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created: 2026-06-03
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updated: 2026-06-03
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---
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Charles Milles Manson was born November 12, 1934, in [[Cincinnati]], [[Ohio]], and spent his childhood in and out of institutions. By the time he arrived in [[San Francisco]]'s [[Haight-Ashbury]] district in 1967, following his release from the federal penitentiary at [[Terminal Island]], Manson had spent more than half his life in correctional facilities. What happened next, the transformation of a petty criminal into a cult leader who ordered the murders of seven people over two August nights in 1969, has remained one of the most scrutinized criminal cases in American history.[^1][^3]
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Charles Milles Manson was born November 12, 1934, in [[Cincinnati]], [[Ohio]], and spent his childhood in and out of institutions. By the time he arrived in [[San Francisco]]'s [[Haight-Ashbury]] district in 1967, following his release from the federal penitentiary at [[Terminal Island]], Manson had spent more than half his life in correctional facilities. What happened next, the transformation of a petty criminal into a cult leader who ordered the murders of seven people over two August nights in 1969, has remained one of the most scrutinized criminal cases in American history.[^1][^2]
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### The Haight-Ashbury Period
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Manson was released from prison on March 21, 1967, the same year the [[CIA]] launched [[Operation CHAOS]], a domestic surveillance program targeting anti-war and counterculture movements under Director of Central Intelligence [[Richard Helms]]. In San Francisco, Manson's parole officer was [[Roger Smith]], based at the [[Haight-Ashbury Free Medical Clinic]] founded by Dr. [[David E. Smith|David Smith]]. The clinic was a nexus for counterculture health services, but it also sat directly adjacent to a facility operated by [[Louis Jolyon West|Dr. Louis Jolyon West]], the [[UCLA]] psychiatrist who headed [[MKULTRA]] Subproject 43 and had been cleared at Top Secret level by the CIA. Manson attended weekly meetings with his parole officer at the clinic, and members of the Manson Family used the clinic for medical treatment.[^3]
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Manson was released from prison on March 21, 1967, the same year the [[CIA]] launched [[Operation CHAOS]], a domestic surveillance program targeting anti-war and counterculture movements under Director of Central Intelligence [[Richard Helms]]. In San Francisco, Manson's parole officer was [[Roger Smith]], based at the [[Haight-Ashbury Free Medical Clinic]] founded by Dr. [[David E. Smith|David Smith]]. The clinic was a nexus for counterculture health services, but it also sat directly adjacent to a facility operated by [[Louis Jolyon West|Dr. Louis Jolyon West]], the [[UCLA]] psychiatrist who headed [[MKULTRA]] Subproject 43 and had been cleared at Top Secret level by the CIA. Manson attended weekly meetings with his parole officer at the clinic, and members of the Manson Family used the clinic for medical treatment.[^2]
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### The Parole Question
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Research into the case found that parole officer Roger Smith should have recommended Manson's return to prison for repeated drug violations but instead tried to arrange for Manson to live in [[Mexico]], which would have made supervision impossible. A retired deputy district attorney involved in the investigation stated that "somebody wanted him out there."[^3] Manson's criminal record, drug use, and probation violations provided ample grounds for revocation, yet authorities at every level permitted him to continue operating freely in the Haight-Ashbury and later in [[Los Angeles]].[^3]
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Research into the case found that parole officer Roger Smith should have recommended Manson's return to prison for repeated drug violations but instead tried to arrange for Manson to live in [[Mexico]], which would have made supervision impossible. A retired deputy district attorney involved in the investigation stated that "somebody wanted him out there."[^2] Manson's criminal record, drug use, and probation violations provided ample grounds for revocation, yet authorities at every level permitted him to continue operating freely in the Haight-Ashbury and later in [[Los Angeles]].[^2]
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### LSD, Conditioning, and the Family's Programming Methods
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Manson's methods for controlling his followers paralleled documented MKULTRA techniques with striking precision. He used massive doses of [[LSD]] to break down personality structures, employed sleep deprivation, sensory overload, and repeated psychological conditioning to rewrite his followers' identities. The [[Process Church of the Final Judgment]], founded in [[London]] in 1966 by [[Robert DeGrimston]] and [[Mary Ann MacLean]], had documented contacts with Manson. Manson reportedly claimed "Moor and I are one and the same," referencing DeGrimston's birth name. The group published an essay by Manson in their 1971 Death issue. While a direct intelligence connection to the Process Church has never been established, the FBI maintained files on the organization.[^3]
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Manson's methods for controlling his followers paralleled documented MKULTRA techniques with striking precision. He used massive doses of [[LSD]] to break down personality structures, employed sleep deprivation, sensory overload, and repeated psychological conditioning to rewrite his followers' identities. The [[Process Church of the Final Judgment]], founded in [[London]] in 1966 by [[Robert DeGrimston]] and [[Mary Ann MacLean]], had documented contacts with Manson. Manson reportedly claimed "Moor and I are one and the same," referencing DeGrimston's birth name. The group published an essay by Manson in their 1971 Death issue. While a direct intelligence connection to the Process Church has never been established, the FBI maintained files on the organization.[^2]
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### The Helter Skelter Narrative
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The official prosecution theory, advanced by Los Angeles District Attorney [[Vincent Bugliosi]], held that Manson ordered the Tate-LaBianca murders to ignite a race war he called "Helter Skelter," framing the [[Black Panthers]] for the crimes. This narrative conveniently served Operation CHAOS objectives, which included discrediting the counterculture and Black radical organizations. Subsequent investigation found that the prosecution's case contained deliberate misrepresentations: "The facts that were presented to the public are not true. And, in the case of the prosecution of Charles Manson and the Manson Family, many things were, in fact, deliberately lied about."[^3]
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The official prosecution theory, advanced by Los Angeles District Attorney [[Vincent Bugliosi]], held that Manson ordered the Tate-LaBianca murders to ignite a race war he called "Helter Skelter," framing the [[Black Panthers]] for the crimes. This narrative conveniently served Operation CHAOS objectives, which included discrediting the counterculture and Black radical organizations. Subsequent investigation found that the prosecution's case contained deliberate misrepresentations: "The facts that were presented to the public are not true. And, in the case of the prosecution of Charles Manson and the Manson Family, many things were, in fact, deliberately lied about."[^2]
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### Manson at Vacaville and the DeFreeze Network
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@ -37,13 +37,13 @@ After his conviction, Manson was incarcerated at [[Vacaville]] Medical Facility
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### Assessment of CIA Connections
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Independent investigators stopped short of claiming definitive proof that Manson was a witting CIA asset, but concluded there was a "good likelihood that Manson is a product of MKULTRA, whether he was knowledgeable about it or not." The circumstantial evidence cited includes the failure to revoke Manson's parole, the proximity to Dr. West's operations, the alignment of the murders with Operation CHAOS objectives, and the deliberate distortions in the official prosecution narrative. West's files from the Haight-Ashbury period have reportedly gone missing.[^3]
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Independent investigators stopped short of claiming definitive proof that Manson was a witting CIA asset, but concluded there was a "good likelihood that Manson is a product of MKULTRA, whether he was knowledgeable about it or not." The circumstantial evidence cited includes the failure to revoke Manson's parole, the proximity to Dr. West's operations, the alignment of the murders with Operation CHAOS objectives, and the deliberate distortions in the official prosecution narrative. West's files from the Haight-Ashbury period have reportedly gone missing.[^2]
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### Death
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Manson died of natural causes at [[Corcoran State Prison]] in California on November 19, 2017, at age 83.[^3]
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Manson died of natural causes at [[Corcoran State Prison]] in California on November 19, 2017, at age 83.[^2]
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### Footnotes
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[^1]: Curt Rowlett, "Project Mind Kontrol: Did the U.S. Government Actually Create Programmed Assassins?," Steamshovel Press #16, 1998.
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[^3]: O'Neill, Tom, and Dan Piepenbring. *Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties*. Little, Brown and Company, 2019.
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[^2]: O'Neill, Tom, and Dan Piepenbring. *Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties*. Little, Brown and Company, 2019.
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@ -36,9 +36,9 @@ The reception among former unit colleagues was largely negative. [[Joe McMoneagl
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Despite these criticisms, *Psychic Warrior* introduced the Fort Meade program to a large popular audience and helped establish the commercial remote viewing training market that emerged after STAR GATE's 1995 declassification. Morehouse subsequently built a civilian career offering remote viewing training seminars.[^1]
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An undated memorandum in the CIA's Star Gate files, headed "Will the Real [[C.B. Scott Jones|Scott Jones]] Please Stand Up?," records: "[[Ed Dames|Edward A. Dames]] serves as President of [[Psi Tech]], and David A. Morehouse is Vice President. They are based in [[Jessup, Maryland]], but there are rumors that they are planning to move to [[New Mexico]]." No other legible mention of him appears in the released collection.[^900]
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An undated memorandum in the CIA's Star Gate files, headed "Will the Real [[C.B. Scott Jones|Scott Jones]] Please Stand Up?," records: "[[Ed Dames|Edward A. Dames]] serves as President of [[Psi Tech]], and David A. Morehouse is Vice President. They are based in [[Jessup, Maryland]], but there are rumors that they are planning to move to [[New Mexico]]." No other legible mention of him appears in the released collection.[^2]
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### Footnotes
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[^1]: Schnabel, Jim. *Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies.* Dell, 1997. Jacobsen, Annie. *Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis.* Little, Brown and Company, 2017. Morehouse, David. *Psychic Warrior: Inside the CIA's Stargate Program, the True Story of a Soldier's Espionage and Awakening.* St. Martin's Press, 1996.
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[^900]: "Will the Real Scott Jones Please Stand Up?," undated memorandum, CIA-RDP96-00792R000400300004-7. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.
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[^2]: "Will the Real Scott Jones Please Stand Up?," undated memorandum, CIA-RDP96-00792R000400300004-7. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.
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@ -36,11 +36,11 @@ In 1991, SRI withdrew from the remote viewing research contract. May negotiated
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When the CIA, which had taken custody of the program from the DIA in 1995 at the direction of Congress, contracted the American Institutes for Research in June 1995 to evaluate it ([[1995 AIR evaluation of Star Gate]]), May, as principal investigator, was asked "to list those studies which he believes provide the strongest evidence" and every unique study since the 1988 [[National Research Council]] report. His memorandum of July 25, 1995, listed ten SAIC experiments, among them "Entropy II" (90 trials, effect size 0.550, p = 9.1 × 10^-8), "ERD AC Behavior" (70 trials, 0.303), "Remote observation" (48 trials, 0.361), and "AC with binary coding" (40 trials, −0.067). [[Jessica Utts]] took them, with the 1988 analysis of the SRI database, as establishing that "psychic functioning has been well established"; [[Ray Hyman]] agreed the effects were "too large and consistent to be dismissed as statistical flukes" but held that ten experiments from one laboratory could not establish a phenomenon. May told the panel that "approximately 20 percent of the information supplied by a viewer is accurate," and AIR noted that throughout the experiments "only one judge, apparently the Principal Investigator, was used in assessing matches." The report of September 29, 1995, recommended against continuing the operational program. May's commentary in the *Journal of Parapsychology* the next year described the review as the result of "a Congressionally Directed Activity" and gave the report's public release as November 28, 1995.[^1]
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The CIA's chronology of the transfer records for February 28, 1995: "CIA met with DIA principal investigator at SAIC, Dr. Ed May. All-day technical exchange." An ORD memorandum for the record of April 20, 1995, its author redacted, states that "Ed May of SAIC called this morning and volunteered to send me unsolicited information he had obtained from a 'remote viewer' named 'Joe' relating to the [[Oklahoma City bombing|Oklahoma City Bombing]]," that ORD had no means of "tasking or disseminating this type of information," that May asked for a law-enforcement contact and, told to send it to his former contracting officer's representative at DIA, "said they didn't get along"; given an FBI number that evening, "he asked if this would be a 'cold call' because he didn't want to sound like a 'lunatic,'" and "agreed reluctantly" to call. The Director of Research and Development's covering memorandum to the [[Counterterrorist Center]] the same day: "We attach no credibility to this information, and currently have no way to evaluate it. We have asked Dr. Ed May of SAIC to forward this information to you directly. Please direct any questions regarding how the information was acquired to Dr. May. He has been the primary contract investigator in this area, and we have not completed our evaluation of his past efforts."[^900]
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The CIA's chronology of the transfer records for February 28, 1995: "CIA met with DIA principal investigator at SAIC, Dr. Ed May. All-day technical exchange." An ORD memorandum for the record of April 20, 1995, its author redacted, states that "Ed May of SAIC called this morning and volunteered to send me unsolicited information he had obtained from a 'remote viewer' named 'Joe' relating to the [[Oklahoma City bombing|Oklahoma City Bombing]]," that ORD had no means of "tasking or disseminating this type of information," that May asked for a law-enforcement contact and, told to send it to his former contracting officer's representative at DIA, "said they didn't get along"; given an FBI number that evening, "he asked if this would be a 'cold call' because he didn't want to sound like a 'lunatic,'" and "agreed reluctantly" to call. The Director of Research and Development's covering memorandum to the [[Counterterrorist Center]] the same day: "We attach no credibility to this information, and currently have no way to evaluate it. We have asked Dr. Ed May of SAIC to forward this information to you directly. Please direct any questions regarding how the information was acquired to Dr. May. He has been the primary contract investigator in this area, and we have not completed our evaluation of his past efforts."[^2]
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### The 1996 Commentary
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May "was asked by the CIA to provide administrative support, technical documents, and briefings on an as-needed basis for the review," under a small contract to SAIC, from which he resigned on November 28, 1995, the day the report was released. His commentary in the *Journal of Parapsychology* argued that "there is compelling evidence that the CIA set the outcome with regard to intelligence usage before the evaluation had begun," by "limiting the research and operations data sets to exclude positive findings, by purposefully not interviewing historically significant participants, by ignoring previous extensive Department of Defense program reviews, and by using the questionable National Research Council's investigation of parapsychology as the starting point." He noted that AIR's president, [[David Goslin]], had also overseen the NRC's 1988 report; that of the seventeen members of the SRI and SAIC oversight committees and review board "only one was contacted by the CIA"; that his memorandum of June 6, 1995, "the existence of anomalous mental phenomena cannot be statistically determined from the results of a single laboratory," was "ignored by fiat"; and that a Senate staff member told him the CIA's briefing to Congress gave eight bullet points to Hyman's conclusions and four to Utts's. He quoted Jessica Utts's letter of December 19, 1995: "I was explicitly asked by AIR staff NOT to mention the NRC report in my review!" and "we were shown very little of the 'operational' remote-viewing work"; and [[Robert Rosenthal]] on the NRC's 1988 request that he omit his ganzfeld section, "censorship did not occur." He quoted [[Joe McMoneagle]]'s 1984 Legion of Merit citation, "more than 200 missions, addressing over 150 essential elements of information," reported "at the highest echelons," and traced a line from ARPA's George Lawrence and Hyman being refused access at SRI in 1974, through Lawrence's commissioning of the NRC study in 1985, to Goslin's AIR review. Of the program's last years: a 1993 attempt to move it to the CIA "found no willing recipient," the last DIA officer "had little knowledge of the program," and "the program was in shambles." "I am forced to conclude that either the AIR investigators were not competent to conduct a proper review of such a complex program, a view to which I do not subscribe, or they knew exactly what they were doing: They wanted to demonstrate that AC lacked usefulness for intelligence operations. They did so by construction rather than by careful analysis." On *Nightline* that November he said: "I think about 15% of our data, over 1500 separate remote viewing trials, are of such a quality that you might think they were sketched," and, after [[Robert Gates]] said the work was "better done on the outside": "I couldn't agree with Director Gates more."[^2]
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May "was asked by the CIA to provide administrative support, technical documents, and briefings on an as-needed basis for the review," under a small contract to SAIC, from which he resigned on November 28, 1995, the day the report was released. His commentary in the *Journal of Parapsychology* argued that "there is compelling evidence that the CIA set the outcome with regard to intelligence usage before the evaluation had begun," by "limiting the research and operations data sets to exclude positive findings, by purposefully not interviewing historically significant participants, by ignoring previous extensive Department of Defense program reviews, and by using the questionable National Research Council's investigation of parapsychology as the starting point." He noted that AIR's president, [[David Goslin]], had also overseen the NRC's 1988 report; that of the seventeen members of the SRI and SAIC oversight committees and review board "only one was contacted by the CIA"; that his memorandum of June 6, 1995, "the existence of anomalous mental phenomena cannot be statistically determined from the results of a single laboratory," was "ignored by fiat"; and that a Senate staff member told him the CIA's briefing to Congress gave eight bullet points to Hyman's conclusions and four to Utts's. He quoted Jessica Utts's letter of December 19, 1995: "I was explicitly asked by AIR staff NOT to mention the NRC report in my review!" and "we were shown very little of the 'operational' remote-viewing work"; and [[Robert Rosenthal]] on the NRC's 1988 request that he omit his ganzfeld section, "censorship did not occur." He quoted [[Joe McMoneagle]]'s 1984 Legion of Merit citation, "more than 200 missions, addressing over 150 essential elements of information," reported "at the highest echelons," and traced a line from ARPA's George Lawrence and Hyman being refused access at SRI in 1974, through Lawrence's commissioning of the NRC study in 1985, to Goslin's AIR review. Of the program's last years: a 1993 attempt to move it to the CIA "found no willing recipient," the last DIA officer "had little knowledge of the program," and "the program was in shambles." "I am forced to conclude that either the AIR investigators were not competent to conduct a proper review of such a complex program, a view to which I do not subscribe, or they knew exactly what they were doing: They wanted to demonstrate that AC lacked usefulness for intelligence operations. They did so by construction rather than by careful analysis." On *Nightline* that November he said: "I think about 15% of our data, over 1500 separate remote viewing trials, are of such a quality that you might think they were sketched," and, after [[Robert Gates]] said the work was "better done on the outside": "I couldn't agree with Director Gates more."[^3]
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### Post-STARGATE Research
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@ -51,5 +51,5 @@ May continued to serve as a consultant on anomalous cognition research for acade
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### Footnotes
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[^1]: Mumford, Michael D., Andrew M. Rose, and David A. Goslin. *An Evaluation of Remote Viewing: Research and Applications.* American Institutes for Research, September 29, 1995, pp. 2-3, 3-18, 3-67, 5-2. https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB438/docs/doc_57.pdf May, Edwin C. "The American Institutes for Research Review of the Department of Defense's STAR GATE Program: A Commentary," *Journal of Parapsychology,* vol. 60, no. 1, 1996, pp. 3-23, abstract only.
