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copyright 1984 Time Inc. All Rights Reserved
Time
January 23, 1984, U.S. Edition
SECTION: NXPION; Pg. 17
LENGTH: 692 words
HEADLINE: An E.S.P. Gap;
Exploring psychic weapons
  BODY:
On the third Tuesday of every month in the fall and winter of 1980, a bizarre
rendezvous allegedly took place in Washington, D.C. A Navy officer in a plain
civilian suit carried a briefcase handcuffed to his wrist into the parlor of
"Madame Zodiac," psychic and palm reader. By looking at top-secret photographs
and charts, the clairvoyant attempted to predict the movements of Soviet
submarines off the East Coast. Madame Zodiac's payment: $ 400 cash.
Ronald McRae, a former investigative reporter for Columnist Jack Anderson,
tells of this type of clandestine assignation and of other operations between
the Pentagon had the so-called psychic community in his book Mind Wars, to be
published this spring. It is one of several forthcoming works, written by both
skeptics and believers, on the military's forays into parapsychology, the
quasi-science that studies the interaction of mind and matter. According to
McRae, who is skeptical of psychic claims, the Department of Denfense has spent
$ 6 million annually in recent years to research such phenomena as extrasensory
perception (E.S.P.) and mental telepathy.
The Pentagon denies any interest in parapsychology. A Denfense Department
spokesman said last week that officials had scrutinized the budgets for fiscal
years 1983 and 1984 "and can find no monies that have been spent for E.S.P. or
whatever sort of label you want to put on those programs." But in an interview
with the Now York Times, retired Lieut. General Daniel 0. Graham, former head of
the defense Intelligence Agency, indicated that the military had unquestionably
been involved in psychic research. While he considered McRae's $ 6 million
budget figure an exaggeration, he said, "I wouldn't be surprised if the
intelligence community were following this. They would be remiss if they
didn't."
McRae claims the Pentagon financed psychic research to study the "shell game"
basing mode for the MX missile, a system that would attempt to confuse Soviet
military strategists by shifting missiles among a number of concrete shelters.
other esoteric programs uncovered by McRae include titles like "Novel Biological
Information Transfer Systems," apparently the Pentagon's way of saying E.S.P.
Back in December 1980, Military Review, a journal of the U.S. Army, carried a
cover story titled "The New Mental Battlefield." In his quirky essay, Lieut.
Colonel John B. Alexander wrote that "there are weapons systems that operate on
the power of the mind and whose lethal capacity has already been demonstrated."
He equated the first strategic breakthrough in defense E.S.P. with sole
possession of nuclear weapons and urged the U.S. to step up its research in the
field.
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"I know the Government's involved," says Physicist Russell Targ, co-author
-with Keith Harary of the forthcoming book The Mind Race. "I did the work," he
-contends.Because he was working with special clearances while at SRI
Interntional, a California research institute, Targ will not specify whether the
Defense Department, the CIA or both funded his psychic research programs, but he
maintains that there was a "multimillion-dollar" project, part of which focused
on "remote viewing" experiments.
In one test, Targ went to Grant's Tomb in New York City and tried to transmit
an image to a clairvoyant in California. The psychic described a high place
with a view, which she said "makes me think of a restaurant or museum." Her
vision, Targ argues, was remarkably accurate. On a visit to the U.S.S.R. in
October, Targ found that the Soviets had replicated some of the experiments he
and his colleagues had reported in scientific journals.Says Targ: "In the
Soviet Union, psychic research is taken seriously at the highest levels."
Sighting submarines by clairvoyance? Sending signals with E.S.P."
Representative Charlie Rose, a North Carolina Democrat on the House Select
Committee on Intelligence, says it may be worth a look. "Some people think this
is the work os the devil," says he. "Others think it may be the holy spirit.
If the Soviets, as is evident, feel it is worthwhile, I am willing to spend a
few bucks."
GRAPHIC: Illustration, no caption, ILLUSTRATION FOR TIME BY MICHAEL WITTE
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
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