CIA Reading Room nsa-rdp96x00790r000100040016-7: SOVIETS WINNING THE MIND RACE

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Approved For Release 2008/04/01: NSA-RDP96XO079OR000100040016-7 WEDNESDAY, JULY 17, I')8 P -2a. JACK ANDERSON and DALE VU Ara Soviets Winning the 'Mind' Race here are new developments on the psychic-warfare front: The Soviets are outspending us by at least 70-to-1 in occult ,search. Most scientists take a dim view of such -if-proclaimed, parapsychological practitioners as ,ind readers and psychic spoon-benders. We've reported in the past on such ludicrous incepts as the "antimissile time-warp machine." he Pentagon once considered developing this rrtraption to blast incoming missiles into a rehistoric era. For years the Pentagon psychic warriors were !owed to pursue any will-o'-the-wisp that flew by, ?ith annual budgets reportedly as high as $6 iillion. No weapons were ever developed-of ,urse-and now the budget has dwindled to less ian $1 million, for exploration of potential :ipabilities of the human mind. The Kremlin has been working overtime to open military "psycho-gap." The latest top-secret entral Intelligence Agency review of Soviet 'forts in parapsychology estimate that it would :Ike $500 million to $1 billion for the United States catch up. Operating at much lower labor costs, re Soviets are probably spending $70 million to 80 million a year, but possibly as much as $350 pillion. The delightful irony of the Soviets' arapsychology extravagance is that it began as a esponse to the perceived threat of U.S. progress n the art. Several years ago, the French reported hat U.S. psychics had communicated with the iuclear submarine Nautilus via mental te!epath, . This gave Soviet scientists the ammunition to lobby for research funds-even though the reports were later exposed as a hoax. Western scientists may chuckle, but the Soviets take their psychic-warfare experiments seriously. In 1977. a Los Angeles Times reporter in Moscow was arrested by the KGB and charged with obtaining a secret state document that revealed the existence of parapsychological research at several laboratories in the Soviet Union. The CIA estimates that research is being conducted in'at least two dozen labs in 10 Soviet cities, 14 in Moscow alone. The experiments range from "dowsing" for minerals to testing "remote psychological monitors" to measure heartbeat and breathing rates of persons thousands of miles away. From there. according to intelligence reports, Soviet scientists hope to be able to affect the heartbeat and respiration of faraway victims, much in the manner of witch doctors. The Soviets have even claimed, secretly, that several experiments were successful, with targets nearly suffering heart attacks or suffocation. How serious does U.S. intelligence take all this? In 1972, the Defense Intelligence Agency said the Soviets might one day be able to learn the contents of secret U.S. documents by psychic techniques, make U.S. weapons malfunction by negative thinking and even brainwash or disable American leaders by willpower. A 1978 CIA study, which cost $100,000,