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[^2]: May, Edwin C. "The American Institutes for Research Review of the Department of Defense's STAR GATE Program: A Commentary," *Journal of Parapsychology,* vol. 60, no. 1, March 1996, pp. 3-23. The letter of December 19, 1995, is printed at pp. 15-17 as Utts's reply to May's e-mail of December 17, checked against the page images. "Psychic Spies: Cold War Whimsy or Secret Weapon?," ABC News *Nightline,* November 28, 1995, Radio TV Reports transcript for the CIA Public Affairs Staff, CIA-RDP99-01448R000402140001-7, read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room.
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[^900]: "Star Gate Transfer Chronology: 1995," memorandum for the record, undated, CIA-RDP96-00791R000200190017-9. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection. Memorandum for the record and memorandum for CTC from the Director, Research and Development, "Star Gate Program Issues," April 20, 1995, CIA-RDP96-00791R000100030036-6. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.
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[^2]: "Star Gate Transfer Chronology: 1995," memorandum for the record, undated, CIA-RDP96-00791R000200190017-9. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection. Memorandum for the record and memorandum for CTC from the Director, Research and Development, "Star Gate Program Issues," April 20, 1995, CIA-RDP96-00791R000100030036-6. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.
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[^3]: May, Edwin C. "The American Institutes for Research Review of the Department of Defense's STAR GATE Program: A Commentary," *Journal of Parapsychology,* vol. 60, no. 1, March 1996, pp. 3-23. The letter of December 19, 1995, is printed at pp. 15-17 as Utts's reply to May's e-mail of December 17, checked against the page images. "Psychic Spies: Cold War Whimsy or Secret Weapon?," ABC News *Nightline,* November 28, 1995, Radio TV Reports transcript for the CIA Public Affairs Staff, CIA-RDP99-01448R000402140001-7, read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room.
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The SRI protocol for Hammid and other subjects involved an outbound experimenter who traveled to a randomly selected location within thirty minutes' driving distance. The subject remained at SRI with Puthoff or Targ and attempted to describe the target location through spontaneous description and drawing. Independent judges matched the descriptions to the target locations blind, without knowing which description came from which trial.[^1]
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[[David Marks]] wrote in 1982 that of the six transcripts of her series shown to him by the SRI judge [[Arthur Hastings]], "four of the six Hammid transcripts actually carried dates" and "one transcript even carried the name of the associated target"; he listed twenty-four cues ("This is the 18th of September," "Russell Targ has gone to the remote site," "Hal has gone to a second target," "Hella has made a drawing of Hal's first location") from which a judge in [[New Zealand]], using no descriptive material, matched the transcripts better than Hastings had, and reported that Hastings had received three target lists, one randomized and two not. Targ and Puthoff's own account of her had been that she was "a friend: 'I (R.T.) had known Hella for more than a dozen years.'"[^901]
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[[David Marks]] wrote in 1982 that of the six transcripts of her series shown to him by the SRI judge [[Arthur Hastings]], "four of the six Hammid transcripts actually carried dates" and "one transcript even carried the name of the associated target"; he listed twenty-four cues ("This is the 18th of September," "Russell Targ has gone to the remote site," "Hal has gone to a second target," "Hella has made a drawing of Hal's first location") from which a judge in [[New Zealand]], using no descriptive material, matched the transcripts better than Hastings had, and reported that Hastings had received three target lists, one randomized and two not. Targ and Puthoff's own account of her had been that she was "a friend: 'I (R.T.) had known Hella for more than a dozen years.'"[^2]
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### The 1974 Record
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SRI's first progress report of March 1974 records "a preliminary remote viewing pilot experiment" with "a subject (H.H.) previously screened by the EEG correlates experiment": "The target chosen at random was a small red clapboard schoolhouse structure with a bell steeple on top in a miniature golf course. The subject's response was that she saw a red clapboard structure with a steeple that seemed to be artificial as in a movie set." An outside reviewer noted that of six subjects in the EEG work, "one of the six subjects, HH, showed a consistent alpha blocking effort. Therefore, this subject was studied further and most of the data recorded is based on HH's performance." A CIA officer who observed her in 1974 wrote: "Hella is very alert and outgoing; although not insightful. She is very concerned with her performance. Her aim seems to be pleasing the experimenters rather than proving anything to herself." "She does very badly on absolute size estimates. She does very well on indicating lighting conditions, including the presence of steady or pulsing lights. She does not often describe colors, but is very accurate when she does." "There can be no question that Hella can repeatably, although not reliably, produce information not available through normal means." Set to describe an electric typewriter on which the officer had typed for ten minutes, she missed, while [[Russell Targ]], who had been questioning her throughout, "gave a nearly perfect account of the target." Called in by a police lieutenant named Konar, who "had exhausted all available leads" in the murder of a young woman in the [[Stanford University|Stanford]] chapel, she "gave details of the crime location, described the victim and her assailant, indicated the exact location of the fatal wound, alluded to the ritualistic tone of the crime, and traced the victim's movements before the crime as well as the relocation of the body afterwards," the only known error being earrings; Konar wrote SRI a letter and followed her leads; but "none of the data that Hella generated, that has been verified, was unknown to Lt. Konar at the time of this experiment. Therefore, it is possible that Hella received all of her information from the Lt., by some unknown means." The same officer warned that if funding lapsed Puthoff and Targ "will publish everything they have generated," including "their association with unreliable subjects." A cassette of September 19, 1974, is catalogued "Tape 'N' Text Editor and Drill Press, Beacon Russell Targ, Viewer Hella Hammid."[^2]
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SRI's first progress report of March 1974 records "a preliminary remote viewing pilot experiment" with "a subject (H.H.) previously screened by the EEG correlates experiment": "The target chosen at random was a small red clapboard schoolhouse structure with a bell steeple on top in a miniature golf course. The subject's response was that she saw a red clapboard structure with a steeple that seemed to be artificial as in a movie set." An outside reviewer noted that of six subjects in the EEG work, "one of the six subjects, HH, showed a consistent alpha blocking effort. Therefore, this subject was studied further and most of the data recorded is based on HH's performance." A CIA officer who observed her in 1974 wrote: "Hella is very alert and outgoing; although not insightful. She is very concerned with her performance. Her aim seems to be pleasing the experimenters rather than proving anything to herself." "She does very badly on absolute size estimates. She does very well on indicating lighting conditions, including the presence of steady or pulsing lights. She does not often describe colors, but is very accurate when she does." "There can be no question that Hella can repeatably, although not reliably, produce information not available through normal means." Set to describe an electric typewriter on which the officer had typed for ten minutes, she missed, while [[Russell Targ]], who had been questioning her throughout, "gave a nearly perfect account of the target." Called in by a police lieutenant named Konar, who "had exhausted all available leads" in the murder of a young woman in the [[Stanford University|Stanford]] chapel, she "gave details of the crime location, described the victim and her assailant, indicated the exact location of the fatal wound, alluded to the ritualistic tone of the crime, and traced the victim's movements before the crime as well as the relocation of the body afterwards," the only known error being earrings; Konar wrote SRI a letter and followed her leads; but "none of the data that Hella generated, that has been verified, was unknown to Lt. Konar at the time of this experiment. Therefore, it is possible that Hella received all of her information from the Lt., by some unknown means." The same officer warned that if funding lapsed Puthoff and Targ "will publish everything they have generated," including "their association with unreliable subjects." A cassette of September 19, 1974, is catalogued "Tape 'N' Text Editor and Drill Press, Beacon Russell Targ, Viewer Hella Hammid."[^3]
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### Project Deep Quest
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### Footnotes
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[^1]: Jacobsen, Annie. *Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis.* Little, Brown and Company, 2017. Puthoff, Harold E., and Russell Targ. "A Perceptual Channel for Information Transfer over Kilometer Distances: Historical Perspective and Recent Research." *Proceedings of the IEEE* 64, no. 3 (March 1976): 329-354 (the primary published SRI remote viewing experimental results).
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[^2]: Puthoff, Harold E. *Perceptual Augmentation Techniques,* progress report no. 1, March 12, 1974, SRI Project 3183, CIA-RDP96-00787R000100010001-1. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection. "Review of Perceptual Augmentation Techniques," unsigned review of SRI progress reports 1 to 3, c. August 1974, CIA-RDP96-00787R000200230001-6. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection. "Experiments with Hella Hammid," CIA memoranda of 1974 with an officer's trip report of November 1974, author's name redacted, CIA-RDP96-00787R000200070006-9 and CIA-RDP96-00787R000200070002-3; cassette catalogue card of September 19, 1974, CIA-RDP79-00999A000400040013-3. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.
|
||||
[^901]: Marks, David F. "Remote Viewing Revisited." *Skeptical Inquirer,* vol. 6, no. 4, Summer 1982, pp. 18-29. https://cdn.centerforinquiry.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/29/1982/07/22165420/p20.pdf Snyder, Harry L., and Arlene G. Snyder. *Summary and Critical Evaluation of Research in Remote Viewing,* Report RV-79-1, final technical report, contract 77F104420, Systemetrics, Inc., Blacksburg, Virginia, June 1, 1979, parts 1 and 2, CIA-RDP96-00791R000100440001-9 and CIA-RDP96-00787R000100260003-2. The sponsor of the contract is not named in the report. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.
|
||||
[^2]: Marks, David F. "Remote Viewing Revisited." *Skeptical Inquirer,* vol. 6, no. 4, Summer 1982, pp. 18-29. https://cdn.centerforinquiry.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/29/1982/07/22165420/p20.pdf Snyder, Harry L., and Arlene G. Snyder. *Summary and Critical Evaluation of Research in Remote Viewing,* Report RV-79-1, final technical report, contract 77F104420, Systemetrics, Inc., Blacksburg, Virginia, June 1, 1979, parts 1 and 2, CIA-RDP96-00791R000100440001-9 and CIA-RDP96-00787R000100260003-2. The sponsor of the contract is not named in the report. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.
|
||||
[^3]: Puthoff, Harold E. *Perceptual Augmentation Techniques,* progress report no. 1, March 12, 1974, SRI Project 3183, CIA-RDP96-00787R000100010001-1. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection. "Review of Perceptual Augmentation Techniques," unsigned review of SRI progress reports 1 to 3, c. August 1974, CIA-RDP96-00787R000200230001-6. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection. "Experiments with Hella Hammid," CIA memoranda of 1974 with an officer's trip report of November 1974, author's name redacted, CIA-RDP96-00787R000200070006-9 and CIA-RDP96-00787R000200070002-3; cassette catalogue card of September 19, 1974, CIA-RDP79-00999A000400040013-3. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
@ -11,30 +11,33 @@ Matthew Alan Livelsberger was born July 22, 1987 in Arizona. He was raised in Bu
|
|||
|
||||
He attended Norwich University from 2016-2019 and graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Strategic Studies and Defense Analysis (Summa Cum Laude).
|
||||
### Army Service
|
||||
In January 2006, he joined the [[U.S. Army]] where he served actively until March 2011. He then joined the [[National Guard]] from March 2011 to July 2012. During this period he briefly worked for [[General Dynamics]] (July 2011-May 2012) as a hyperspectral Imaging Integrator on the “Lightguard Minotaur system.”[^7] This was followed by rejoining the [[Army Reserve]] from July 2012 to December 2012. He then reenlisted into active duty in the [[U.S. Army]] as part of the [[Special Operations Group|Special Operations]] where he served in active duty until his death January 1, 2025 in the [[Cybertruck Trump Hotel Bombing]] as a potential [[act of terrorism]].[^5]
|
||||
In January 2006, he joined the [[U.S. Army]] where he served actively until March 2011. He then joined the [[National Guard]] from March 2011 to July 2012. During this period he briefly worked for [[General Dynamics]] (July 2011-May 2012) as a hyperspectral Imaging Integrator on the “Lightguard Minotaur system.”[^1] This was followed by rejoining the [[Army Reserve]] from July 2012 to December 2012. He then reenlisted into active duty in the [[U.S. Army]] as part of the [[Special Operations Group|Special Operations]] where he served in active duty until his death January 1, 2025 in the [[Cybertruck Trump Hotel Bombing]] as a potential [[act of terrorism]].[^2]
|
||||
|
||||
He served in Afghanistan (2017-2019), Ukraine (2016), the Republic of Congo (2014), Tajikistan (2016), and Georgia as a [[Green Berets]].[^1] He was awarded two Bronze stars and an Army Commendation Medal. In Dec 2016 he received the Department of State Meritorious Honor Award (DMSHA) for work in Central Asian States. At one point he was stationed at [[Fort Bragg]], but most of his career he was stationed at [[Fort Carson]][^3]. His last assignment as a Master Sargent was to the 10th group in Germany as a "systems manager” and involved building drones. He was on leave in the days preceding the bombing and his death.
|
||||
He served in Afghanistan (2017-2019), Ukraine (2016), the Republic of Congo (2014), Tajikistan (2016), and Georgia as a [[Green Berets]].[^3] He was awarded two Bronze stars and an Army Commendation Medal. In Dec 2016 he received the Department of State Meritorious Honor Award (DMSHA) for work in Central Asian States. At one point he was stationed at [[Fort Bragg]], but most of his career he was stationed at [[Fort Carson]][^4]. His last assignment as a Master Sargent was to the 10th group in Germany as a "systems manager” and involved building drones. He was on leave in the days preceding the bombing and his death.
|
||||
|
||||
There were social media posts made that suggested he was helping to connect soldiers to recruiters for Ukraine.
|
||||
### Personal Life
|
||||
Livelsberger was married twice (first divorced in 2018) and had a young daughter from his most recent merger. His latest wife allegedly broke up with him in the days preceding the explosion over Matthew’s adultery.[^2]
|
||||
Livelsberger was married twice (first divorced in 2018) and had a young daughter from his most recent merger. His latest wife allegedly broke up with him in the days preceding the explosion over Matthew’s adultery.[^5]
|
||||
|
||||
On the drive to [[Las Vegas]], he was texting [[Alicia Arritt]], an old girlfriend, about the cyber truck.
|
||||
> “I rented a Tesla Cybertruck. It’s the shit”
|
||||
> "I feel like Batman or halo”
|
||||
> “I'm building drones in my new position”[^3]
|
||||
> “I'm building drones in my new position”[^4]
|
||||
|
||||
He was on a history channel reality show at one point.[^6]
|
||||
### Medical History
|
||||
Matthew had back surgery twice from his time as a paratrooper[^3]. In 2019, following his service in Afghanistan, he suffered a traumatic brain injury causing behavior change. He did not seek treatment.
|
||||
Matthew had back surgery twice from his time as a paratrooper[^4]. In 2019, following his service in Afghanistan, he suffered a traumatic brain injury causing behavior change. He did not seek treatment.
|
||||
### Politics
|
||||
Livelsberger was allegedly a supporter of Donald Trump and voted for him in Novemeber 2024.
