Spies, Psychic Research, and the Cold War

A lot of people are unfamiliar with some of the more unusual aspects of the Cold War. During the late Seventies and early Eighties, there was a big push to study psychic phenomena, as it pertained to potential military and intelligence applications.

As I started to work on my grad degree in psychology, I got a first-hand look at a number of “alternate reality” groups. Many of these morphed out of the “near-death” experiences that were reported by a variety of people. At the University of Connecticut, the Institute for Near-Death Studies (IANDS), which was under the tutelage of Dr. Ken Ring and Lt. Colonel John B. Alexander, worked feverishly to prove the psychic phenomena behind the anecdotal evidence the team members had gathered. There were wealthy benefactors, like Arthur M. Young and his heiress wife, who bankrolled the research.

Many of the groups delving into psychic phenomena were closely associated. The Institute of Noetic Sciences, another pet project of Arthur M. Young, had members in IANDS and other groups he financially supported, such as the Institute for the Study of Consciousness. Thus, most people who traveled in the so-called psychic circles back then knew each other. There were psychiatrists, psychologists, physicists, and others, all promoting their versions of remote viewing, channeling, out-of-body experiences, psychokinesis, and mind-to-mind healing.

The Soviets were doing their own research at the time, so it’s small wonder that the United States government got involved at the behest of Senator Claiborne Pell, the US senator from Rhode Island. One of his staff members, C. B. “Scotty” Jones, set up the Human Potential Foundation for research purposes. Jones was a busy “networker”, coordinating with groups like IANDS and Harvard psychiatrist John Mack. Pell pushed through the financial wherewithal that gave legitimacy to research, even though the research often fell short of standard scientific practices.

Everywhere I turned during these years, I was tripping over the same psychic advocates again and again. It didn’t matter where I went, where I lived, or what I did. They all wanted to read my horoscope, my chakras, and my energy fields. I was, according to them, living under a dark, dark cloud. Despite their best efforts to warn me that I was on the wrong path, I knew all too well that it was not the Cosmos reaching down to me, not with that agenda.

One such individual who repeatedly showed up in my life was John Miller, one of the founders of A Gentle Wind. He spoke at Ken Ring’s gatherings in CT, claiming to have an in with the Cosmos, via an ancient and sage adviser from a galaxy far, far away. (Ironically, he was later successfully sued, along with other members of his group. Some of his victims took exception to the emotional coercion and cult practices.) He taught psychic classes in Cheshire, Connecticut with John Warren White, the author of “Polar Shift”, who claimed the Earth was about to experience a terrifying tilt in its axis because of all the negative energy humankind was creating. Miller  joined forces with White to start Alpha Logics, a school for psychics in Bristol, Connecticut. Later on, he offered his self-proclaimed psychic talents in Boston and Kittery, Maine, before eventually moving farther north.

White also worked at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, the CA organization headed by former NASA astronaut, Edgar Mitchell and supported by Arthur M. Young. providing communications expertise in reaching out to potential recruits.

Is it any wonder that when the CIA and the Department of Defense began to test psychics, they turned to the same small circle of people again and again, or to the supposed psychics trained by them? These were the only “experts” available, and Lt. Colonel John B. Alexander, as the Army’s point man, was determined to train psychic warriors for the DOD.

Author Jon Ronson attempted to investigate some of these research projects in “The Men Who Stare at Goats”. It’s unfortunate that he came up so short. He missed a lot of important connections. Lt. Colonel John B. Alexander, who served as a president of IANDS while it was located  at the University of Connecticut (it also was based in Philadelphia at one point), pushed for research that purported to prove some people had a talent for reading minds and manipulating physical elements with mental energies. As a Special Forces soldier, Alexander served as an underling to Major General Albert Stubblebine at Army INSCOM. He focused on non-lethal weapons, becoming manager of the Non-Lethal Weapons Program at Los Alamos after retiring from active service. There was nothing he discounted, whether it was using the mind to telepathically control the behavior of other human beings or UFO’s and alien beings popping down from space. That’s because Alexander was, first and foremost, an intelligence man, skilled in the art of espionage. Human weaknesses are meant to be exploited. It was another opportunity to get a hook into a target, based on the MICE scale (money, ideology, coercion, ego).

