PSYCHIC STUDIES MIGHT HELP U.S. EXPLORE SOVIETS

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Body:  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