|
||||
### Manifesto
|
||||
The day prior to his death, Livelsberger allegedly sent a manifesto ([[Cybertruck Trump Hotel Bombing#^5630d3|manifesto text]]) to [[Sam Shoemate]] (@samosaur) on December 31, 2024[^4] alleging, among other things, that the [[New Jersey Drones|NJ Drones]] are Chinese [[anti-gravitic]] devices, that the United States also possesses this technology, that he is aware of war crimes committed in 2019 by the United States, and that he has TSSCI with [[UAP Task Force]] [[Special Access Programs|USAP]] access. He indicated that these craft were controlled from a building at Groom Lake.
|
||||
The day prior to his death, Livelsberger allegedly sent a manifesto ([[Cybertruck Trump Hotel Bombing#^5630d3|manifesto text]]) to [[Sam Shoemate]] (@samosaur) on December 31, 2024 alleging, among other things, that the [[New Jersey Drones|NJ Drones]] are Chinese [[anti-gravitic]] devices, that the United States also possesses this technology, that he is aware of war crimes committed in 2019 by the United States, and that he held "an active TSSCI with UAP [[Special Access Programs|USAP]] access."[^7] He wrote that "our OPCEN location for this activity in the box is below"; the map pin that accompanied the text was at 37.2475372, -115.8155235 in Lincoln County, Nevada, at [[Groom Lake]].[^8]
|
||||
### Footnotes
|
||||
[^1]: [Man who rented Cybertruck that exploded in Las Vegas a Green Beret, official says](https://archive.is/RKsXC)
|
||||
[^2]: [Cybertruck bomber Matthew Livelsberger’s wife broke up with him days before explosion outside Trump hotel in Las Vegas: sources](https://archive.is/V3mds)
|
||||
[^3]: [ What Matthew Livelsberger texted ex days before Cybertruck explosion at Trump hotel in Las Vegas](https://archive.is/L0NjZ)
|
||||
[^5]: [US Army statement](https://archive.is/Sebb4)
|
||||
|
||||
[^1]: [Livelsberger LinkedIn Page Archive](https://archive.is/ylhFG)
|
||||
[^2]: [US Army statement](https://archive.is/Sebb4)
|
||||
[^3]: [Man who rented Cybertruck that exploded in Las Vegas a Green Beret, official says](https://archive.is/RKsXC)
|
||||
[^4]: [ What Matthew Livelsberger texted ex days before Cybertruck explosion at Trump hotel in Las Vegas](https://archive.is/L0NjZ)
|
||||
[^5]: [Cybertruck bomber Matthew Livelsberger’s wife broke up with him days before explosion outside Trump hotel in Las Vegas: sources](https://archive.is/V3mds)
|
||||
[^6]: [History channel show](https://x.com/InsideEdition/status/1875312049443758517) ([archive](https://archive.is/T0L86))
|
||||
[^7]: [Livelsberger LinkedIn Page Archive](https://archive.is/ylhFG)
|
||||
[^7]: Sam Shoemate, a retired U.S. Army intelligence officer posting as @samosaur, stated that Livelsberger emailed him the text on December 31, 2024 with the request "Please do not release until 1JAN and keep my identity private until then." "Livelsberger Reportedly Sent 'Manifesto' Before Vegas Hotel Blast," Casino.org, January 3, 2025, https://www.casino.org/news/matthew-livelsberger-reportedly-sent-manifesto-before-trump-hotel-explosion/; Collin Woodard, Jalopnik, January 6, 2025, https://jalopnik.com/las-vegas-cybertruck-bomber-claimed-nj-drones-are-ultra-1851733106; [Tweet by @samosaur](https://archive.is/BLh0q).
|
||||
[^8]: [coordinates](https://archive.is/6iV4v)
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
@ -56,7 +56,7 @@ The annotations are in three hands, identified in the introduction as Mr. A, Mr.
|
|||
|
||||
### Death
|
||||
|
||||
Barker's 1973 preface opens with the statement that "on the evening of April 20, 1959, an astronomer committed suicide in Dade County Park, Florida," that he inhaled automobile exhaust which he had run by hose from the tail pipe into his station wagon, and that he died "unheralded and almost unrecognized in his discipline."[^2] The coroner's file was not available for this draft. The [[Miami Herald]] of April 22, 1959 reported under the headline "Author A Suicide, Police Say" that Metro detectives said on Tuesday, April 21, that Morris K. Jessup, 59, an astronomer and author of several books on flying space objects, had committed suicide by asphyxiating himself; that his body was found on Monday, April 20, in his parked car at [[Matheson Hammock Park|Matheson Hammock]]; and that investigators said a hose ran from the car's exhaust pipe to the inside of the automobile. The item states that he was survived by his wife, Ruby, that he lived at 1531 Saragossa Avenue in [[Coral Gables, Florida|Coral Gables]], having moved there six months earlier, and that he was a onetime instructor at the University of Michigan and Drake University and the author of The Case for the UFO, a 1955 publication, with another book on outer space flight before his publishers at his death. It gives no time of death and does not mention Varo or Allende. The Herald calls the vehicle a car and gives Monday as the day of discovery; Barker calls it a station wagon and gives the evening of April 20 as the time of death.[^6] Barker added that a "tradition of bad luck or strange circumstances" attached to owners of the Varo Edition: a house destroyed by fire, the heart attack of Captain [[Edward J. Ruppelt]], former head of [[Project Blue Book]], "allegedly shortly after he read a borrowed copy," and the early death of the author [[Robert Loftin]]. He wrote that "except for the deaths, this is purely hearsay."[^2] Barker also wrote that "at least two national magazine articles explored Jessup's death and his connection with the book," and that [[Brad Steiger]] published reduced reproductions of three pages in [[Saga]] magazine for November 1967, in the article "Fantastic Key to the Flying Saucer Mystery," from a microfilm copy owned by [[Stephen Yankee]].[^2]
|
||||
Barker's 1973 preface opens with the statement that "on the evening of April 20, 1959, an astronomer committed suicide in Dade County Park, Florida," that he inhaled automobile exhaust which he had run by hose from the tail pipe into his station wagon, and that he died "unheralded and almost unrecognized in his discipline."[^2] The [[Miami Herald]] of April 22, 1959 reported under the headline "Author A Suicide, Police Say" that Metro detectives said on Tuesday, April 21, that Morris K. Jessup, 59, an astronomer and author of several books on flying space objects, had committed suicide by asphyxiating himself; that his body was found on Monday, April 20, in his parked car at [[Matheson Hammock Park|Matheson Hammock]]; and that investigators said a hose ran from the car's exhaust pipe to the inside of the automobile. The item states that he was survived by his wife, Ruby, that he lived at 1531 Saragossa Avenue in [[Coral Gables, Florida|Coral Gables]], having moved there six months earlier, and that he was a onetime instructor at the University of Michigan and Drake University and the author of The Case for the UFO, a 1955 publication, with another book on outer space flight before his publishers at his death. It gives no time of death and does not mention Varo or Allende. The Herald calls the vehicle a car and gives Monday as the day of discovery; Barker calls it a station wagon and gives the evening of April 20 as the time of death.[^6] Barker added that a "tradition of bad luck or strange circumstances" attached to owners of the Varo Edition: a house destroyed by fire, the heart attack of Captain [[Edward J. Ruppelt]], former head of [[Project Blue Book]], "allegedly shortly after he read a borrowed copy," and the early death of the author [[Robert Loftin]]. He wrote that "except for the deaths, this is purely hearsay."[^2] Barker also wrote that "at least two national magazine articles explored Jessup's death and his connection with the book," and that [[Brad Steiger]] published reduced reproductions of three pages in [[Saga]] magazine for November 1967, in the article "Fantastic Key to the Flying Saucer Mystery," from a microfilm copy owned by [[Stephen Yankee]].[^2]
|
||||
|
||||
Barker acquired an original copy in 1971 from a friend of Jessup to whom Jessup had given one, decided in July 1972 to publish, and issued a facsimile through [[Saucerian Press]] in 1973, stating the run would be no more than 500 copies.[^2] The transcription at the [[Internet Archive]] was prepared by the [[Quantum Future Group]] of Castelnau-Barbarens, [[France]], in 2003.[^2]
|
||||
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
@ -23,8 +23,9 @@ Another experiment involved Kulagina attempting to increase the heart rate of a
|
|||
|
||||
Kulagina's alleged abilities contributed to the [[Pentagon]]'s decision to launch a joint intelligence assessment of the "Soviet psychoenergetic threat," a term coined to encompass Soviet research into anomalous mental phenomena and [[Electromagnetic Weapons|electromagnetic weapons]] programs[^1]. Her work, along with that of [[Qian Xuesen|H. S. Tsien]] in [[China]], highlighted the perceived need for the U.S. to invest in its own psychic research programs.
|
||||
|
||||
A DIA briefing on Soviet psychoenergetics given to the Air Force in 1987 quoted [[Yuri Kobzarev|Yu. B. Kobzerev]], "radar pioneer, member USSR Academy of Science": "I am persuaded that the phenomena demonstrated by N. Kulagina (psychokinesis), and by L. Korabelnikova (extrasensory perception), are by no means tricks but rather the existence of the manifestation of unusual capabilities in man. My conviction is shared by many people including a group of professors and academicians," and [[Vladimir Kotelnikov|V. A. Kotel'nikov]], vice president of the Academy: "Psychokinetic abilities of N. Kulagina are real."[^900]
|
||||
A DIA briefing on Soviet psychoenergetics given to the Air Force in 1987 quoted [[Yuri Kobzarev|Yu. B. Kobzerev]], "radar pioneer, member USSR Academy of Science": "I am persuaded that the phenomena demonstrated by N. Kulagina (psychokinesis), and by L. Korabelnikova (extrasensory perception), are by no means tricks but rather the existence of the manifestation of unusual capabilities in man. My conviction is shared by many people including a group of professors and academicians," and [[Vladimir Kotelnikov|V. A. Kotel'nikov]], vice president of the Academy: "Psychokinetic abilities of N. Kulagina are real."[^2]
|
||||
|
||||
### Footnotes
|
||||
|
||||
[^1]: Jacobsen, Annie. *Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis*. Little, Brown and Company, 2017.
|
||||
[^900]: Henry E. Shinol, Deputy Assistant Chief of Staff, Studies and Analyses, Headquarters USAF, to the Defense Intelligence Agency, "Soviet Parapsychology Research Briefing," June 12, 1987, and cover note of July 14, 1987, with paper briefing slides "Soviet Activities in Psychoenergetics," CIA-RDP96-00789R002600320001-8 to -004-5. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.
|
||||
[^2]: Henry E. Shinol, Deputy Assistant Chief of Staff, Studies and Analyses, Headquarters USAF, to the Defense Intelligence Agency, "Soviet Parapsychology Research Briefing," June 12, 1987, and cover note of July 14, 1987, with paper briefing slides "Soviet Activities in Psychoenergetics," CIA-RDP96-00789R002600320001-8 to -004-5. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
@ -1,20 +1,96 @@
|
|||
---
|
||||
aliases:
|
||||
- R. S. Hawke
|
||||
category: "Psychics & Remote Viewers"
|
||||
- R. S. Hawke
|
||||
- Ronald S. Hawke
|
||||
- Ronald Hawke
|
||||
- Ron Hawke
|
||||
- Dr. Hawke
|
||||
category: "Scientists & Researchers"
|
||||
tags:
|
||||
- Person
|
||||
- RemoteViewer
|
||||
summary: "Hawke documented the results of one of these tests, stating that 'The magnetic pattern stored in the iron oxide layer of a magnetic program card was erased.' He concluded that 'Further experiments are warranted,' indicating a measurable effect from Geller's alleged abilities."
|
||||
updated: 2026-09-22
|
||||
- Physicist
|
||||
- Engineer
|
||||
- LawrenceLivermore
|
||||
- Psychokinesis
|
||||
- UriGeller
|
||||
- AcousticEmission
|
||||
- Railgun
|
||||
- Stargate
|
||||
- GrillFlame
|
||||
summary: "Livermore electronics engineer who tested Uri Geller on magnetic program cards in 1974, built an acoustic emission experiment for metal bending, and was visited in 1979 by the Army's Grill Flame committee."
|
||||
location: "Livermore, California"
|
||||
relations:
|
||||
- type: employed_by
|
||||
with: "[[Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory]]"
|
||||
role: "research physicist, Engineering Research Division, Electronics Engineering Department"
|
||||
fn: 1
|
||||
- type: investigated
|
||||
with: "[[Uri Geller]]"
|
||||
start: 1974
|
||||
role: "invited Geller to Livermore in 1974 to alter magnetic program cards; wrote 'Magnetic Pattern Erasure'"
|
||||
fn: 3
|
||||
- type: investigated
|
||||
with: "[[Psychokinesis]]"
|
||||
start: 1978
|
||||
role: "acoustic emission experiments with two subjects reputed to bend metal paranormally, outlined January 11, 1979"
|
||||
fn: 7
|
||||
- type: subject_of
|
||||
with: "[[Grill Flame Scientific Evaluation Committee]]"
|
||||
start: 1979
|
||||
end: 1979-12
|
||||
role: "laboratory visited by committee members; Annex 7 of the December 1979 report evaluates his experiments"
|
||||
fn: 11
|
||||
created: 2026-09-22
|
||||
updated: 2026-10-05
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
R. S. Hawke was one of the scientists at [[Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory]] who conducted classified [[Psychokinesis|psychokinesis]] tests with [[Uri Geller]] in the winter of 1975. These tests aimed to determine if Geller could interfere with high-quality lasers and affect magnetic computer program cards[^1].
|
||||
Ronald S. Hawke, who signed his technical writing "R. S. Hawke," was a research physicist in the Engineering Research Division of the Electronics Engineering Department at [[Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory]] (then Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, University of California) in the 1970s.[^1] His published and patented work at the laboratory concerned electromagnetic railguns and hypervelocity launchers: the May 8, 1979 preprint UCRL-82677, "Magnetic Propulsion Railguns: Their Design and Capabilities," written with Jonathan K. Scudder for the Second International Conference on Megagauss Magnetic Field Generation, concluded that projectiles could be accelerated to more than 20 kilometers per second; a July 1979 companion paper (UCRL-82296) examined railgun impactors for generating pressures of 1 to 10 terapascals; and United States Patent 4,343,223, "Multiple stage railgun," was filed May 23, 1980 by Hawke, Scudder and Kristian Aaland and issued August 10, 1982.[^1][^2] The laboratory's report series carries his name on railgun and plasma armature papers through 1991, among them "Results of Railgun Experiments" (UCRL-88703, 1983, with [[Los Alamos]] authors) and a 1991 progress report on a transition armature technology project.[^2]
|
||||
|
||||
Hawke documented the results of one of these tests, stating that "The magnetic pattern stored in the iron oxide layer of a magnetic program card was erased." He concluded that "Further experiments are warranted," indicating a measurable effect from Geller's alleged abilities[^1].
