PSYCHIC

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000402720004-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 11, 2012
• Sequence Number: 4
• Publication Date: November 10, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/11: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402720004-6
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10 November 1985
PSYCHIC
BY CHRISTOPHER HANSON
WASHINGTON
Military agents with "Extra-Sensory Perception" (ESP) are put to work
reading the minds of enemy generals 5,000 miles away and visualizing secret war
plans locked in safes.
Government agents with another bizarre mental power -- the ability to move
physical objects without touching them and to affect the pulse rates of human
beings -- use their skill to sabotage weapons and cause heart attacks in enemy
leaders.
Scientists use a machine to extract a mysterious form of energy from the
brain and use it as a death beam.
These cases from a hypothetical mind-war are the stuff of science fiction --
but a U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) report expresses fear that a major
Soviet "psychotronic" research effort may be developing just such mental powers.
"Soviet and Czech psychotronic research ... has powerful potential for use as
an effective weapon against groups of men and leaders," according to the report,
a copy of which was provided to Reuters by a private source.
Some skeptics have dismissed reports about Soviet psychic experiments as
"disinformation" aimed at confusing the West. Many mainstream scientists reject
psychic research.
Even so, Washington is backing its own research into psychic phenomena and
this year doubled annual funding to $1 million, scientists who have worked on
U.S. psychic projects say.
Sources close to the U.S. experiments say the Central Intelligence
Agency ( CIA) once funded tests in which psychics, sitting in a laboratory
and given map coordinates of military bases and nuclear plants in the Soviet
Union, described those sites in detail that was consistent with CIA data.
A CIA spokesman would not comment on whether or not such tests had been
conducted.
The Pentagon denies funding psychic studies and a CIA spokesman told
Reuters: "We have no ongoing program for psychic research."
But a 1983 congressional report confirms the U.S. government has funded
psychic research.
Scientists Russell Targ and Keith Harary say the center for U.S.-funded
psychic research is SRI International, a private institute in Menlo Park, Calif.
They describe what they say were their government experiments for SRI in a
recent book, "The Mind Race."
An SRI spokesman declined to comment on funding sources.
Targ and Harary state that for 13 years SRI has been carrying out a
multi-million dollar series of U.S. government experiments in so-called "remote
viewing", which they describe as "the perception of events, objects or people
which are hidden from the five senses."
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In these experiments, they say, a psychologist would sit with a "psychic"
The scientist
subject in a while another
would attempt to describewtheite,
sometimes thousands site, of which he had no prior knowledge.
In many cases, the scientists said, these descriptions -- of objects as large
the evident
pins --
as clock toarteies teand as lepathic small
yet understood.
result of Targ told Reuters Soviet scientists have shown great interest in their
research, have met with them in the United States and invited them to the Soviet
Union for talks. The Soviets were especially interested in whether a way could
be found to screen off secrets from psychic intrusion.
The DIA report, "Soviet and Czechoslovakian Parapsychology Research", is
based largely on Soviet scientific literature and describes a large-scale
Kremlin program including mind-over-matter experiments, a field known as
psychokinesis.
It said in one set of experiments a Soviet psychic named Nina Kulagina stood
in a laboratory beside the heart of a frog, which had been surgically removed
and placed in a glass but was kept beating artificially.
"As she
concentrated (aits nd) five minutes of
decreased
increased or r
began she stopped its beat entirely," the report said.
Kulagina's ability "might be used against human targets," the report said. It
said Soviet scientists had reported extensively on experiments in which psychics
moved Y3dsuobjects pplies through skill could be used to
dea power
Larissa VilensKaya, a scientist who says she particiapted in Soviet psychic
studies for 10 years before emigrating to the United States, wrote in a recent
book that Kulagina managed to affect human heartbeats in a number of
experiments.
The report said in other experiments reported by Soviet scientists, including
Vilenskaya, psychioareeconcepnedttthatesuchf hymiles pnosiswcouidlbeausedally. It
said some western experts
against "U.S. or allied personel in (nuclear) missile silos."
Much of the Soviet research described in the report deals with a theory that
psychic abilities stem from a form of brain energy that can be identified and
studied.
Soviet scientists have developed a machine which they say can extract energy
from the brain, and report that when flies were exposed to a beam of such energy
they "died instantly."
"If (such) devices can kill insects at present, their potential ... after
refinement and enlargement may well be for killing men," the report said.
The 1983 congressional report summarized this way the objections of
mainstream scientists to psychic research:
"Poorly conceived methods, including inadequate controls, faulty equipment
... experimental bias, selective treatment of data, and general experimental and
theoretical incompetence."
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/11: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402720004-6
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3.
authentic in Arab countries.
As the "Protocols" suggest, disinformation goes way back. An ancient example
would be the famous Trojan Horse of Greece.
A modern classic was the massive Allied scheme to conceal the site of the
1944 D-Day invasion of Nazi-occupied France.
Some scholars, such as Soviet specialist Dmitri Simes, say Soviet
disinformation is more an irritant than a real threat.
The skeptics note Soviet efforts often backfire. Bogus letters from the "Ku
Klux Klan" were sent to black African athletes warning they would face violence
at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games, which the Kremlin was boycotting. After
Washington said they were KGB fakes, black Africans attended.
Washington's critics also say it is on thin ice denouncing disinformation
since it has dabbled in the field itself.
In 195+, U.S. officials say, the CIA set up a radio station in an
unidentified Latin American country near Guatemala that claimed to be operating
in Guatemala itself. The station urged overthrow of the leftist government and
exaggerated the size of rightist forces, who eventually seized power.
A former CIA official involved in that operation declined to say which
country harbored the bogus Guatemalan station.
John Stockwell, a former CIA officer in Africa, said in a book on the
agency that U.S. intelligence planted pro-American articles in Angolan arid
Zambian newspapers in the mid-1970s.
A 1984 study funded by Harvard University said the State Department drew up
plans in 1978 for a secret campaign to bolster support in Europe for the
controversial neutron warhead, using "sympathizers or agents" in the European
press.
Private intelligence analysts said it appears the CIA is more selective in
its use of black propaganda than the KGB, which seems to rely much more heavily
on forgeries.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/11: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402720004-6