ESP & national security

Psychic dogs and enlisted men: the military's research into ESP

Government research often pushes the boundaries between science and science fiction. Today, the proud bearer of that mantle is often DARPA, experimenting with robots, cybernetics, and more. But in the sixties, during the height of the Cold War, this research often went into more fantastical realms, even exploring whether ExtraSensory Perception was possible.

As recently as 1990, these studies were being presented on, with code names like SUN STREAK, CENTER LANE, and GONDOLA WISH.

ESP & national security

Damien Broderick on Parapsychology: A Handbook for the 21st Century and Extrasensory Perception: Support, Skepticism, and Science

MANY PEOPLE ACCEPT AS TRUE, or at least partially true, numerous assertions that seem laughable or absurd to critics. A Harris poll a few years back reported that only 47 percent of adult Americans accepted the reality of evolution: more than half the population still denies the basic lynchpin of scientific biology. Meanwhile, 42 percent accept the reality of ghosts, 29 percent put their faith in astrology, and a quarter of the population think they’ll be reincarnated in another body. Others think they’ll go to heaven or perhaps suffer eternal punishment in hell.

ESP & national security

Bill Clinton’s Pentagon paid psychics to gather intelligence via ESP

The scientist who used to run a now-defunct government program that tried to leverage psychics to mine defense intelligence is still conducting extrasensory perception (ESP) experiments and defends his past experience with the program, according to a newly-published story in Newsweek.

Edwin May, the scientist who had been running the government’s ESP research program before it was ended in 1995, told the news magazine that ESP has “already been proved,” and former Sen. William Cohen of Maine, who was Defense Secretary under former President Clinton, also spoke positively of the idea, according to the story.

ESP & national security

Meet the Former Pentagon Scientist Who Says Psychics Can Help American Spies

Twenty years ago this month, the CIA released a report with the unassuming title, “An Evaluation of Remote Viewing: Research and Applications.” The 183-page white paper was more like a white flag—it was the CIA’s public admission, after years of speculation, that U.S. government agencies had been using a type of ESP called “remote viewing” for more than two decades to help collect military and intelligence secrets. At a cost of about $20 million, the program had employed psychics to visualize hidden extremist training sites in Libya, describe new Soviet submarine designs and pinpoint the locations of U.S. hostages held by foreign kidnappers.