|
||||
### Geller at Livermore, 1974
|
||||
|
||||
The Army's [[Grill Flame Scientific Evaluation Committee]] visited "Dr. Hawke" at Lawrence Livermore in November 1979 and wrote that "Committee members who visited Dr. Hawke's laboratory were very impressed by the scientific approach used in his investigations." Its annex on his work: "Highly specific physical phenomena are recovered by instruments while PK 'intent' is being 'exerted' by a Subject. Thus a definite 'result' is measured in terms of a physical phenomenon (e.g., grain fracture measured by physical measuring apparatus commonly used for such metallurgical experiments)." "Hawke's experiments are the most objective and scientific of the investigations we have reviewed... His type of PK experiments are, in my view, vastly more valuable than the PK effects on random number generators." "A means exists for conduct of these experiments on a compartmentalized basis: Since the experiments utilize measuring equipment commonly used in weapons development, 'cover' and access restrictions are relatively straightforward. As an example, NWC China Lake is just now initiating development of contact fuzing utilizing (for the first time in the fuzing community) acoustic emission of materials transitioning the plastic deformation regime. A small development project on 'AE applications to guided missile fuzing' would provide easily administered and controlled PK experiments by Hawke."[^900]
|
||||
In his 1976 anthology *The Geller Papers*, [[Charles Panati]] wrote that during one of his West Coast trips [[Uri Geller]] visited "Ronald Hawke, an engineer working at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory" in late 1974, and that "no formal testing with Geller was undertaken," although Hawke and his colleagues "did observe events in their laboratory that they feel call for further scientific investigation."[^3] Panati's account of Hawke's contribution, titled "Magnetic Pattern Erasure: A Proposed Method of Scientific Study," says the targets were four computer cards carrying magnetic programs under a plastic coating, and that Geller's goal was to alter or erase them. Twice he failed, once when a card was sealed in a glass bottle and once when he was not allowed to touch a card. Two other cards were handed to him and he rubbed his fingers across their surfaces; Hawke stated that rubbing alone cannot alter the magnetic programs, yet when the cards were fed to a computer they were rejected as "ambiguous," and Hawke wrote that "subsequent inspection with a magnetic viewer after the meeting with Geller revealed that the magnetic patterns had been altered."[^3]
|
||||
|
||||
Geller's own account (1986, with Guy Lyon Playfair) names Hawke as "the physicist who invited me there," says Hawke "had published several articles in his highly specialized fields," and describes two successes in four attempts, the cards being "fed into a Hewlett Packard 65 calculator" and rejected by it although accepted before he touched them. Geller thanked "Ron Hawke and family" in the book's acknowledgements and listed Hawke among the 1974 investigators "all of whom produced positive reports."[^4]
|
||||
|
||||
A CIA staff report released in 2014, filed with a Reuters item of November 4, 1974 about a Geller prediction of war in the Middle East, records a telephone call received "on 23 October" from a "Security Officer" of the [[Atomic Energy Commission]] at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, who said "they had just spent two days in the laboratory testing Geller." The document states that forty AEC scientists took part in a month-long program designing the experiments, that the equipment cost $20,069, that Geller showed "unequivical evidence" of paranormal ability under conditions the Livermore project team "certified" fraud and cheat-proof, and that he was monitored by four kinds of magnetometers, neutron counters, active and passive infrared, low-light video and motion picture film, in part covertly. It also records that "predetermined portions of HP" program cards were erased, that a second series was planned at Livermore for the second week of December, and that arrangements had been made for testing at [[NASA Ames Research Center]] (Moffett Field). The writer adds that the information "was received anecdotally" from a security officer who had not been one of the experimenters. The document names neither Hawke nor the security officer. Other paragraphs of the same report concern "LSD personnel" and a career development course for "LSD."[^5]
|
||||
|
||||
[[Annie Jacobsen]]'s *Phenomena* (2017) describes classified [[Psychokinesis]] tests of Geller by Livermore scientists in the winter of 1975, with high-quality lasers and magnetic computer program cards, and attributes to Hawke the written result "The magnetic pattern stored in the iron oxide layer of a magnetic program card was erased."[^6]
|
||||
|
||||
### Acoustic emission experiments, 1978 to 1979
|
||||
|
||||
Hawke's later work with metal-bending subjects is documented in a paper titled "Outline of Acoustic Emission Experiments Performed with a Person Reputed to Have Paranormal Metal Bending Abilities," dated January 11, 1979 and stamped "In Strict Confidence." Its cover letter, on Lawrence Livermore Laboratory Electronics Engineering Department letterhead (reference WT 79-0027A), was addressed to an office designated DT-1A at 1735 North Lynn Street in Arlington, Virginia, and said the outline was the one "you requested during our meeting on December 4, 1978." Copies went to A. E. Brown, H. C. McDonald, E. K. Miller, A. J. Poggio and C. A. Tatro, and the outline's reference note thanked A. E. Brown and C. A. Tatro for help with design, implementation and interpretation.[^7]
|
||||
|
||||
The outline gives the reasoning for the method. Acoustic emission responds to "a single intragranular or intergranular fracture or grain boundary slip," its "high sensitivity requires non-contact, hence decreases possibility of deception," and the signals "are very distinct from all forms of touching, rubbing and other noise." The sensor was a lead zirconate titanate element resonant at 140 kilohertz, epoxied to the bowl of a standard stainless steel spoon clamped in a vise; other instruments included a logic probe recording electric field on the spoon, an air-core coil for magnetic field, an AM radio tuned to 1600 kilohertz, a video recorder that stored the acoustic signal on the video channel, and a helium-neon laser reflected from the underside of the spoon bowl onto a target to register any bending. Sessions lasted about an hour with the subject and two or three observers present; the subject was told that touching the spoon spoiled the record.[^7]
|
||||
|
||||
Results: during one session, with one subject, "at least 4 clear instances of A.E. events occurred" while the spoon and vise were untouched, typical of single-grain or grain-boundary fracture; "no anomalous A.E. events were recorded during dry runs"; no elastic or plastic deformation large enough to shift the laser beam was observed; "fewer but similar results were obtained with one other subject." The abstract said the results were "consistent with those of Crussard" (C. Crussard and J. Bouvaist, *Mémoires Scientifiques Revue de Métallurgie*, February 1978) and that "further experiments are warranted."[^7] The Stargate collection holds the same outline in several copies; the abstract in the copy filed under CIA-RDP96-00787R000200130003-5 reads "no significant bending was observed," where the copy filed under CIA-RDP96-00788R001100100001-9 reads "large amounts of bending were not observed."[^7][^8]
|
||||
|
||||
A routing note in the same file, unsigned, reads: "This piece may offer us excellent opportunity to bring in some other (than SRI) minds to work the problem. There is absolutely no reason to believe that the scientist, Hawke, might have manipulated the data/experiment. Might be a good idea to invite him to brief his work to the Science Monitoring Team when they visit California in late July 79."[^9] The file also contains a Hawke envelope addressed to Major Bill Stoner at DAMI 2E453 in the Pentagon (the Army's Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence) and an Army routing slip forwarding a visit request form that was "retained on file in DAMI-RMA."[^10]
|
||||
|
||||
### Grill Flame visit and the Department of Energy briefing, 1979
|
||||
|
||||
The Army's [[Grill Flame Scientific Evaluation Committee]], chaired by [[Manfred Gale]], listed Lawrence Livermore Laboratory and "Dr. Hawke" among the places and individuals contacted in the autumn of 1979 (Annex 2). Its December 1979 report states that "Committee members who visited Dr. Hawke's laboratory were very impressed by the scientific approach used in his investigations," and that his experiments were "considerably more valuable than PK effects on random number generators." Annex 7 records that "highly specific physical phenomena are recovered by instruments while PK 'intent' is being 'exerted' by a Subject," with control experiments performed and no mechanisms adduced; "Hawke's experiments are the most objective and scientific of the investigations we have reviewed... vastly more valuable than the PK effects on random number generators." The annex adds: "A means exists for conduct of these experiments on a compartmentalized basis: Since the experiments utilize measuring equipment commonly used in weapons development, 'cover' and access restrictions are relatively straightforward," proposing as an example that Naval Weapons Center, China Lake, which "is just now initiating development of contact fuzing utilizing... acoustic emission of materials transitioning the plastic deformation regime," could host "a small development project on 'AE applications to guided missile fuzing'" that "would provide easily administered and controlled PK experiments by Hawke." Elsewhere in the report, the committee's discussion of the Army MICOM random-number experiment says that an experiment using "the modification of the physical aspect of a structure" might be more convincing, and that "the acoustic emission experiment by Hawke might be an example of an attempt to do this."[^11][^12]
|
||||
|
||||
On November 28, 1979, Hawke met Dr. Ruth M. Davis, Assistant for Research Applications at the [[Department of Energy]], and Dr. W. LaBerge of the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering. In a letter of December 26, 1979 (EMS79-0117) he wrote that, after talking to the laboratory's acoustic emission, metallurgy and ceramics staff, "the equivalent of 5-7 full employees would be the optimum," with tasks distributed "among 10-15 researchers, technicians and other consultants and advisors," enough in a one-year program "to obtain reliable data or nearly exhaust the possibility of obtaining such data." He had sounded out Henry McDonald (Associate Director for Engineering) and Dale Nielsen (Associate Director for Administration), who said "such types of multidisciplinary and discrete research are within the capability of LLL," and reported that director Roger Batzel "has been informed that such a project might be suggested by DOE and/or DOD"; Batzel was named as the person to contact. Copies went to Batzel, McDonald, Nielsen and LaBerge.[^13]
|
||||
|
||||
### After 1979
|
||||
|
||||
After the December 1979 letter, the laboratory's published record under Hawke's name consists of the railgun and launcher papers listed above.[^2]
|
||||
|
||||
Accounts of a Livermore group that experienced apparitions after its Geller sessions come from [[Jim Schnabel]], who gives the physicists the pseudonyms [[Peter Crane]], [[Mike Russo]] and [[Don Curtis]]; Schnabel's account does not name Hawke.[^14]
|
||||
|
||||
### Footnotes
|
||||
[^1]: Jacobsen, Annie. *Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis*. Little, Brown and Company, 2017.
|
||||
[^900]: *Report by the Grill Flame Scientific Evaluation Committee,* December 1979, Manfred Gale, chairman, CIA-RDP96-00788R001300120001-5. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.
|
||||
|
||||
[^1]: R. S. Hawke, "Outline of Acoustic Emission Experiments Performed with a Person Reputed to Have Paranormal Metal Bending Abilities," January 11, 1979, cover letter signed "R. S. Hawke, Engineering Research Division, Electronics Engineering Department," CIA-RDP96-00788R001100100001-9 (archive.org mirror of the CIA STARGATE collection, https://archive.org/download/CIA-RDP96-00788R001100100001-9/CIA-RDP96-00788R001100100001-9_djvu.txt) and CIA-RDP96-00787R000500110001-6.
|
||||
[^2]: R. S. Hawke and J. K. Scudder, "Magnetic Propulsion Railguns: Their Design and Capabilities," UCRL-82677, May 8, 1979, https://www.osti.gov/biblio/6255454; Hawke and Scudder, "Prospects for Generating 1-10 TPa Pressures with a Railgun," UCRL-82296, July 13, 1979, https://www.osti.gov/biblio/5974977; Hawke, Brooks, Fowler and Peterson, "Results of Railgun Experiments," UCRL-88703, 1983, https://www.osti.gov/biblio/6263329; Hawke, "Transition Armature Technology Project, Progress Report No. 1, June 1-July 31, 1991," UCRL-ID-114847, https://www.osti.gov/biblio/10107228; U.S. Patent 4,343,223, "Multiple stage railgun," inventors Ronald S. Hawke, Jonathan K. Scudder and Kristian Aaland, https://patents.google.com/patent/US4343223A/en.
|
||||
[^3]: Charles Panati, ed., *The Geller Papers: Scientific Observations on the Paranormal Powers of Uri Geller* (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1976), introduction, as reproduced at https://urigeller.com/scientific-paranormal/the-geller-papers/introduction/.
|
||||
[^4]: Uri Geller and Guy Lyon Playfair, *The Geller Effect* (London: Jonathan Cape, 1986), chapters on 1974 investigators and on computers; acknowledgements; index entry "Hawke, Ronald S." http://www.mbdodd.weebly.com/uploads/1/4/1/6/14162844/the_geller_effect_-_uri_geller_and_guy_lyon_playfair.pdf. Geller is the sole source for his account of two successes in four attempts.
|
||||
[^5]: CIA document CIA-RDP79-00999A000200010023-0, "Declassified in Part, Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2014/01/09," archive.org item cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp79-00999a000200010023-0, https://archive.org/download/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp79-00999a000200010023-0/cia-rdp79-00999a000200010023-0_djvu.txt. Sole source for the passages so cited; the writer and the caller are not named.
|
||||
[^6]: Annie Jacobsen, *Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis* (Little, Brown, 2017). Sole source for the passages so cited; Hawke's own wording in *The Geller Papers* differs (note 3).
|
||||
[^7]: Hawke, outline of January 11, 1979, as in note 1; cover letter, reference WT 79-0027A.
|
||||
[^8]: Hawke outline, CIA-RDP96-00787R000200130003-5, https://archive.org/download/CIA-RDP96-00787R000200130003-5/CIA-RDP96-00787R000200130003-5_djvu.txt.
|
||||
[^9]: Unsigned note, "101-06 Lawrence Livermore Lab. Metal Bending - R.S. Hawke," CIA-RDP96-00788R001100100002-8, https://archive.org/download/CIA-RDP96-00788R001100100002-8/CIA-RDP96-00788R001100100002-8_djvu.txt.
|
||||
[^10]: Envelope addressed to Maj. Bill Stoner, DAMI 2E453, CIA-RDP96-00788R001100100005-5; Army routing slip, CIA-RDP96-00788R001100100008-2.
|
||||
[^11]: *Report by the Grill Flame Scientific Evaluation Committee*, December 1979, Manfred Gale, chairman, CIA-RDP96-00788R001300120001-5, Chapter 2 paragraph 4b, Annex 2 (places visited, p. 43) and Annex 7 (pp. 66-67). https://archive.org/download/CIA-RDP96-00788R001300120001-5/CIA-RDP96-00788R001300120001-5_djvu.txt.
|
||||
[^12]: Same report, critique of the Army [[MICOM]] random-number experiment.
|
||||
[^13]: R. S. Hawke to Dr. Ruth M. Davis, December 26, 1979, EMS79-0117, CIA-RDP96-00788R001100100003-7, https://archive.org/download/CIA-RDP96-00788R001100100003-7/CIA-RDP96-00788R001100100003-7_djvu.txt.
|
||||
[^14]: Jim Schnabel, *Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies* (Dell, 1997), as excerpted in Rudy Havenstein, "Dr. Green and the Goblins of Langley," July 11, 2025, https://rudy.substack.com/p/dr-green-and-the-goblins-of-langley.
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
@ -1,47 +1,135 @@
|
|||
---
|
||||
created: 2026-05-15
|
||||
updated: 2026-09-22
|
||||
updated: 2026-10-05
|
||||
title: Ray Hyman
|
||||
aliases:
|
||||
- Ray Hyman
|
||||
- Raymond Hyman
|
||||
- Dr. Hyman
|
||||
- Hyman
|
||||
category: "Skeptics & Critics"
|
||||
tags:
|
||||
- Person
|
||||
- Skeptic
|
||||
- PSI
|
||||
- Psychologist
|
||||
- Magician
|
||||
- CSICOP
|
||||
- UriGeller
|
||||
- SRI
|
||||
- Stargate
|
||||
- AIR
|
||||
- SRI
|
||||
- 1970s
|
||||
- 1990s
|
||||
summary: "University of Oregon psychologist and skeptic who evaluated Uri Geller for DARPA in 1973 and, for the 1995 AIR review, judged ten SAIC experiments too few to establish remote viewing."
|
||||
- NationalResearchCouncil
|
||||
- GrillFlame
|
||||
- Parapsychology
|
||||
summary: "University of Oregon psychologist who observed Uri Geller at SRI for the Defense Department in 1972, sat on CSICOP's Executive Council, and wrote the skeptical half of the 1995 AIR evaluation of Star Gate."
|
||||
born: 1928-06-23
|
||||
location: "Chelsea, Massachusetts"
|
||||
location: "Eugene, Oregon"
|
||||
relations:
|
||||
- type: employed_by
|
||||
with: "[[Harvard University]]"
|
||||
start: 1953-07
|
||||
end: 1961-06
|
||||
role: "assistant professor of social psychology"
|
||||
fn: 1
|
||||
- type: employed_by
|
||||
with: "[[University of Oregon]]"
|
||||
start: 1961-09
|
||||
role: "associate professor of psychology, professor from September 1964"
|
||||
fn: 1
|
||||
- type: employed_by
|
||||
with: "[[Stanford University]]"
|
||||
start: 1982-09
|
||||
end: 1983-06
|
||||
role: "visiting professor of psychology, Thomas Welton Stanford Chair for Psychical Research"
|
||||
fn: 1
|
||||
- type: investigated
|
||||
with: "[[Uri Geller]]"
|
||||
start: 1972-11
|
||||
end: 1972-12
|
||||
role: "observed a day of tests at SRI as consultant to the Department of Defense; wrote that the tests were performed with 'incredible sloppiness'"
|
||||
fn: 3
|
||||
- type: member_of
|
||||
with: "[[Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal]]"
|
||||
role: "Executive Council member"
|
||||
fn: 1
|
||||
- type: member_of
|
||||
with: "[[Skeptical Inquirer]]"
|
||||
role: "editorial board, 1994"
|
||||
fn: 1
|
||||
- type: member_of
|
||||
with: "[[National Research Council]]"
|
||||
start: 1985
|
||||
end: 1991
|
||||
role: "Committee on Techniques for the Enhancement of Human Performance; led the parapsychology section"
|
||||
fn: 1
|
||||
- type: contractor_to
|
||||
with: "[[American Institutes for Research]]"
|
||||
start: 1995-06
|
||||
end: 1995-09-11
|
||||
role: "reviewer of the SRI/SAIC anomalous mental phenomena program for the CIA, with Jessica Utts"
|
||||
fn: 12
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
Ray Hyman is a psychologist and a prominent figure in the scientific skepticism movement. He was contracted by [[DARPA]] in 1973 to evaluate [[Uri Geller]]'s purported psychic abilities at [[Stanford Research Institute|SRI]]. Along with [[George Lawrence]] and [[Robert Van de Castle]], Hyman concluded that anyone who believed in Geller's powers was falling for the "ridiculous"[^1].
