IN SEARCH OF MODERN MERLINS: PSYCHICS GAIN WIDER CREDIBILITY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: STARGATE
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP96-00787R000200080027-5
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: November 4, 2016
• Document Release Date: November 5, 1998
• Sequence Number: 27
• Publication Date: June 26, 1989
• Content Type: NSPR

Approved For Release 2001/03/26 : CIA-RDP
0OQ06080'27-5
Advice: Lipstick
at the table?/7
Gardens: The joys
of greenhouses/8
In search of mode
sychics gaol wider creai
Belief in psychic phenom-
ena, on par with a be-
lief in astrology a
decade ago, is gain-
ing new respectabil-
ity.
The most striking
change is in the scientific commu-
It is exhibiting a new willing-
nit
y
ness to believe that some people can
know things by inexplicable means
and that others can will the behavior
of physical objects.
Psychologist Brenda Dunne, a
member of a Princeton University
scientific team which has conducted
elaborate tests of psychic ability for
tion is nearly over.
"A survey taken about three years
ago among scientists showed that a
t e
t in
g,
believe there as .come
14 .
This isn,contrast to one taken about
Marcello'Ilrn zzi of Fast Michigan
University, who was chairman of the
Comitiitteefor Scientific Investiga-
Von of Cl ams o the l9aranormal.
+lecided,his associates were inter
ted only'in debunking phenomena.
o he founded the Center for Scienti-
Anomaly Research, which keeps
":':determinedly open mind.
N ,,lf it,".t,,Ff has and truth. it has
Abn vald 14qWPe9NF`g6.1/
the new acceptance a lin iage
SECTION E
 'U t .' 40r] 1 JCCL - it's
Ms.-Ball. "If Jim and I
-te things he says, peon
us. But when he says it,
wally broadens the show"
'11, page E5
-as D. Frankfin!The Washington Times
studios.
Jim Wright, Texas Democrat, is an-
other.
roMd'oi Release'2W 1/0
'
staff
take a detached, scientific and
very supportive interest" in the work
being. done by her and her col-
leagues.
Mr. Wright's office says he has at-
tended lectures by Washington psy-
chic Anne Gehman; Mrs. Gehman
says she has discussed psychic phe-
nomena with Mr. Wright and his
wife, Betty, and has a friendly rela-
tionship with them.
Mr. Pell, perhaps Capitol Hill's
most unabashed believer, has urged
the National Science Foundation, the
Defense Department and other gov-
ernment agencies to increase psy-
chic research funding: He has a full-
time staff member, C.B. Scott Jones,
whose exclusive job is to monitor re-
ports of psychic activities.
Rep. Charlie Rose, North Carolina
Democrat, is the founder of the Con-
gressional Clearing House on the
Future, which has .met with psy-
chics. He has urged the CIA to initi-
ate a "psychic Manhattan Project" to
develop its abilities to monitor Soviet
military projects.
The government's interest in psy-
chic phenomena began in the 70s
when the Pentagon and the CIA, with
the backing of Congress, sponsored
Washington psychic Anne Gehman cautions that any ' medium-' who' -
guarantees physical phenomena is a "liara cheat and a fraud:"
experiments on remote viewing at
SRI International, formerly Stan-
ford Research Institute, at Menlo
Park, Calif. It continues today.
In a report last year, the National
Research Council said the Army and
its advisers had considered if para-
normal forces "might used to jam
enemy computers, ematurely
trigger nuclear wed and inca
pacitate weapons and vehicles" It
said "one suggested application"
monks" who could exert long-
distance influence over enemy per-
sonnel.
The cutting edge currently is fo-
cused on less spectacular goals, the
abilities of people to foresee coming
events . -; 'reeogniitive emote Per-
ception -:~ or, to stake ctu(rrept ones
psycho~kineais. x .: ,
The , most intriguing sults have
been those reporteS by scientists at
was to form a, battalion of "warrior see PS;Y, I .Mtge E2
-TER / Hap Erstein
:e a Face'
iPPetry
-i Paris
gh we tend to relegate
?uppetry to the realm of
hildren's entertainment,
he French understand
_rdly kid's stuff.
an a birthday party di-
ppets can be the conduit
-tedy and chilling drama.
se the faces of puppets
aly immobile does not
:hey cannot convey the
emotion.
-e among the unspoken
y which a Parisian pup-
-with the intriguing
alulu operates. With its
how, "Face a Face," a
ling, moving and infer-
ssing series of skits,
Heracio Peralta and
_colas expand the possi-
heir art without over-
it with spectacle or gim-
1J'an
Puppeteers fade into the background once the performance starts.
