Cold war history

The CIA's Secret Plan to Crush Russia During the Cold War: Super Psychic Powers

What if someone sitting in a darkened room could close his eyes and visualize the exact location of a nuclear submarine hidden in the ocean depths five thousand miles away?

If the U.S. government’s paranormal research had proved fruitful instead of a flop, that’s the world we would live in today. A world where psychics hunt subs, and American soldiers kill enemies with the power of their mind, like an army of Darth Vaders in camouflage uniforms.

When the CIA made twelve million documents available online in January, the records that drew the most media attention were those concerning the agency’s Cold War paranormal research. Beginning in the 1970s, and spurred by reports that the Soviet Union had invested heavily in psychic research, the CIA’s Scanate and the U.S. Army’s Stargate projects explored the possibility of using psychic powers as battlefield tools.