|
||||
Raymond Hyman was born on June 23, 1928 in Chelsea, Massachusetts. He took a bachelor's degree with honors in psychology from Boston University in 1950, a master's degree in 1952 and a doctorate in February 1953 from [[Johns Hopkins University]], and was an assistant professor of social psychology at [[Harvard University]] from July 1953 to June 1961. From 1958 to 1961 he was a consultant in behavioral research to the General Electric Company, and in January to July 1953 a consultant to the Systems Coordination Division of the [[Naval Research Laboratory]]. He joined the [[University of Oregon]] as associate professor of psychology in September 1961 and has been professor there since September 1964. From September 1982 to June 1983 he was visiting professor of psychology at [[Stanford University]], holding the Thomas Welton Stanford Chair for Psychical Research. His 1994 vita lists him on the Executive Council of the [[Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal]] and on the editorial board of the *[[Skeptical Inquirer]]*, and states that he earned his way through college "performing mentalism and reading palms" and has published articles in magic journals.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
Hyman, along with [[Martin Gardner]], joined forces in an anti-Geller crusade. He was critical of [[Hal Puthoff]] and [[Russell Targ]]'s methodology, echoing Gardner's criticisms of [[J. B. Rhine]]'s research, citing loose laboratory controls, skewing of data, and the influence of experimenter bias[^1].
|
||||
His vita states that "since 1953, I have been called upon by various governmental agencies to investigate or evaluate paranormal claims," and lists among examples "the evaluation of a lady who allegedly could read with her fingertips; the evaluation of the claim by a group of engineers that they could teach psychics to gather information from photographs; the assessment of parapsychological research by American and foreign investigators; and the observation of metal bending and other alleged miracles by Uri Geller."[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
In 1983, Hyman weighed in on the [[James Randi]] hoax against the McDonnell Laboratory for Psychical Research, stating that Randi was "very upset by Geller’s using trickery to deceive scientists. He thought it was very immoral. And he felt that it was a prostitution of his beloved magic"[^1].
|
||||
### SRI and Uri Geller, 1972 and 1973
|
||||
|
||||
Hyman was considered for the Army's [[Grill Flame Scientific Evaluation Committee]] in 1979. Its coordinator, Major [[William Stoner]], wrote in January 1980, against the chairman's claim to have "rejected two people who had pronounced tendencies to be nonobjective," that "one person himself declined the offer to participate, claiming potential flak from his corporation. The other, Dr Ray Hyman, was rejected not because of any action by Gale, but because of a protest memo from MG [[Edmund Thompson|Thompson]] to Dr [[Walter LaBerge|LaBerge]]."[^900]
|
||||
*[[Time]]* of March 12, 1973 described Hyman as "a psychology professor from the University of Oregon who is used frequently by DOD as a consultant." According to the magazine, news of the work at the [[Stanford Research Institute]] "reached the Department of Defense, and investigators were soon on the scene": Hyman, [[George Lawrence]], the [[DARPA]] projects manager, and Lawrence's companion [[Robert Van de Castle]], a University of Virginia psychologist. Van de Castle "decided that Geller was 'an interesting subject for further study,'" while "neither Lawrence nor Hyman was impressed." After a day with [[Uri Geller]], [[Russell Targ]] and [[Hal Puthoff]], Hyman said he "was able to spot the 'loopholes and inconclusiveness' of each feat." *Time* reported two episodes. In the first, Geller asked Lawrence to write a number between one and ten on a pad as large as possible while Geller covered his eyes with his hands, and Hyman saw Geller's open eyes through his fingers and the arm motions that identified the number. In the second, Geller turned a compass needle about five degrees, Lawrence moved his body and made the needle deflect further, Geller accused Lawrence of trickery, and Targ examined Lawrence for hidden magnets, while Hyman noted that Targ did not feel it necessary to search Geller. Hyman wrote in a letter to a friend that the SRI tests were conducted with "incredible sloppiness" and that the earlier records Targ and Puthoff offered were "the most uncontrolled and poorly recorded data I have ever encountered." The magazine added that his impressions were "admittedly based on observations made on a day when normal testing routine was not in effect."[^2]
|
||||
|
||||
A memorandum from the Under Secretary of the Army's office to Gale of July 17, 1979, reads: "Reference the 'few additional experts,' Dr. Orlansky has accepted. Dr. [[Harry Snyder|Snyder]] of VPI has been asked in place of Dr. Hyman - at this time he has not accepted the invitation." Snyder's own evaluation of remote-viewing research, delivered that June, cited "R. Hyman, personal communication" for its statement that [[Arthur Hastings]], the SRI judge, "is a professional magician."[^901]
|
||||
*New Scientist*, in an issue of October 17, 1974 on the Geller research, places the visit in two ways. One passage says Hyman was "called in to see Geller at SRI by a government agency to whom Russell Targ and Dr Hal Puthoff had applied for funding," and that one of Geller's demonstrations for him "at SRI in December 1972" was to guess a number written by another person, where Hyman could "see his eyes through his hands" and the number 10 from "George's arm motions." Another passage says Hyman "observed a day of SRI tests on Geller in November 1972" and concluded that "they don't know how to observe. Targ and Puthoff recounted incidents we just saw in completely the reverse order, making them miracles." The same article records a story Hyman told, confirmed by another person present who asked not to be identified, about a Geller "premonition" of a plane crash in Washington during a half hour in which a newspaper report could have reached him.[^3]
|
||||
|
||||
[[Annie Jacobsen]] wrote that Hyman, Lawrence and Van de Castle concluded that anyone who believed in Geller's powers was falling for the "ridiculous," and that Hyman and [[Martin Gardner]] joined in what she called an anti-Geller crusade, criticizing Puthoff and Targ for loose laboratory controls, skewed data and experimenter bias, the charges Gardner had made against [[J. B. Rhine]]. She also wrote that Hyman, in 1983, said of [[James Randi]]'s campaign against Geller that Randi was "very upset by Geller's using trickery to deceive scientists. He thought it was very immoral. And he felt that it was a prostitution of his beloved magic."[^4] [[Edwin May]], in a 1996 commentary, wrote of the visit that Hyman, Lawrence and Van de Castle were refused access to an experiment in progress, and gave the date as 1973 or 1974.[^5]
|
||||
|
||||
In a 1985 paper Hyman wrote that "parapsychologists blamed me, rather than Geller, for the fact that Geller cheated in my presence because, as they put it, I did not impose sufficiently stringent conditions to prevent him from cheating."[^6]
|
||||
|
||||
### CSICOP
|
||||
|
||||
[[Paul Kurtz]] recorded that CSICOP was established on April 30 and May 1, 1976 at a conference at the State University of New York at Buffalo, Amherst campus. The call announcing the committee was signed by, among others, [[George Abell]], [[Isaac Asimov]], [[Antony Flew]], Gardner, [[Sidney Hook]], [[Philip Klass]], [[Ernest Nagel]], [[W. V. Quine]], [[B. F. Skinner]], Randi and [[Marcello Truzzi]]. In 1996 Kurtz listed Hyman, [[James Alcock]] and [[Susan Blackmore]] among the Executive Council members who had examined "in cooperation with parapsychologists, claims of psychic phenomena," set beside Gardner and Randi in "fearlessly debunking" popular claims, and named among efforts to discredit the committee "Hyman's tangle with parapsychologists."[^7]
|
||||
|
||||
### Grill Flame, 1979
|
||||
|
||||
Hyman was considered for the Army's [[Grill Flame Scientific Evaluation Committee]] in 1979. Its coordinator, Major [[William Stoner]], wrote in January 1980, against the chairman's claim to have "rejected two people who had pronounced tendencies to be nonobjective," that "one person himself declined the offer to participate, claiming potential flak from his corporation. The other, Dr Ray Hyman, was rejected not because of any action by Gale, but because of a protest memo from MG [[Edmund Thompson|Thompson]] to Dr [[Walter LaBerge|LaBerge]]."[^8]
|
||||
|
||||
A memorandum from the Under Secretary of the Army's office to [[Manfred Gale]] of July 17, 1979, reads: "Reference the 'few additional experts,' Dr. Orlansky has accepted. Dr. [[Harry Snyder|Snyder]] of VPI has been asked in place of Dr. Hyman - at this time he has not accepted the invitation." Snyder's own evaluation of remote-viewing research, delivered that June, cited "R. Hyman, personal communication" for its statement that [[Arthur Hastings]], the SRI judge, "is a professional magician."[^9]
|
||||
|
||||
### Project Alpha, 1979 to 1983
|
||||
|
||||
Hyman held the Stanford psychical research chair during the academic year in which [[James Randi]] ended Project Alpha. Randi's account is that he placed two young magicians, [[Steven Shaw]] and [[Michael Edwards]], as subjects in the [[McDonnell Laboratory for Psychical Research]] at [[Washington University]] beginning in 1979, and revealed the arrangement at a press conference on January 28, 1983. Hyman is named in the August 1987 *Zetetic Scholar* among those who gave Truzzi critical commentary on the preliminary draft of his essay about Alpha, and is listed on its masthead as an associate editor. In it Truzzi recorded that Hyman had pointed out that even a psychic who performed a feat could not repeat it under exactly the same conditions, so a test of a conjuror against a psychic would require both to attempt the same feat under conditions agreed to by proponents, critics and agnostics.[^10]
|
||||
|
||||
### Research criticism, 1985 to 1994
|
||||
|
||||
Hyman's "Parapsychological Research: A Tutorial Review and Critical Appraisal" appeared in the *Proceedings of the IEEE* in June 1985 and is held in the CIA's STARGATE collection. Its abstract states that "each generation of parapsychologists has set aside the work of earlier generations and offered up as sufficient scientific evidence the best work of its own day," and that "two systematic evaluations of the best contemporary research programs in parapsychology revealed that the experiments departed from the minimal standards of adequate randomization of targets, appropriate use of statistical inference, and controls against sensory leakage."[^6] He was a member of the [[National Research Council]]'s Committee on Techniques for the Enhancement of Human Performance from 1985 to 1991, and Edwin May's 1996 commentary describes [[George Lawrence]] as commissioning that study in 1985 with Hyman leading its parapsychology section.[^1][^5]
|
||||
|
||||
In *Psychological Bulletin* in 1994, in "Anomaly or Artifact? Comments on Bem and Honorton," Hyman wrote that although the autoganzfeld experiments of [[Charles Honorton]] were "methodologically superior to previous parapsychological experiments, the tests of their randomization procedures were inadequate," and that "we have to wait for independent replications of these experiments before we can conclude that a replicable anomaly or psi has been demonstrated." The paper is in the same STARGATE files.[^11]
|
||||
|
||||
### The 1995 Evaluation
|
||||
|
||||
In 1995 the [[American Institutes for Research]], under contract to the CIA, engaged Hyman and the statistician [[Jessica Utts]] to review the research of the [[Stargate Project|Star Gate program]] ([[1995 AIR evaluation of Star Gate]]). His report of September 11, 1995, took the ten [[Science Applications International Corporation|SAIC]] experiments as "the only ones for which we have adequate documentation," agreed with Utts that they "were free of the methodological weaknesses that plagued the early SRI research" and that "the effect sizes reported in the SAIC experiments are too large and consistent to be dismissed as statistical flukes," and then answered no to three questions: whether the effects established anomalous cognition, whether "the possibility of methodological flaws" had been "completely eliminated," and whether the results were consistent with other laboratories. "Ten experiments, especially from one laboratory," he wrote, "is far too few to establish reliable relationships in almost any area of inquiry." He compared the field's negatively defined anomaly with the discovery of Neptune from the perturbations of Uranus, and told anyone relying on operational hits to read [[David Marks]] and [[Richard Kammann]] on subjective validation. Of operations he recorded [[Edwin May]]'s estimate that "approximately 20 percent of the information supplied by a viewer is accurate": "If May is correct, then 80% of all the information supplied by this talented viewer will be erroneous."[^2]
|
||||
On June 12, 1995 Hyman faxed his curriculum vitae from the University of Oregon psychology department to "Mike" with a handwritten cover note, a document filed in the CIA's "Misc. Stargate Notes/Memos - 1995 Chrono."[^1] In 1995 the [[American Institutes for Research]], under contract to the CIA, engaged Hyman and the statistician [[Jessica Utts]] to review the research of the [[Stargate Project|Star Gate program]] ([[1995 AIR evaluation of Star Gate]]). The panel convened at AIR's Palo Alto office; AIR's Michael Mumford and Andrew Rose served as panel members and staff, [[Lincoln Moses]] of Stanford as statistical resource, and [[David Goslin]], AIR's president, as reviewer and coordinator. Utts and Hyman wrote independent reports, took part in conference calls to identify points of agreement and disagreement, and Utts wrote a reply to Hyman's statement of those points.[^12]
|
||||
|
||||
Writing in the *[[Skeptical Inquirer]]* in 1996, he said the CIA "abandoned this program in the late 1970s because it showed no promise," that under the DIA it "consisted of three components," one tracking foreign work, an operations program of "six, and later three, psychics on the government payroll," and the laboratory research at SRI and SAIC; that "because of some controversies within the program, a Senate committee decided to transfer the program from the DIA back to the CIA"; that "May helped identify the ten best studies for Utts and me to evaluate"; and that the panel "all agreed that any scientifically meaningful evaluation of these operational psychic intelligence uses was impossible." He ended: "It is premature to draw any conclusions. We will simply have to wait and see. If history is a guide, then this will be a long wait, indeed."[^3]
|
||||
A preliminary draft by Hyman, titled "Preliminary Evaluation of SRI/SAIC Anomalous Mental Phenomena Program" and dated August 29, 1995, was faxed from his office to AIR on August 30, 1995. It opens with a passage from William James of 1909, calls the investigators' conclusion that anomalous cognition was "clearly demonstrated" "premature," and describes his work as "the tentative outcome of a quick first pass." It records that he was "unimpressed by the results of meta-analysis on the psychoenergetic research conducted at SRI International from 1973-1988," which covered 25,449 trials, and describes a "fatal flaw" in the original Targ and Puthoff judging protocol: because a subject learned each target after a session, successive trials were not independent, and a subject might avoid describing anything resembling earlier targets, which he illustrated with the Hoover Tower and the Palo Alto train station. It credits [[David Marks]] with discovering that transcripts given to judges contained clues, and recommends that the project, if continued, contract with several independent laboratories and "some non-parapsychological, neutral investigators" to replicate its key findings. The Hoover Tower illustration does not appear in his report of September 11 as reproduced in the AIR report.[^13][^12]
|
||||
|
||||
On *Nightline* on November 28, 1995, he said: "My considered judgment, if someone pushed me hard right now, I'd have to say the odds are 99 to 1 that there's nothing to remote viewing." Edwin May's commentary of 1996 traced "a thread of bias" from the visit to SRI (1973 or 1974, the accounts differ) at which Hyman, George Lawrence of ARPA, and Robert Van de Castle were refused access to an experiment in progress, and *Time* quoted Hyman on the tests' "incredible sloppiness," through Lawrence's commissioning of the [[National Research Council]] study in 1985 with Hyman leading its parapsychology section, to the AIR review under [[David Goslin]], who had administered the NRC report.[^4]
|
||||
His report of September 11, 1995, reproduced in the AIR report at pp. 3-41 to 3-75, took the ten [[Science Applications International Corporation|SAIC]] experiments as "the only ones for which we have adequate documentation," agreed with Utts that they "were free of the methodological weaknesses that plagued the early SRI research" and that "the effect sizes reported in the SAIC experiments are too large and consistent to be dismissed as statistical flukes," and then answered no to three questions: whether the effects established anomalous cognition, whether "the possibility of methodological flaws" had been "completely eliminated," and whether the results were consistent with other laboratories. "Ten experiments, especially from one laboratory," he wrote, "is far too few to establish reliable relationships in almost any area of inquiry." He compared the field's negatively defined anomaly with the discovery of Neptune from the perturbations of Uranus, and told anyone relying on operational hits to read Marks and [[Richard Kammann]] on subjective validation. Of operations he recorded Edwin May's estimate that "approximately 20 percent of the information supplied by a viewer is accurate": "If May is correct, then 80% of all the information supplied by this talented viewer will be erroneous."[^12]
|
||||
|
||||
Writing in the *Skeptical Inquirer* in 1996, he said the CIA "abandoned this program in the late 1970s because it showed no promise," that under the [[Defense Intelligence Agency]] it "consisted of three components," one tracking foreign work, an operations program of "six, and later three, psychics on the government payroll," and the laboratory research at SRI and SAIC; that "because of some controversies within the program, a Senate committee decided to transfer the program from the DIA back to the CIA"; that "May helped identify the ten best studies for Utts and me to evaluate"; and that the panel "all agreed that any scientifically meaningful evaluation of these operational psychic intelligence uses was impossible." He ended: "It is premature to draw any conclusions. We will simply have to wait and see. If history is a guide, then this will be a long wait, indeed."[^14]
|
||||
|
||||
On *Nightline* of [[ABC News]] on November 28, 1995, he said: "My considered judgment, if someone pushed me hard right now, I'd have to say the odds are 99 to 1 that there's nothing to remote viewing." May's commentary of 1996 traced "a thread of bias" from the visit to SRI, at which Hyman, George Lawrence and Robert Van de Castle were refused access to an experiment in progress, and *Time* quoting Hyman on the tests' "incredible sloppiness," through Lawrence's commissioning of the National Research Council study in 1985 with Hyman leading its parapsychology section, to the AIR review under David Goslin, who had administered the NRC report.[^15]
|
||||
|
||||
### Footnotes
|
||||
|
||||
[^1]: Jacobsen, Annie. *Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis*. Little, Brown and Company, 2017.
