CIA Reading Room cia-rdp96-00788r001200050011-3: VOODOO GAP LOOMS AS LATEST WEAPONS CRISIS

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Approved For Release 2003/09/09 : CIA-RDP96-00788R001200050011-3 post 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.), suppor