And when the subject of  UFOs took center stage in the many psychic presentations, the reports of sightings were “validated” by these same psychic experts. In addition to Dr. Ken Ring, one of the strongest advocates was Dr. John Mack, who insisted that these stories had to have some kind of merit somewhere. Rational thinkers wondered how could anyone prove that which cannot be tested or measured? The popular answer from people like Dr. Ken Ring and Dr. John Mack was that people wouldn’t have these experiences unless there was some grain of truth in there. If it was felt to be true, it must be true.

I met a lot of people along the way. Some were dedicated peace advocates who practiced what they preached. They were genuine in their beliefs and ethics. But others, including some of the leaders in the psychic circles, were incredibly manipulative. To them, deceiving people into accepting their leadership was an acceptable practice. In order to succeed at it, they needed to control every aspect of their target’s environment.

These weavers of psychic threads wrapped their wizardly blankets around a number of gullible people, promising the dawn of a New Age if only their instructions were followed. Fail to heed their advice and the universe falls apart. Imagine being responsible for the world ending, all because you didn’t believe enough in your gurus. That is the epitome of emotional manipulation.

In Connecticut, there were plenty of UFO sightings back in the Sixties and Seventies. That’s hardly surprising, given the fact that Connecticut was home to a number of defense contractors. Pratt and Whitney engines went into the CIA’s Oxcart-12 spy plane. The Soviets, the Chinese, and other hostile governments wanted to get their hands on the technology. And people like Arthur M. Young, who created  the Bell-47 helicopter, seemed to have a change of heart when it came to applying their work to military efforts across the globe. (Young’s wife was a founder and funder of the International Peace Academy in 1970, whose mission was ostensibly to train military personnel for UN peacekeeping missions.)

The CIA, like the DOD, had its own team of security experts charged with making sure that these technologies did not fall into the wrong hands. Thus, there were many people working at cross purposes. The disinformation campaigns were convoluted, to say the least. Groups like NICAP were not just seeking UFO-experiencers. They were also trying to determine whether the sightings were actually of aircraft in development from a defense contractor like Sikorsky or Pratt & Whitney. In other words, claiming UFO research was a great way to cover your fanny while you were seeking a penetration point for classified defense information.

Was there a Soviet penetration effort here in the United States? Absolutely. Was there an effort to counter that attempt at penetration? Absolutely. And along the way, the line became blurred in psychic research. Many years later, the CIA released documents on its efforts to study psychic phenomena. You can see these documents for yourself: https: //www. cia. gov/ library/ readingroom/ collection/ stargate  to go to the CIA Reading Room for the documents.

Do they tell the whole story? Do we know the depth and the breadth and the impact of those Cold War activities? That’s a question for which I have no answer. The truth is that a lot of self-professed psychics had a political agenda and they were looking for ways to gain influence over American leaders of politics, society, and science. How much of their talent was borne of a genuine desire to know truth and how much was about gaining the upper hand and controlling minds for a dangerous purpose?

Psych warfare, in reality, has nothing to do with psychic talent and everything to do with controlling what people think, feel, and believe. It is often used to deceive, to distract, to dissuade, and to destroy. Cult practices, closely aligned with psych warfare, depend on separating a target from his or her support base and isolating the individual for the purposes of manipulating for a self-serving purpose. It’s all about power, control, and sometimes even money.

But there is an important thing to remember about efforts to shape and control the human mind outside the framework of personal choice. When a subject is not allowed to exercise free will, it renders him a victim. Mental manipulation depends on maintaining total control over the target. It takes a small army of soldiers to surround the victim and constantly and consistently reinforce the message. The moment a person is no longer contained in such a rigid environment, the power behind the message begins to wane. That is the key to freedom from such oppressive “re-education”. The more we employ logic and rational thought, quieting the emotional distress we experience, the better we are able to recognize the danger of surrendering our free will to people with evil intentions.