VOODOO GAP LOOMS AS LATEST WEAPONS CRISIS

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Body:  Approved For Release 2003/09/09 : CIA-RDP96-00788R001200050011-3
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 7'iit xky, r Etrii 22, A984
 'Voodoo' Gap'
 Looms as Latest
 We  ons Crisis
 I have reported previously on se-
 cret projects to adapt psychic pheno-
 Mena to military Purposes. For ex-
 ample, in laboratory experiments,
 psychics have been used to spy on
 the Soviets by projecting their minds
 outside their bodies.
 One psychic was able to describe a
 secret Soviet base in astonishing de-
 tail that was later confirmed by sat-
 ellite photographs. Another located a
 Soviet Tu95 "Backfire" bomber that
 had crashed in Africa.
 U.S. Navy and Air Force chiefs
 are skeptical about these experi-
 ments, which they describe scornful-
 ly as "witchcraft" and "black magic."
 But the Army's intelligence chief, Lt.
 Gen, William Odom, has been im-
 pressed with some of the results,
 Odom is worried about intelli-
 gence reports that the Soviets are far
 ahead in psychic research. Inside the
 Pentagon, he has raised the question
 of whether the Soviets could use
 psychics to penetrate our secret
 vaults. This has led to talk in the
 backrooms about raising a "psychic
 shield" to block this sort of remote
 spying.
 ~t?eb GES~~r7C   vrnc a PARrcH
 The CIA also is taking psychic
 research seriously. Former CIA di-
 rector Stansfield Turner told critics
 that their skepticism about the
 CIA's psychic protects was healthy
 but that the research should keep
 pace with their skepticism.
 The most. impressive research in
 this area has been conducted by
 Harold Puthoff and Russell Targ,
 both respected academics with the
 Stanford  Research  Institute  in
 Menlo Park, Calif. Puthoff is still
 with the institute; Targ left two
 years ago to form his own company,
 Delphi Associates. They began their
 experiments in the early 1970s, using
 psychics to describe scenes at spe-
 cific coordinates on the globe. The
 project, partly funded by the De-
 fense Department and the CIA, was
 called "Scanate" for "scan by coor-
 dinate,"
 Their latest project, code-named
 "Grill Flame," produced some amaz-
 ing results. Psychics described the
 contents of locked filing cabinets;
 they mentally breached the security
 of secret military installations.
 Earlier, they had discovered the
 rings around Jupiter years before
 their existence was scientifically es-
 tablished by photographs.
 Despite these impressive achieve-
 ments, sources told my associates
 Dale Van Atta and Joseph Spear
 that the psychics' success rate is only
 about 70 percent. For example, psy-
 chics who were asked by the Fenta-
 C13
 gon to pinpoint the place where Ita$<
 ian Red Brigade terrorists were hole
 ing Brig. Gen. James Dozier prison;
 in January, 1982, did not come close
 But the occasional successes
 courage intelligence officials to kegpp_
 trying in hopes of giving remote spyi :.
 ing more respectability. They aloes,
 are concernc;d about the soviets wii
 are known to have spent many :more
 years and ?? r more money on par&-
 psychological research.
 At the risk of being ridiculed over
 Charlie Rose (D-N.C.), support coh..
 tinned research into the more Prom--4
 ising areas of this mysterious field""'?
 After all, the atomic bomb was once
 thought to be a harebrained idea. '
 It's safe to say that many things con. 3,k
 sidered utterly fantastic today Will R?.
 be accepted as commonplace by the"',
 end of the century.
 Backfire of the Week: The fe , ;
 era] government's massive giveawa L,
 of cheese not only was supposed ta.,"
 feed the hungry but also to cut down`
 on surplus cheese stocks in govern-Ili
 meat warehouses. It seems the give-'
 away allowed some consumers to"l,
 stop buying cheese at the superrnir-`,"
 ket. So the government's stockpile n1~T`
 surplus cheese has grown from 619<
 million pounds in 1981 to 1 billion
 pounds last year, The cost of tha::
 government's purchase . of surplus,,`
 cheese and butter went from $1.6
 billion in 1979 to $2.8 billion Jo:_,
 i9QQ
 11 "MIS TitEM46i
 Approved For Release 2003/09/09 : CIA-RDP96-00788R001200050011-3