent Robert
Toth was .detained in Moscow by the KGB, allegedly for
receiving “state secrets” about parapsychology research.
The paper given to Toth by a scientist said to be labora-.
tory chief at the Moscow Institute of Medical-Biological
^
ere when lasers were just get-
ting started.” Investigators at the Navy’s Surface Weap-
ons Center and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
also have run “informal” tests on Geller, with dubious
results.
The Geller Tests
T
HE GROWING governmental
interest in psychic
possibilities had been accelerated in 1972 when Dr.
Andrija Puharich, a longtime researcher in the field,
-
brought Geller to be studied at Stanford Research Instl-
‘ tute. This ?100-million-a-year think tank south of San
Francisco (just renamed SRI International), conducts^
• w]de variety._of.studiesjor_both goyernment,and busl-~
•
ness. SRI has evaluated the potential of LSD and other
* drugs for the CIA, forecast world trade in the year 2000
.
‘ for
multinational
companies, even
analyzed
an
18 ’A
minute tape gap for just one customer, Richard Nbcon.
.
SRI scientists are no strangers when it comes to dealing
with hush-hush projects..
"
"*
Neither
is Puharich. His connections with the
mili-
tary/intelligence communities go back to the early 1950s
when he worked in the Army’s Chemical and Biological
Warfare Center at Ft. Detrick, Md.*, site of the CIA’s now
famous shellfish toxin repository. He presented a paper
entitled "On
the. Possible Usefulness of Extrasensory
Perception
in
Psychological Warfare”
to a Pentagon
conference in 1952 and later lectured the Army. Air
Force and Navy on other possibilities for mind warfare.
Expert in hypnotism as well as microelectronics, Puha-
rich also invented a miniature tooth radio, reportedly
for the CIA.
-
So it was Puharich who netted Geller for study, stud-
. ies paid for by a few small, private foundations formed
expressly to fund such research, including one beaded
by former astronaut Edgar Mitchell. In addition to telep-
athy and clairvoyance, SRI researchers claimed that Gel-
ier could
erase magnetic tapes,
levitate
tiny weights,
even materialize and dematerialize small objects. The
^ Pentagon’s DARPA sent a team of consultants to SRI to
see
if such bizarre claims rated their funding. But the
DARPA consultants concluded that SRI’s work with Gel-
ler was conducted with “incredible sloppiness." Geller
now is largely discounted as merely an extremely facile
conjurer.
While Geller and others were undergoing tests at SRI,
CIA scientists were canvassing
the country
for
addi-
tional
evaluations, prowling parapsychology meetings
and tapping experts- in an effort to fathom the conflic-
ting, and often quite emotional, reports from both be-
lievers and skeptics alike.
"I. had two men from the CIA come down and
visit
me," recalls Dr. Robert Van de Castle, at the time a Uni-
'
versity of Virginia psychologist and also a member of
the DARPA team that investigated- Geller. “One thing
they wanted to know was if Geller could jam computers.
But they were
particularly
interested
in
out-of-body
stuff. They were concerned that the Russians bad devel-
oped it to such an extent that they were using it for in-
telligence monitoring. They seemed to think that psy-
chic intelligence gathering was not beyond the realm of
Approved For Release 2000/08/08
: CIA-RDP96-00788R001 700360003-3