|
||||
[^2]: Hyman, Ray. "Evaluation of Program on Anomalous Mental Phenomena," September 11, 1995, reproduced in the AIR report, pp. 3-41 to 3-75, and published in *Journal of Scientific Exploration,* vol. 10, no. 1, 1996, pp. 31-58. https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB438/docs/doc_57.pdf
|
||||
[^3]: Hyman, Ray. "Evaluation of the Military's Twenty-Year Program on Psychic Spying," *Skeptical Inquirer,* March-April 1996, pp. 21-23.
|
||||
[^4]: "Psychic Spies: Cold War Whimsy or Secret Weapon?," ABC News *Nightline,* November 28, 1995, Radio TV Reports transcript for the CIA Public Affairs Staff, CIA-RDP99-01448R000402140001-7, read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room. May, Edwin C. "The American Institutes for Research Review of the Department of Defense's STAR GATE Program: A Commentary," *Journal of Parapsychology,* vol. 60, no. 1, March 1996, pp. 3-23.
|
||||
[^900]: Stoner, William L., Major, GS, "Memorandum of Conversation, Subject: Gale Briefing to ZA, Science Evaluation Group Final Report on GRILL FLAME, 14 Jan 80," CIA-RDP96-00788R001200230017-7. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.
|
||||
[^901]: "Grill Flame Review Panel Members," undated roster, CIA-RDP96-00788R001200230008-7; Office of the Under Secretary of the Army, memorandum for Mr. Manny Gale, July 17, 1979, CIA-RDP96-00788R001200230004-1; K. Lytle, Major, Military Assistant, memorandum for Mr. Gale, Advisor for RDA Analysis, ODCSRDA, "Briefing for Dr. Ruth Davis and Mr. Nealsen," August 8, 1979, CIA-RDP96-00788R001200230013-1; Snyder to Gale, undated (catalogued May 11, 1979, but referring to October and a visit of September 28), CIA-RDP96-00788R001200230038-4, and November 19, 1979, CIA-RDP96-00788R001200230042-9; "Findings," "Recommendations," "Estimated Costs," unsigned, CIA-RDP96-00788R001200230043-8; SSO Meade to SSO ACSI DA, "Grill Flame DoD Science Evaluation Team Report," LTC Watt, November 1979, CIA-RDP96-00788R001200230047-4. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection. Snyder, Harry L., and Arlene G. Snyder. *Summary and Critical Evaluation of Research in Remote Viewing,* Report RV-79-1, final technical report, contract 77F104420, Systemetrics, Inc., Blacksburg, Virginia, June 1, 1979, parts 1 and 2, CIA-RDP96-00791R000100440001-9 and CIA-RDP96-00787R000100260003-2. The sponsor of the contract is not named in the report. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.
|
||||
[^1]: Hyman, Ray, "Curriculum Vitae," September 1994, faxed from the University of Oregon Department of Psychology June 12, 1995, in "Misc. Stargate Notes/Memos - 1995 Chrono," CIA-RDP96-00791R000100030044-7; Hyman's vita as reproduced in Appendix A of *An Evaluation of Remote Viewing: Research and Applications,* American Institutes for Research, September 29, 1995, https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB438/docs/doc_57.pdf. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.
|
||||
[^2]: "The Magician and the Think Tank," *Time,* March 12, 1973, pp. 111-112, CIA-RDP96-00787R000400100023-4. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.
|
||||
[^3]: Hanlon, Joseph, "Uri Geller and science," *New Scientist,* vol. 64, no. 919, October 17, 1974, CIA-RDP96-00787R000700110020-3. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.
|
||||
[^4]: Jacobsen, Annie. *Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis*. Little, Brown and Company, 2017.
|
||||
[^5]: May, Edwin C. "The American Institutes for Research Review of the Department of Defense's STAR GATE Program: A Commentary," *Journal of Parapsychology,* vol. 60, no. 1, March 1996, pp. 3-23.
|
||||
[^6]: Hyman, Ray, "Parapsychological Research: A Tutorial Review and Critical Appraisal," *Proceedings of the IEEE,* June 1985, CIA-RDP96-00789R003800330001-4. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.
|
||||
[^7]: Kurtz, Paul, "CSICOP at Twenty," *Skeptical Inquirer,* July/August 1996, pp. 5-8, https://cdn.centerforinquiry.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/29/1996/07/22165034/p05.pdf
|
||||
[^8]: Stoner, William L., Major, GS, "Memorandum of Conversation, Subject: Gale Briefing to ZA, Science Evaluation Group Final Report on GRILL FLAME, 14 Jan 80," CIA-RDP96-00788R001200230017-7. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.
|
||||
[^9]: "Grill Flame Review Panel Members," undated roster, CIA-RDP96-00788R001200230008-7; Office of the Under Secretary of the Army, memorandum for Mr. Manny Gale, July 17, 1979, CIA-RDP96-00788R001200230004-1; K. Lytle, Major, Military Assistant, memorandum for Mr. Gale, Advisor for RDA Analysis, ODCSRDA, "Briefing for Dr. Ruth Davis and Mr. Nealsen," August 8, 1979, CIA-RDP96-00788R001200230013-1; Snyder to Gale, undated (catalogued May 11, 1979, but referring to October and a visit of September 28), CIA-RDP96-00788R001200230038-4, and November 19, 1979, CIA-RDP96-00788R001200230042-9; "Findings," "Recommendations," "Estimated Costs," unsigned, CIA-RDP96-00788R001200230043-8; SSO Meade to SSO ACSI DA, "Grill Flame DoD Science Evaluation Team Report," LTC Watt, November 1979, CIA-RDP96-00788R001200230047-4. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection. Snyder, Harry L., and Arlene G. Snyder. *Summary and Critical Evaluation of Research in Remote Viewing,* Report RV-79-1, final technical report, contract 77F104420, Systemetrics, Inc., Blacksburg, Virginia, June 1, 1979, parts 1 and 2, CIA-RDP96-00791R000100440001-9 and CIA-RDP96-00787R000100260003-2. The sponsor of the contract is not named in the report. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.
|
||||
[^10]: Truzzi, Marcello, "Reflections on 'Project Alpha': Scientific Experiment or Conjuror's Illusion?," *Zetetic Scholar,* nos. 12 and 13 (issue numbers printed 11 and 12), August 1987, https://archive.org/details/alpha-project-zetetic-scholar-nos-12-13; Randi, James, "The Project Alpha Experiment: Part 1. The First Two Years," *Skeptical Inquirer,* Summer 1983, https://archive.org/details/JamesRandiTheProjectAlpha
|
||||
[^11]: Hyman, Ray, "Anomaly or Artifact? Comments on Bem and Honorton," *Psychological Bulletin,* vol. 115, no. 1, 1994, pp. 19-24, CIA-RDP96-00789R003200100001-5. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.
|
||||
[^12]: Hyman, Ray. "Evaluation of Program on Anomalous Mental Phenomena," September 11, 1995, reproduced in the AIR report, pp. 3-41 to 3-75, and published in *Journal of Scientific Exploration,* vol. 10, no. 1, 1996, pp. 31-58; panel composition and procedure at AIR report pp. 2-2 to 2-5. https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB438/docs/doc_57.pdf
|
||||
[^13]: Hyman, Ray, "Preliminary Evaluation of SRI/SAIC Anomalous Mental Phenomena Program," August 29, 1995, fax transmittal to American Institutes for Research, August 30, 1995, CIA-RDP96-00789R003200290001-5. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.
|
||||
[^14]: Hyman, Ray. "Evaluation of the Military's Twenty-Year Program on Psychic Spying," *Skeptical Inquirer,* March-April 1996, pp. 21-23.
|
||||
[^15]: "Psychic Spies: Cold War Whimsy or Secret Weapon?," ABC News *Nightline,* November 28, 1995, Radio TV Reports transcript for the CIA Public Affairs Staff, CIA-RDP99-01448R000402140001-7, read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room. May, Edwin C. "The American Institutes for Research Review of the Department of Defense's STAR GATE Program: A Commentary," *Journal of Parapsychology,* vol. 60, no. 1, March 1996, pp. 3-23.
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
@ -26,7 +26,7 @@ Ronald Jay Lister was a former southern California police officer who became [[D
|
|||
|
||||
Before his criminal career, Lister spent nearly fifteen years as a police officer. He started as a military policeman for the U.S. Army and U.S. Army Reserve, stationed in Orange County with the 414th Military Police company. His service records show he held a degree in political science and was trained in processing prisoners of war captured during the Vietnam conflict. He regularly received excellent fitness reports. While an army reservist, Lister hired on as an officer with the police department of Maywood, a small suburb of [[Los Angeles]] that employed only a handful of uniformed patrolmen. He was also a reserve deputy for the [[Los Angeles County Sheriff's Office|L.A. County Sheriff's Office]] at the same time.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
Lister was called to active duty in the army for a few months in 1969, and later, when his enlistment ended, he volunteered for the U.S. Coast Guard, serving as a reserve port security officer at Terminal Island in San Pedro, California. In late 1973 he found a home with the [[Laguna Beach Police Department]], which patrols a posh Orange County suburb south of Los Angeles. There he rose through the ranks to become a detective in the burglary division.[^1] Lister's own account to the Justice Department's inspector general was about thirteen years in law enforcement: the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department from 1967, the Maywood police from 1969 to 1973 and the Laguna Beach police from 1973 to 1980. On leaving, he told the inspector general, he became owner of Terman International Security Consultants of Newport Beach, later Mundy's Security Group.[^7]
|
||||
Lister was called to active duty in the army for a few months in 1969, and later, when his enlistment ended, he volunteered for the U.S. Coast Guard, serving as a reserve port security officer at Terminal Island in San Pedro, California. In late 1973 he found a home with the [[Laguna Beach Police Department]], which patrols a posh Orange County suburb south of Los Angeles. There he rose through the ranks to become a detective in the burglary division.[^1] Lister's own account to the Justice Department's inspector general was about thirteen years in law enforcement: the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department from 1967, the Maywood police from 1969 to 1973 and the Laguna Beach police from 1973 to 1980. On leaving, he told the inspector general, he became owner of Terman International Security Consultants of Newport Beach, later Mundy's Security Group.[^2]
|
||||
|
||||
Lieutenant Danielle Adams, who served with Lister, recalled him as "always very successful, very tenacious and got the job done." His former chief, [[Neil Purcell]], who was on the hiring board that gave Lister his job, offered a starkly different assessment: "The man, in my opinion, is a lying, conniving, manipulative person who likes to play with people's minds. He's very evasive and loves living on the edge. He's the biggest bullshitter that has ever been placed on this earth." Both agreed on one point: "Don't ever underestimate him. He's very, very bright and very tenacious," Adams warned.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
|
|
@ -64,33 +64,33 @@ Between 1983 and 1986, the [[Federal Bureau of Investigation]] opened five separ
|
|||
|
||||
### CIA Denials
|
||||
|
||||
When defense attorneys tried in 1996 to quiz Blandón about Lister's alleged relationship with the CIA, a federal prosecutor immediately objected, and the jury was ordered out of the courtroom. During a whispered conversation with the judge, the prosecutor said that while it was true that "Lister made a claim... that he was an employee of the CIA," the government believed it was false, made only to "impress [his] illegal business partners," and was an attempt "to deter prosecution." Nevertheless the prosecutor asked the judge to halt that line of inquiry because it was "muddying the waters." The judge decided that since Blandón had denied that Lister worked for the government, there was no need for any more questions. An internal CIA investigation in 1997 declared that Lister had no relationship with the agency.[^1] The Justice Department's inspector general concluded that "we have found no credible evidence that Lister ever had a relationship with the CIA. The evidence does indicate, however, that Lister frequently told people that he had an association with the CIA in order to impress them and to hide his illegal activities." The FBI had closed a 1984 investigation of his attempt to sell equipment to foreign nationals because he could not supply it, concluding that he "clearly had intentions of violating U.S. export laws" but lacked the ability, and its [[San Francisco]] office called him the "quintessential con man." The CIA's inspector general confirmed that William Nelson, the retired security consultant Lister named as a contact, had once been the agency's Deputy Director for Operations.[^7]
|
||||
When defense attorneys tried in 1996 to quiz Blandón about Lister's alleged relationship with the CIA, a federal prosecutor immediately objected, and the jury was ordered out of the courtroom. During a whispered conversation with the judge, the prosecutor said that while it was true that "Lister made a claim... that he was an employee of the CIA," the government believed it was false, made only to "impress [his] illegal business partners," and was an attempt "to deter prosecution." Nevertheless the prosecutor asked the judge to halt that line of inquiry because it was "muddying the waters." The judge decided that since Blandón had denied that Lister worked for the government, there was no need for any more questions. An internal CIA investigation in 1997 declared that Lister had no relationship with the agency.[^1] The Justice Department's inspector general concluded that "we have found no credible evidence that Lister ever had a relationship with the CIA. The evidence does indicate, however, that Lister frequently told people that he had an association with the CIA in order to impress them and to hide his illegal activities." The FBI had closed a 1984 investigation of his attempt to sell equipment to foreign nationals because he could not supply it, concluding that he "clearly had intentions of violating U.S. export laws" but lacked the ability, and its [[San Francisco]] office called him the "quintessential con man." The CIA's inspector general confirmed that William Nelson, the retired security consultant Lister named as a contact, had once been the agency's Deputy Director for Operations.[^2]
|
||||
|
||||
Lister dismissed any suggestion that he was "knowingly" working for the CIA. In an interview with police in 1996, he claimed "that if he were affiliated with an organization like the CIA, he wouldn't talk about it." The detectives noted that "Lister did display some knowledge of the U.S. intelligence community during our interview." Blandón's attorney [[Brad Brunon]] described Lister as "one of these guys who would boast about having bugging capabilities, would boast about having wiretap capabilities, you could get any information any time, one of those... I-can-uplink-to-the-satellite sort of guy." Brunon said of Lister: "I never knew what his true role was. I mean, he covertly insinuated that he was CIA. At least, if not a sworn member, whatever the hell they do to get to become employees - some sort of operative." Brunon "really didn't have much communication with the guy because he scared me."[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
### Mundy Security Group
|
||||
|
||||
In mid-1983, Lister incorporated [[Mundy Security Group]] Inc. in Laguna Beach. Named as directors and officers were Lister, attorney Maurice Green, attorney Gary Shapiro, and reserve police officer Christopher W. Moore. A business card found in a 1986 drug raid identified Danilo Blandón as a vice president. The company was licensed with the U.S. State Department in 1983 to export U.S. Munitions List items to other countries, receiving three temporary export licenses (DSP-73s) for laser components and spare parts. Aside from burglar alarm installations, the company's main business activity was marketing a laser sighting device for AR-15 assault rifles designed by Lister's partner [[William Downing]].[^2]
|
||||
In mid-1983, Lister incorporated [[Mundy Security Group]] Inc. in Laguna Beach. Named as directors and officers were Lister, attorney Maurice Green, attorney Gary Shapiro, and reserve police officer Christopher W. Moore. A business card found in a 1986 drug raid identified Danilo Blandón as a vice president. The company was licensed with the U.S. State Department in 1983 to export U.S. Munitions List items to other countries, receiving three temporary export licenses (DSP-73s) for laser components and spare parts. Aside from burglar alarm installations, the company's main business activity was marketing a laser sighting device for AR-15 assault rifles designed by Lister's partner [[William Downing]].[^3]
|
||||
|
||||
Moore described director Maurice Green as a self-proclaimed legal genius with a severe drug and alcohol problem who had a hollow wall built behind his desk for emergency escape. Green was prosecuted and disbarred in 1987 for forging prescriptions and sentenced to two years in prison in 1992 for grand theft and practicing law without a license. Director Gary Shapiro described an incident where angry doctors besieged the office over Green's financial mismanagement.[^2]
|
||||