"Facea,Fce" manages the more
difficult achievement of.
transforming adults, at least those
who are willing to accept the ex-
perience, into children.
The stage of the modern Matson
Francaise auditorium is clad in
black, as are 'the two puppeteers.
At times they appear alongside the
puppets they ' manipulate,. occasion-
ally interacting with them and of-
ten merely standing out of the light
in a semblance of invisibility
When they mask themselves
completely, in black, all, it takes:
from a cooperative viewe is the
slightest squint nd the puppets are
moving by themselves
At one point, Miss Nicolas care-
fully takes a puppet of an old
woman out of a wicker basket, lays
it down on the table-performance
platform and leaves the stage. With
a wondrous "touch of theatrical ,
magic, the doll then snaps to life-
by itself or at least at the hand of.
the unseen Mr. Peralta.
The puppets move by the simple,
almost imperceptible actions of
th
i
t
,
ll the b
r
o
-
e
r mas
ers
a
ette
t
sus
year under the umbrella of the Although billed as appropriate
Marionette Performance Festival for both adults and children, one fain the illusion of self propelled
Francais. If the other two compa- fears that today's television-trained creatures. Bululu strips puppetry
ll
roes areas inventive and awe-
youngsters may not have the pa- ?-- -" .~ ""? ", " . ...~? ..
appearance is the first inspiring, you should make a lustrated by the opening scene of a
point tience or attention span for a how
-ench puppet theaters to of pulling strings to go see them that evolve' in such delicate'''
_e French Embassy this all. strokes and tiny touches. Instead, see PUPPETS, page E5
Approved For Release 2001/03/26: CIA-RDP96-00787R000200080027-5-,
 manta rwaslem Salon (2025 through Feb 11 might inspire b drs unction n unk ale
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dace NW) in Dupory}~l g veditFOVRO 1L~1@A /03/26;rt~tCiA6oROl~98d7&7 ROO020OM02F tion for atmos-
ly was intended to be women are depicted in art has be- tures of the women from Picasso's phere. As a result, we tend to read
ion venture to Mrs. Has- come a subject of intense debate ';classical period, and such classical
ragtime gallery on Seventh and analysis over the past decade, - subject matter as Botticelli's
But as lease problems and women are Ms, Friedman's "Three Graces."
ier to close the Seventh preferred subject matter. Ms. Friedman's "Three Figures
:pace last December, the If her small portrait renditions on the Beach" translates this Re-
of regular monthly exhibi- of heavy-lidded, porcelain-skinned naissance motif into a dream vi-
-)w has fallen to the salon, beauties are innocuous enough, a sion; the cavorting women seem
salon will continue to func- number of full-figure and multiple- oblivious to a severed foot on the
newhat differently from a figure compositions display the sand before them. The intimation
Her son and the salon's di- tense conjunction of innocence and of menace and prior violence that
Hotel Terminus"
NR (descriptions of Holocaust
~s)
dictims, colleagues, employers,
intances, observers of Klaus
CTION: Directed, researched
educed by Marcel Ophuls,
_ive-produced by John S.
,an, Hamilton Fish and Peter
. edited by Albert Jurgenson
atherine Zins, associate
:er Bernard Farrel, with Memory
released by the Samuel
ryn Company
4'/2 hours plus a brief
-lission
E: Cineplex Odeon Circle Outer
-er, 4849 Wisconsin Ave. NW
1: Opens Friday
IUM RATING: FOUR STARS
K), his bodyguard in Bolivia, his
,ney in France, his U.S. employ-
_n the postwar Counter Intelli-
::e Corps who used and pro-
-2d Barbie for his information
-ommunists.
1r. Ophuls also talked with Bar-
s victims who have harrowing
nories of his torture methods in
its, with journalists'and Nazi
ters who tracked Barbie, with
-istance leaders, Auschwitz sur
3rs, Bolivian authorities and
-des of others who knew Barbie
Knew of him.
they all have important stories,
hearing them all in one big,
=-straining (subtitles and IDs),
pressing dose is a numbing, of-
_ disengaging experience. I vote
three 90-minute TV segments
zl less of Mr. Ophuls' words and
aug face on screen.
PSYCHIC
From page El
SRI, Princeton and the Mind Science
Foundation in San Antonio, Texas.
In the precognition tests one per-
son, the "precipient;' describes a
randomly selected place that a col-
league, "the agent," is about to visit.
