PSYCHIC STUDIES MIGHT HELP U.S. EXPLORE SOVIETS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: STARGATE
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP96-00788R001200050009-6
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: November 4, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 5, 2003
• Sequence Number: 9
• Publication Date: April 23, 1984
• Content Type: NSPR

Approved For Release 2003/09/10 : CIA-RDP96-00788R001200050009-6
sychic tinier
Might Help 1J..
... a. lore Soviets
U.S. intelligence agencies won't
talk about it, but they are rushing to
catch up with the Soviet Union in
what one scientist jocularly calls the
,race for inner space"-psychic re-
search.
Parapsychology is a field so full of
pseudo-scientists, flakes and outright
charlatans that its easy to debunk
the whole idea as a comic-strip con-
cept unworthy of serious scientific
study.
In 1981, when I first began report-
ing on secret U.S. and Soviet pro-
grams using so-called psychics to
gather intelligence, some of the gov-
ernment-funded projects were obvi-
ously off-the-wall. There was the
"hyperspatial nuclear howitzer" that
would "transmit" a bomb explosion
from the Nevada desert to down-
town Moscow with the speed of
thought, or, the "anti-missile time
warp" that would send an incoming
enemy missile into the past, blowing
tip dinosaurs instead of 20th century
Americans.
But there are legitimate labora-
tory projects that may eventually
unlock the mysteries of the human
mind. One of the most promising is
the testing of "remote viewing"-the
claimed ability of some psychics to
describe scenes thousands of miles
away.
The CIA and the Pentagon have
an obvious interest in this phenom-
enon. If they could get psychics to
throw their minds behind the Iron
Curtain, there'd be no need to risk
the lives of human agents.
The CIA sent representatives to a
parapsychology conference in Virgin-
ia last December. Besides the usual
spoon-bending-which professional
magicians have denounced as a fairly
simple trick----there was serious dis-
cussion of remote viewing. In fact,
the CIA is now seriously pondering
the possibility of raising "psychic
shields" to keel) Soviet remote view-
ers away from our secrets.
I asked my skeptical associates
Dale Van Atta and Joseph Spear to
find out how remote viewing has be-
come almost universally accepted in
the intelligence community. They
gained access to top-secret briefings
on the subject. This is what they
learned:
The CIA's latest remote viewing
project was code-named "Grill
Plame," and was carried out in part
by two respected academics: Harold
Puthoff, formerly with the National.
Security Agency, and Russell Targ,
formerly with the Stanford Research
Institute in Menlo Park, Calif.
Puthoff and Targ conducted at
least two tests that produced asstsx ..
ishing results. They gave one psych
the latitude and longitude of a t
mote location and told him to pro-
ject his mind there and describe the
scene. He described an airfiield, 11
plete with details-:including a la, e
gantry and crane at one end of INt
field. s~.
The CIA was impressed, but
ital. There was indeed an airfiel
the map coordinates the psychic
been given. The site was the Soviets'
ultra-secret nuclear testing area dt
Semipalath sk, Kazakhstan. l
there was no gantry or crane them"
Still, it had. been a while siu '
U.S. spy satellites had taken picti i ,
of the Semipalatinsk base. So
CIA waited for the ne:ct eat af' p; '
tos---and sure enough, there -eO .,
the gantry and crane, just as the 0-
chic had. described therr.;.. No ono ,)h
U.S. intelligence agencies had k"*'
the equipment was there, so the 1q-
formation couldn't have been lewd
to him. '
The second `test involved a Sot f
TU95 "Backfire" bomber, which the
CIA knew had crashed somewhere in
Africa. They were eager to find it be-.'
fore the Soviets did, so they wild
take photographs and perhaps pur-
loin secret gear from the wreckage.:
So one of Project Grill Flame'sre-
mote viewers was asked to locate the
downed bomber. He gave the CIA,
the location within several miles.,
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Approved For Release 2003/09/10 : CIA-RDP96-00788R001200050009-6