Moore described director Maurice Green as a self-proclaimed legal genius with a severe drug and alcohol problem who had a hollow wall built behind his desk for emergency escape. Green was prosecuted and disbarred in 1987 for forging prescriptions and sentenced to two years in prison in 1992 for grand theft and practicing law without a license. Director Gary Shapiro described an incident where angry doctors besieged the office over Green's financial mismanagement.[^3]
|
||||
|
||||
### Connection to William Nelson
|
||||
|
||||
Lister's most significant intelligence connection was [[William Nelson|Bill Nelson]], the CIA's former deputy director of operations from 1973 to 1976, who later became vice president for security at Fluor Corporation. During 1982 and 1983, Lister met with Nelson at Fluor's headquarters - described by Chris Moore as "Ron's big CIA contact." Former CIA officer John Vandewerker confirmed that Nelson and Lister knew each other. Nelson's name appeared at the top of a handwritten list of seven names that Lister prepared for his 1985 grand jury appearance, alongside Roberto D'Aubuisson and Ray Prendes.[^2]
|
||||
Lister's most significant intelligence connection was [[William Nelson|Bill Nelson]], the CIA's former deputy director of operations from 1973 to 1976, who later became vice president for security at Fluor Corporation. During 1982 and 1983, Lister met with Nelson at Fluor's headquarters - described by Chris Moore as "Ron's big CIA contact." Former CIA officer John Vandewerker confirmed that Nelson and Lister knew each other. Nelson's name appeared at the top of a handwritten list of seven names that Lister prepared for his 1985 grand jury appearance, alongside Roberto D'Aubuisson and Ray Prendes.[^3]
|
||||
|
||||
### FBI KGB Investigation and Grand Jury
|
||||
|
||||
On April 3, 1985, two FBI agents, Richard Smith and David Cook, delivered a grand jury subpoena to Lister's home in Mission Viejo. They questioned him about contacts with Soviet bloc countries. Lister confirmed to police in 1996 that he had been the subject of a "grand jury investigation on my relationship with Soviet agents." He said he had sold an FBI "scrambler system" to someone overseas, and the FBI investigated only to find the equipment was declassified and available commercially.[^2]
|
||||
On April 3, 1985, two FBI agents, Richard Smith and David Cook, delivered a grand jury subpoena to Lister's home in Mission Viejo. They questioned him about contacts with Soviet bloc countries. Lister confirmed to police in 1996 that he had been the subject of a "grand jury investigation on my relationship with Soviet agents." He said he had sold an FBI "scrambler system" to someone overseas, and the FBI investigated only to find the equipment was declassified and available commercially.[^3]
|
||||
|
||||
FBI agent Smith recalled that Lister was attempting to sell classified electronic equipment to Soviet [[KGB]] agents. The FBI conducted a sting operation with agents posing as KGB agents. Smith said Lister's activities were "completely illegal and clearly in violation of United States national security." Chief Purcell recalled the FBI was "absolutely convinced he was selling this stuff to the Russians" and showed him photographs of Lister meeting with Russians in San Francisco, New York, and the Embassy in Washington. But Purcell told the FBI: "Pardon me for laughing, but he's taking you guys for a ride." The FBI discovered Lister was overcharging the Russians four to five times retail for camera equipment. Smith claimed Lister was never prosecuted because he was "full of hot air" and lacked "present capability" to produce the equipment, though the case went to a grand jury.[^2]
|
||||
FBI agent Smith recalled that Lister was attempting to sell classified electronic equipment to Soviet [[KGB]] agents. The FBI conducted a sting operation with agents posing as KGB agents. Smith said Lister's activities were "completely illegal and clearly in violation of United States national security." Chief Purcell recalled the FBI was "absolutely convinced he was selling this stuff to the Russians" and showed him photographs of Lister meeting with Russians in San Francisco, New York, and the Embassy in Washington. But Purcell told the FBI: "Pardon me for laughing, but he's taking you guys for a ride." The FBI discovered Lister was overcharging the Russians four to five times retail for camera equipment. Smith claimed Lister was never prosecuted because he was "full of hot air" and lacked "present capability" to produce the equipment, though the case went to a grand jury.[^3]
|
||||
|
||||
### Seized Documents and National Security Classification
|
||||
|
||||
When L.A. detectives tried to obtain FBI files on the Lister investigation in 1996, FBI Special Agent Tim Bezick stated that "the FBI reports and the transcripts of Lister's grand jury testimony were protected by the National Security Act." Joel Levin, chief of the Criminal Division of the San Francisco [[U.S. Attorney's office]], confirmed a court order would be required. The personnel files from Lister's old employers were also inaccessible: Maywood Police Department files were "sealed by the City of Maywood," and Laguna Beach Police Department files had been purged entirely.[^2]
|
||||
When L.A. detectives tried to obtain FBI files on the Lister investigation in 1996, FBI Special Agent Tim Bezick stated that "the FBI reports and the transcripts of Lister's grand jury testimony were protected by the National Security Act." Joel Levin, chief of the Criminal Division of the San Francisco [[U.S. Attorney's office]], confirmed a court order would be required. The personnel files from Lister's old employers were also inaccessible: Maywood Police Department files were "sealed by the City of Maywood," and Laguna Beach Police Department files had been purged entirely.[^3]
|
||||
|
||||
Documents seized during a 1986 narcotics raid on Lister's house included a ten-page handwritten document chronicling weapons and equipment deals, including meetings with a customer named "Ivan" at the Fairmont Hotel in [[San Jose]] and a visit to the Russian embassy in [[Washington, D.C.]] Lister's monthly calendars for 1985 contained "frequent references to the Contras," including notations reading "SF Contras," "LA Contras," "D-Contra" and at least one reference to the DIA. Agents seized weapons code sheets and a handwritten note bearing the names of several CIA operatives working with [[Eden Pastora]]'s [[ARDE]] group.[^2]
|
||||
Documents seized during a 1986 narcotics raid on Lister's house included a ten-page handwritten document chronicling weapons and equipment deals, including meetings with a customer named "Ivan" at the Fairmont Hotel in [[San Jose]] and a visit to the Russian embassy in [[Washington, D.C.]] Lister's monthly calendars for 1985 contained "frequent references to the Contras," including notations reading "SF Contras," "LA Contras," "D-Contra" and at least one reference to the DIA. Agents seized weapons code sheets and a handwritten note bearing the names of several CIA operatives working with [[Eden Pastora]]'s [[ARDE]] group.[^3]
|
||||
|
||||
A flow chart found in Lister's notes contained boxes labeled "Swiss Bank," "U.S. State Department," "H.K.," "X Country," and "Factory USA." [[U.S. Customs]] Service analysis concluded it diagrammed a scheme to illegally divert American-made weapons using fraudulent end-user certificates - precisely the method [[Oliver North]] used to arm the Contras after the congressional funding cutoff. The Justice Department's inspector general concluded that "whatever the legality of the transactions depicted in the flow chart, nothing indicates that it shows the sale of arms to the Contras, and certainly nothing suggests that it depicts the use of drug money in any of the deals," and that "the documents seized from Lister in 1986 largely corroborate his account of his relationship with Blandon and the Contras. Lister would have liked to sell military and security weaponry and equipment to the Contras and to factions in El Salvador but we found no evidence showing that he did."[^2][^7]
|
||||
A flow chart found in Lister's notes contained boxes labeled "Swiss Bank," "U.S. State Department," "H.K.," "X Country," and "Factory USA." [[U.S. Customs]] Service analysis concluded it diagrammed a scheme to illegally divert American-made weapons using fraudulent end-user certificates - precisely the method [[Oliver North]] used to arm the Contras after the congressional funding cutoff. The Justice Department's inspector general concluded that "whatever the legality of the transactions depicted in the flow chart, nothing indicates that it shows the sale of arms to the Contras, and certainly nothing suggests that it depicts the use of drug money in any of the deals," and that "the documents seized from Lister in 1986 largely corroborate his account of his relationship with Blandon and the Contras. Lister would have liked to sell military and security weaponry and equipment to the Contras and to factions in El Salvador but we found no evidence showing that he did."[^2][^3]
|
||||
|
||||
### Drug Trafficking Expertise
|
||||
|
||||
|
|
@ -100,18 +100,18 @@ Lister told CIA inspectors that he had been to Colombia with Blandón and observ
|
|||
|
||||
### Cocaine Distribution Operations
|
||||
|
||||
As 1982 drew to a close, Blandón's cocaine trafficking business in Los Angeles expanded dramatically. Lister described the logistics to police: "I'd go over to D's [Blandón's] house, take my Mercedes over there, put three U-Haul boxes which will cover about 100 keys, about 33 per box plus one you'd squeeze in, in the trunk, go over to south L.A. It was the slickest deal you've ever seen."[^1] The Torres brothers told investigators that "Blandón is working with an ex-Laguna Beach police officer by the name of Ronnie, who lives in an expensive house in Mission Viejo and drives a new Mercedes automobile. Ronnie transported 100 kilos of [[Cocaine]] to the Black market and has transported millions of dollars to [[Miami]] for Danilo Blandón.".[^5]
|
||||
As 1982 drew to a close, Blandón's cocaine trafficking business in Los Angeles expanded dramatically. Lister described the logistics to police: "I'd go over to D's [Blandón's] house, take my Mercedes over there, put three U-Haul boxes which will cover about 100 keys, about 33 per box plus one you'd squeeze in, in the trunk, go over to south L.A. It was the slickest deal you've ever seen."[^1] The Torres brothers told investigators that "Blandón is working with an ex-Laguna Beach police officer by the name of Ronnie, who lives in an expensive house in Mission Viejo and drives a new Mercedes automobile. Ronnie transported 100 kilos of [[Cocaine]] to the Black market and has transported millions of dollars to [[Miami]] for Danilo Blandón.".[^4]
|
||||
|
||||
### October 1986 Raids
|
||||
|
||||
On October 27, 1986, the [[LASD Major Violators]] raided Lister's former Mission Viejo house - where [[Aparicio Moreno]] was now living - and his new residence. At the new house, Deputy Bobby Juarez explained they were executing a drug warrant. Lister responded: "I know why you're here, but why are you here? Mr. Weekly knows what I'm doing and you're not supposed to be here." Lister told deputies he "had dealings in [[South America]] and worked with the CIA and added that his friends in Washington weren't going to like what was going on." Deputy Richard Love said Lister warned: "You don't know what you are doing. There's a bigger picture here. I'm working for the CIA. The government is allowing drug sales to go on in the United States." Lister also had "intimate details about a plane loaded with guns that crashed in Nicaragua" and "alluded to the fact that he had been on one of those planes before." No drugs were found. Seized evidence was logged as "miscellaneous CIA info" and included "a lot of Contra rebel correspondence."[^3]
|
||||
On October 27, 1986, the [[LASD Major Violators]] raided Lister's former Mission Viejo house - where [[Aparicio Moreno]] was now living - and his new residence. At the new house, Deputy Bobby Juarez explained they were executing a drug warrant. Lister responded: "I know why you're here, but why are you here? Mr. Weekly knows what I'm doing and you're not supposed to be here." Lister told deputies he "had dealings in [[South America]] and worked with the CIA and added that his friends in Washington weren't going to like what was going on." Deputy Richard Love said Lister warned: "You don't know what you are doing. There's a bigger picture here. I'm working for the CIA. The government is allowing drug sales to go on in the United States." Lister also had "intimate details about a plane loaded with guns that crashed in Nicaragua" and "alluded to the fact that he had been on one of those planes before." No drugs were found. Seized evidence was logged as "miscellaneous CIA info" and included "a lot of Contra rebel correspondence."[^5]
|
||||
|
||||
Deputies found papers showing Lister had "regular meeting with DIA subcontractor [[Scott Weekly]]," handwritten weapons lists including antiaircraft weapons, 1,000 AR-15 rifles, and napalm bombs, and a list of names including William Nelson, Roberto D'Aubuisson, and Scott Weekly. Federal agents copied over 1,000 pages of seized documents, then nearly all copies disappeared. The CIA's Los Angeles office sent an "Immediate Director" cable asking for traces on Lister, Blandón, and Meneses. Lister denied the CIA claims, but Sergeant Art Fransen said Lister erupted in a "tirade": "You guys don't know what you are doing. I deal with the CIA. I got power!"[^3]
|
||||
Deputies found papers showing Lister had "regular meeting with DIA subcontractor [[Scott Weekly]]," handwritten weapons lists including antiaircraft weapons, 1,000 AR-15 rifles, and napalm bombs, and a list of names including William Nelson, Roberto D'Aubuisson, and Scott Weekly. Federal agents copied over 1,000 pages of seized documents, then nearly all copies disappeared. The CIA's Los Angeles office sent an "Immediate Director" cable asking for traces on Lister, Blandón, and Meneses. Lister denied the CIA claims, but Sergeant Art Fransen said Lister erupted in a "tirade": "You guys don't know what you are doing. I deal with the CIA. I got power!"[^5]
|
||||
|
||||
### Footnotes
|
||||
|
||||
[^1]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 6: "They were doing their patriotic duty"
|
||||
[^2]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 10: "Teach a man a craft and he's liable to practice it"
|
||||
[^3]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 18: "We bust our ass and the government's involved"
|
||||
[^5]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Ch. 9, Ch. 8.
|
||||
[^7]: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General. *The CIA-Contra-Crack Cocaine Controversy: A Review of the Justice Department's Investigations and Prosecutions.* December 1997, chapter V. https://oig.justice.gov/sites/default/files/legacy/special/9712/
|
||||
[^2]: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General. *The CIA-Contra-Crack Cocaine Controversy: A Review of the Justice Department's Investigations and Prosecutions.* December 1997, chapter V. https://oig.justice.gov/sites/default/files/legacy/special/9712/
|
||||
[^3]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 10: "Teach a man a craft and he's liable to practice it"
|
||||
[^4]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Ch. 9, Ch. 8.
|
||||
[^5]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 18: "We bust our ass and the government's involved"
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
@ -1,17 +1,59 @@
|
|||
---
|
||||
aliases:
|
||||
- Stefan Kanfer
|
||||
category: "Skeptics & Critics"
|
||||
category: "Authors & Journalists"
|
||||
tags:
|
||||
- Person
|
||||
- Skeptic
|
||||
summary: "Stefan Kanfer was a reporter for *Time* magazine."
|
||||
- Journalist
|
||||
- Time
|
||||
- Critic
|
||||
- Magician
|
||||
- UriGeller
|
||||
- SRI
|
||||
- Parapsychology
|
||||
alias:
|
||||
- Stefan Kanfer
|
||||
- Steve Kanfer
|
||||
- Kanfer
|
||||
summary: "Time associate editor who wrote the March 4, 1974 cover story on psychic phenomena, an amateur magician who treated Uri Geller and the SRI research as unproven and called for examiners with no prior belief."
|
||||
born: 1933-05-17
|
||||
died: 2018-06-19
|
||||
location: "New York City, New York, USA"
|
||||
relations:
|
||||
- type: employed_by
|
||||
with: "[[Time]]"
|
||||
end: 1987
|
||||
role: "writer, critic, associate editor and senior editor; wrote the March 4, 1974 cover story 'Boom Times on the Psychic Frontier'; resigned his staff position in 1987"
|
||||
fn: 1
|
||||
- type: employed_by
|
||||
with: "[[City Journal]]"
|
||||
start: 1995
|
||||
role: "contributing writer, at the request of editor Myron Magnet"
|
||||
fn: 3
|
||||
created: 2026-05-15
|
||||
updated: 2026-10-05
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
Stefan Kanfer was a reporter for *Time* magazine. He was a vocal critic of the [[Stanford Research Institute|SRI]]'s involvement in [[Extrasensory Perception|ESP]] research, particularly its work with [[Uri Geller]]. Kanfer targeted SRI for blame, stating, "SRI should be destroyed" for carrying out this kind of research, and that "That’s the way fascism began"[^1].