Miss Dunne says in a test which
she conducted when she was at Mun-
delein College in Chicago, the agent
picked a sealed envelope from a.
stack of 10 containing sites chosen
by outsiders.
The Rockefeller Chapel at the
University of Chicago was the site
picked and the precipient, some
miles away, described the chapel in
extraordinary detail: "I am getting
the little turrets around the building
... long windows in a row quite high
. a heavy wooden door with a black
bolt on it.... My feeling at the mo-
ment is that it is a building like a
church, and I can see the pews."
Miss Dunne said that about 15
percent of similar tests at Princeton
produced results equally rich in ac-
curate detail.
The main emphasis at Princeton,
however, has been on psychokinesis,
which can be more easily fitted into
scientific controls. Robert G. Jahn,
dean emeritus of the School of Engi-
neering and Applied Science, Miss
Dunne and others have reported the
results of 78 million trials in which
voluntary operators have tried to in-
fluence the behavior of natural
background static, called "white
noise;" and the distribution of free-
falling balls.
In the first experiment an elec-
tronic device produces 1,000 white%
noise pulses a second. Left to
chance, half would have positive
electrical charges, half negative. .
The participating volunteers try
to influence the impulses by concen-
trating on a desired outcome. The
results over the years show a diver-
gence from the norm 10,000 times
greater than indicated by chance.
In the second major experiment,
called the "Random Mechanical
Cascade;' a specially designed ma-
chine drops 9,000 polystyrene balls
through a matrix of 330 pegs.
Left to chance, the balls would be
distributed among 19 bins in a uni-
form, perfectly balanced fashion,
with a few at each end and most in
the middle in what is known as a bell
curve.
Operators will the balls to one side
or the other. And results over 15
years, according to Miss Dunne,
have, again, been 10,000 times as
great as anticipated.
The other major psychokinesis
experimenter, Helmut Schmidt, a
quantum physicist formerly of Duke
University and currently of the
Mind Science Foundation in San
Antonio, has achieved even more
striking results. His subjects try to
influence the clicks of a Geiger
counter.
The clicks, which measure the
emissions of radioactive materials,
come at predictable rates. Operators
try to speed or slow them. Mr.
Schmidt says they have outscored
chance by 10 million to one.
The scientific interest in para-
normal events has a historical foun-
dation. Thomas Edison was a firm
believer in the paranormal, and
physicists Albert Einstein, Max
Planck and Neils Bohr took open-
minded attitudes.
In the 1920s, J.B. and Louisa
Rhine were appointed to the faculty
of the Department-of Psychology at
Duke University, where they
touched off a new interest in psychic
phenomena.
Reports by today's experimenters
have received considerable atten-
tion, but less than total acceptance,
in the scientific community. John
the paintings as patches of color on
canvas even as we relate to their
recognizable subject matter.
Achieving this kind of tension
between the formal and the repre-
sentational has long been a concern
of painters. Mn Koch, however,
casts no new light on the matter,
and here the picturesque remains
just picturesque.
Palmer, of the Foundation for Re-
search of the Nature of Man, in Dur-
ham, N.C., says in "An Evaluative Re-
port on the Current Status of
Parapsychology" (1985) that the ex-
periments do support the existence
of anomalies.
A report by the National Re-
search Council, "Enhancing Human
Performance" (1988), which was
funded by the Army, concluded that
they "fall short of an experimental
ideal" and do not "justify any conclu-
sion" The report praised "the sin-
cerity and dedication" of the investi
gators and recommended that, tht
Army continue to monitor the work
at Princeton, SRI and San Antonio.
Mr. nuzzi takes a more positive
view. He says scientists prefer to de
scribe test results as "anomalies;" o,
abnormalities, and avoid such term
as paranormal phenomena.
He says he would prefer to hav
their significance explained is
terms of physical laws. If they tur
out to be paranormal phenomena, h
says, "it would shake my world to ii
foundations."
lvlrs, Gehman, a board it ember
the National Spiritualist Associatic
of Churches, who charges a min
mum "gift" of $100 for a 60-minu
session and who says she has mar
people from Capitol Hill among hi
clients, believes that she can cor
municate with "those who have goi
through the process of death:' and
certain situations can heal and bei
metal.
But she says 99.9 percent of r
ported physical phenomena - tat
rapping, levitation and such a
fraudulent and that any mediu
who guarantees physical phenom
ena is a "liar, a cheat and a fraud.'
She says that if the scienti:
eventually prove that their ano
alies are rooted in natural law
won't bother her at all.
"Whatever the explanation;"
s
says, "I will be content."