|
||||
Stefan Kanfer was born on May 17, 1933 and died on June 19, 2018, a month after his eighty-fifth birthday. He worked at [[Time]] for about three decades, edited its book review section, and wrote novels and biographies; he resigned his staff position in 1987 and stopped freelancing for the magazine about five years later. In a tribute in *[[City Journal]]*, [[Myron Magnet]] called him "by a long measure the best book and movie critic that *Time* magazine could boast, excepting only James Agee." Kanfer's other occupations, in that account, included playing the musical saw in Greenwich Village clubs, work in advertising, service as a military interrogator, and writing cartoon captions and television gags. He began writing for *City Journal* in 1995.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
### The March 4, 1974 cover story
|
||||
|
||||
In the issue of *Time* dated March 4, 1974, the Publisher's Letter states that "Associate Editor Stefan Kanfer, who wrote the cover story, managed to remain free of psychic interruption last week," and quotes him: "I got into this topic through the back door, some would say front door, of magic and mentalism. There are many tricks with which one can duplicate paranormal phenomena." The letter describes Kanfer as an amateur magician who "astounded numerous TIME staffers" by guessing over the telephone cards drawn from a deck in the office of Senior Editor [[Leon Jaroff]], one floor above, and records that Jaroff, who brought "an admitted predisposition to skepticism" to the story, said that "belief in these matters is less a function of intelligence than of psychological need." The letter adds that Los Angeles Correspondent Richard Duncan had himself photographed by the Kirlian process at [[University of California, Los Angeles]], and that on closing night the magazine's computerized copy-processing system failed at about the moment the story was entered.[^2]
|
||||
|
||||
The cover story, "Boom Times on the Psychic Frontier," opens with the assertion that the [[Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency]] "assigns a team to investigate seemingly authentic psychic phenomena at the Stanford Research Institute." It describes [[Uri Geller]]'s work at [[Stanford Research Institute]] (SRI) as a film in which he picked a can containing an object from identical empty cans, influenced laboratory scales, reproduced drawings sealed in envelopes, deflected a magnetometer, and called the upper face of a die in a closed box eight times in eight tries. It reports that [[Ray Hyman]] of the [[University of Oregon]], assigned by the Department of Defense to report on the SRI work and accompanied by [[George Lawrence]], the DOD projects manager for ARPA, "caught Geller in some outright deceptions," and that Hyman called the SRI controls "incredible sloppiness."[^2]
|
||||
|
||||
The story gives [[James Randi]] a paragraph, describing him as a television performer who "duplicates many of Uri Geller's achievements with a combination of sleight of hand, misdirected attention and patented paraphernalia." It records that on the *[[Tonight Show]]* [[Johnny Carson]] imposed controls at Randi's suggestion and that nothing Geller attempted during twenty minutes succeeded, and that Geller cancelled a British tour citing "death threats" after English magicians planned to observe him. It reviews [[Andrija Puharich]]'s forthcoming book *Uri* (Doubleday), quoting the passage in which [[Russell Targ]] told Geller that his account of outer-space intelligences agreed "very well with things that Hal [[Harold Puthoff]] and I believe but we can't prove," and asking why the SRI scientists had not mentioned Geller's claimed contacts with outer space.[^2]
|
||||
|
||||
The same article lists connections it calls "questionable": that Puthoff is "a promoter of the bizarre and controversial cult of Scientology," which [[Ingo Swann]] also practices; that Putnam executive [[William Targ]] had contracted to publish astronaut [[Edgar Mitchell]]'s *Psychic Exploration* and said at the signing that "the real race now between the Russians and us is in the area of sciences like ESP"; and that Mitchell's [[Institute of Noetic Sciences]] "helped to fund S.R.I.'s Geller research, which was conducted largely by Puthoff and Russell Targ, who happens to be Editor Targ's son." It closes that "there is only one way to tell: by a thorough examination of the phenomena by those who do not express an a priori belief," and that "until such examiners are allowed to play the psychic game, it is unlikely that the paranormal will escape" the prohibition of Leviticus on mediums and wizards.[^2]
|
||||
|
||||
The story was reproduced in the CIA's STARGATE collection (CIA-RDP96-00787R000700030001-3, with a second copy at CIA-RDP96-00787R000100030002-8). The April 16, 1974 CIA memorandum on a request by Time's former reporter [[John L. Wilhelm]] to interview Puthoff and Targ was written six weeks after its publication.[^4]
|
||||
|
||||
### Statement attributed to Kanfer on SRI
|
||||
|
||||
[[Annie Jacobsen]] reports that Kanfer blamed SRI for the psychic research and said "SRI should be destroyed" for carrying it out, adding "that's the way fascism began."[^5]
|
||||
|
||||
### Footnotes
|
||||
[^1]: Jacobsen, Annie. *Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis*. Little, Brown and Company, 2017.
|
||||
|
||||
[^1]: Magnet, Myron. "Irreplaceable Steve," *City Journal,* 2018. https://www.city-journal.org/article/irreplaceable-steve (birth date May 17, 1933 and death date June 19, 2018 as carried on the prior vault page; the tribute gives his eighty-fifth birthday as May 17, 2018).
|
||||
[^2]: "Boom Times on the Psychic Frontier," *Time,* March 4, 1974, cover story and Publisher's Letter, CIA-RDP96-00787R000700030001-3. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection: https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp96-00787r000700030001-3
|
||||
[^3]: Magnet, Myron. "Irreplaceable Steve," *City Journal,* 2018. https://www.city-journal.org/article/irreplaceable-steve
|
||||
[^4]: Memorandum for the Record, "Request for Information about Stanford Research Institute (SRI) Paranormal Research Project by Mr. Wilhelm former Time Reporter," April 16, 1974, CIA-RDP96-00787R000200200023-5. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.
|
||||
[^5]: Jacobsen, Annie. *Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis.* Little, Brown and Company, 2017. Sole source for the passages so cited.
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
@ -26,8 +26,9 @@ Despite his proficiency, McNear did not want to remain part of the viewer unit a
|
|||
|
||||
In 1985, the [[Department of Defense]] published a forty-one-page how-to manual, "Coordinate Remote Viewing, Stages I–VI and Beyond." The author of this manual, declassified in 2000, was Tom McNear[^1].
|
||||
|
||||
The released CIA collection on the program carries no legible mention of McNear.[^900]
|
||||
The released CIA collection on the program carries no legible mention of McNear.[^2]
|
||||
|
||||
### Footnotes
|
||||
|
||||
[^1]: Jacobsen, Annie. *Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis*. Little, Brown and Company, 2017.
|
||||
[^900]: The archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection, about 13,000 items under the identifiers cia-rdp96-*, searched by title and OCR text.
|
||||
[^2]: The archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection, about 13,000 items under the identifiers cia-rdp96-*, searched by title and OCR text.
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
@ -1,16 +1,78 @@
|
|||
---
|
||||
aliases:
|
||||
- Walter Levy
|
||||
category: "Skeptics & Critics"
|
||||
category: "Scientists & Researchers"
|
||||
tags:
|
||||
- Person
|
||||
- Skeptic
|
||||
summary: "Walter Levy was an assistant to J."
|
||||
- Parapsychologist
|
||||
- Fraud
|
||||
- Durham
|
||||
- InstituteForParapsychology
|
||||
- Rhine
|
||||
- AnimalPsi
|
||||
- 1970s
|
||||
alias:
|
||||
- Walter Levy
|
||||
- Walter J. Levy
|
||||
- Walter J. Levy Jr.
|
||||
- Walter Jay Levy
|
||||
- W. J. Levy
|
||||
- W. Jay Levy
|
||||
- Jay Levy
|
||||
- Levy
|
||||
summary: "Director of J. B. Rhine's Institute for Parapsychology in Durham who resigned in June 1974 after colleagues recorded him altering the output of rat and gerbil psi experiments."
|
||||
location: "Durham, North Carolina"
|
||||
relations:
|
||||
- type: director_of
|
||||
with: "[[Institute for Parapsychology]]"
|
||||
start: 1973
|
||||
end: 1974-06
|
||||
role: "laboratory director at the Foundation for Research on the Nature of Man, Durham; resigned after the June 11, 1974 observation"
|
||||
fn: 3
|
||||
- type: employed_by
|
||||
with: "[[J. B. Rhine]]"
|
||||
start: 1973
|
||||
end: 1974
|
||||
role: "full-time researcher after graduating from the Medical College of Georgia in 1973; summer worker from 1969"
|
||||
fn: 3
|
||||
- type: subject_of
|
||||
with: "[[James Kennedy]]"
|
||||
start: 1974-05-10
|
||||
end: 1974-06-11
|
||||
role: "observed and recorded by Jerry Levin, Jim Davis and James Kennedy; chart recorder installed June 9, 1974"
|
||||
fn: 5
|
||||
created: 2026-05-15
|
||||
updated: 2026-10-05
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
Walter Levy was an assistant to [[J. B. Rhine]] at the [[Duke University Parapsychology Laboratory]]. In 1974, he was caught cheating in an experiment involving rats. The experiment was designed to test whether rats could use [[Extrasensory Perception|ESP]] to increase the number of pleasurable brain stimulations delivered by an apparatus[^1].
|
||||
Walter J. Levy Jr. (known as W. Jay Levy) was a medical student who began working at J. B. Rhine's parapsychology institute in Durham, North Carolina during his summer vacation in 1969. In March 1971 the *[[Journal of Parapsychology]]* published "Repetition of the French Precognition Experiments with Mice" by Levy, L. Allen Mayo Jr., Eve Andre and Anita McRae; the editors' note describes Levy as a second-year medical student at the [[Medical College of Georgia]], Mayo as a [[Duke University]] zoology graduate student, Andre as a librarian in Victoria, Australia, and McRae as a research assistant at the [[Institute for Parapsychology]]. The copy of that paper is in the [[Central Intelligence Agency]] STARGATE collection.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
Levy's research assistants discovered him tampering with the lab equipment and recorded him on videotape. When confronted with the evidence, Levy confessed and resigned. This scandal became fodder for skeptics of Rhine and his [[Parapsychology|parapsychology]] research[^1].
|
||||
### Directorship
|
||||
|
||||
The Institute for Parapsychology, in Durham, was the successor to the Duke University Parapsychology Laboratory that [[J. B. Rhine]] had moved off campus on his retirement from Duke in 1965, and was part of the Foundation for Research on the Nature of Man.[^2] [[Time]] reported on August 26, 1974 that after Levy graduated from the Medical College of Georgia in 1973 Rhine "hired him as a full-time researcher; soon he was promoted to director," that he had "showed an unusual talent for automating experiments and recording data," and that his experiments tested the ability of rodents to anticipate events (extrasensory perception) or to affect physical changes by will (psychokinesis). In the rat experiments, electrodes implanted in a pleasure zone of the brain delivered stimuli at random intervals from a computer keyed to the decay of atoms in a strontium 90 sample; the expected rate without influence was 50 percent, and by early May 1974 Levy was reporting 54 percent.[^3] [[James Kennedy]] later wrote that the Levy case came shortly after Rhine's 1974 article on researcher fraud.[^4]
|
||||
|
||||
### The 1974 exposure
|
||||
|
||||
The chronology written in 1974 by James Kennedy, J. W. Davis and Jerry Levin records the sequence. On Friday, May 10, 1974, Levin observed Levy at the indicator panel of the small-rodent precognition work holding wires from the random generator "in a position where he could control the target chosen"; Levin did not witness a clear-cut manipulation, and taped the wires. About a week later he told Kennedy. On Saturday, June 8, Kennedy set up a rat implantation experiment (the effect of valium on psychokinesis scoring) with the wires to the rat left disconnected without Levy's knowledge, saw Levy with his hand in the equipment several times, and on entering the room after Levy left found "a long string of hits had just been recorded on paper tape punch, which was the official record." Levy had commented several times that positive results with valium "might lead to some financial support." On Sunday, June 9, Kennedy, Levin and Davis installed an Esterline Angus chart recorder in the basement to record the output of the random generator, and decided that Davis would watch from the porch off the experimenter room.[^5]
|
||||
|
||||
On Tuesday, June 11, in an isolation experiment officially Kennedy's, Davis noticed that the mechanical counter sounded on every trial (every four seconds) but the paper punch, the official record, did not register on every trial while Levy was in the room. Comparing the punch record with the chart record afterward, "it was apparent that when a long string of hits occurred on the paper punch record, the misses were simply not recorded." From the porch Davis saw Levy enter the room and put his hand among the wires, and from the window saw that the plug carrying the channel that recorded misses had been removed; Levy returned twice more, and the plug was reinserted before Davis went back in. The three recorded that "for at least the past few months it has been Dr. Levy's practice to spend an excessive amount of time in close proximity to the equipment during studies involving his lines of research." Kennedy added in 2005 that he had left the rat's wires disconnected because he wished to test whether the experimenter or the animal produced the apparent effects, and had initially rejected Levin's suspicions because he "could not comprehend how someone would work so hard and be so devoted to a topic that he was fraudulently producing."[^5]
|
||||
|
||||
The three reported to Rhine, who confronted Levy. Time wrote that Levy "confessed and resigned, later telling friends that he had been under great pressure to produce positive results and had been overburdened by administrative duties," insisted that this was the only time he had falsified data, and said that after failing to reproduce earlier positive tests he felt a need to force the data to reflect the results he expected; Rhine "set other staff members to work, checking the more important of Levy's earlier findings, and cautioned other psychic researchers not to rely on these data until they can be verified." The magazine called the case "the parapsychological equivalent of the famous case of the painted mice at Manhattan's Sloan-Kettering Institute."[^3]
|
||||
|
||||
[[Annie Jacobsen]] writes that Levy was a Rhine assistant who was caught in 1974 cheating in an experiment in which rats were thought to use ESP to increase the number of pleasurable brain stimulations, that his research assistants found him tampering with the equipment and recorded him on videotape, and that he confessed and resigned when confronted.[^6] Kennedy's contemporaneous chronology describes a chart recorder and a human observer, and does not mention videotape.[^5]
|
||||
|
||||
### Rhine's reports and later accounts
|
||||
|
||||
Rhine published "A New Case of Experimenter Unreliability" in the *Journal of Parapsychology* in 1974 (volume 38, pages 215 to 225) and "A Second Report on a Case of Experimenter Fraud" in 1975 (volume 39, pages 306 to 325); the volume 38 index lists a comment on the first by Jule Eisenbud.[^7] Kennedy wrote that the extent of the fraud took about a year to investigate, that the investigation found evidence of fraud in all of Levy's lines of research (including a fully fabricated computerized game experiment with human subjects), and that he later posted the original summaries of three of Levy's four lines of work (maze, rat implantation and egg).[^8] Kennedy also disputed accounts by [[D. Scott Rogo]], [[Chris Roe]] and [[John Palmer]] of who first became suspicious, whether Rhine and others suppressed reporting, and whether the fraud was confined to a single experiment.[^8]
|
||||
|
||||
The Levy case appears in the STARGATE collection in an abstract of Werner Eeman's article "Fraud" in *Psi-Forum* (1985), in *Parapsychology Abstracts International*, which states that "we should not dramatize these uncovered frauds, such as those of Soal and Levy."[^9]
|
||||
|
||||
### Footnotes
|
||||
[^1]: Jacobsen, Annie. *Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis*. Little, Brown and Company, 2017.
|
||||
|
||||
[^1]: Levy, Walter J., Jr., L. Allen Mayo, Jr., Eve Andre and Anita McRae. "Repetition of the French Precognition Experiments with Mice," *Journal of Parapsychology,* vol. 35, no. 1, March 1971, CIA-RDP96-00787R000400100021-6. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection. Time (note 3) states Levy began working at the institute in the summer of 1969.
|
||||
[^2]: "Rhine Research Center," Psi Encyclopedia, Society for Psychical Research, https://psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/rhine-research-center/ (states that testing continued at Duke until Rhine's retirement in 1965, when the laboratory moved off campus and was renamed the Foundation for the Research on the Nature of Man, which included the Institute for Parapsychology).
|
||||
[^3]: "Science: The Psychic Scandal," *Time,* August 26, 1974. https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,944971,00.html
|
||||
[^4]: Kennedy, J. E. "Researcher Fraud in Experimental Parapsychology," Psi Encyclopedia, https://psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/researcher-fraud-in-experimental-parapsychology/ (gives Rhine's 1974 article on fraud as published shortly before the Levy case and records Rhine making Levy director in 1973).
|
||||
[^5]: Kennedy, J. E., J. W. Davis and J. Levin. "Chronology of Events in Exposing W.J. Levy," 1974, with additional information added by Kennedy in March 2005. https://www.jeksite.org/psi/fchron.pdf, linked from https://www.jeksite.org/psi/fraud.htm
|
||||
[^6]: Jacobsen, Annie. *Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis.* Little, Brown and Company, 2017.
|
||||
[^7]: *The Journal of Parapsychology,* vol. 38 (1974) index, listing "a new case of experimenter unreliability, 215-25," https://archive.org/details/sim_journal-of-parapsychology_1974_38_index; Kennedy, "Notes on a Case of Scientific Fraud in Parapsychology," https://www.jeksite.org/psi/fraud.htm (gives the 1975 report as J. B. Rhine, "A Second Report on a Case of Experimenter Fraud," *Journal of Parapsychology,* 1975, pp. 306-325, and notes a "surprisingly accurate article" in Time on August 26, 1974).
|
||||
[^8]: Kennedy, J. E. "Notes on a Case of Scientific Fraud in Parapsychology," https://www.jeksite.org/psi/fraud.htm; Kennedy, "Researcher Fraud in Experimental Parapsychology," Psi Encyclopedia, https://psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/researcher-fraud-in-experimental-parapsychology/
|
||||
[^9]: *Parapsychology Abstracts International,* abstract 02965, Eeman, Werner, "Fraud [Part 1]," *Psi-Forum,* 1985, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 82-94, CIA-RDP96-00792R000400040001-9. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
Loading…
Add table
Add a link
Reference in a new issue