vault backup: 2026-09-22 00:06:36

10 - PEOPLE/(T-Z)/Jack Vorona.md

@@ -16,7 +16,7 @@ Jack Vorona was the Assistant Director for Scientific and Technical Intelligence
 
 In 1981, Vorona contacted [[Dale Graff]] and brought him to Washington, D.C., to help run a classified program called [[Psychoenergetics]]. The main goals of this project were "to evaluate the threat that foreign psychoenergetics achievements might pose to US national security, and to explore the potential of psychoenergetics for use in US intelligence collection"[^2]. Vorona believed that with the resources of the DIA, genuine progress could be made toward a general theory of [[Extrasensory Perception|ESP]] and [[Psychokinesis|PK]][^2].
 
-Vorona oversaw the Grill Flame program and later the Sun Streak program, which aimed to train military personnel in [[Remote Viewing]]. He made administrative changes, converting the branch chief and operations officer positions from military to civilian, and reducing training time[^2].
+Vorona oversaw the Grill Flame program and later the [[Sun Streak]] program, which aimed to train military personnel in [[Remote Viewing]]. He made administrative changes, converting the branch chief and operations officer positions from military to civilian, and reducing training time[^2].
 
 He was also involved in high-priority operational tasks, such as the effort to locate [[William Richard Higgins]], a Marine Lieutenant Colonel abducted in [[Lebanon]], and the tracking of [[Muammar Qaddafi]]'s alleged chemical weapons stockpile. In the latter case, Vorona sat with [[Angela Dellafiora]] in the viewing room at [[Fort Meade]], demonstrating the high-level attention given to her abilities[^2].
 
@@ -30,10 +30,13 @@ Jack Vorona retired after twenty-five years of service at DIA and was inducted i
 
 ### The Committee
 
-Vorona chaired the Defense Department's Grill Flame committee from its first meeting at DIA on November 28, 1978, where he "cautioned the Committee to maintain a low profile with minimal fanfare," "urged the development of experimental protocol and methods for validating experiments," and saw it agree "that all documents originating as a result of the GRILL FLAME program would undergo downgrading review only after 20 years." He missed the meeting of July 12, 1979, because he "was briefing Congressman Rose on DoD efforts and interest in parapsychology." In November 1979 the committee asked him to demand sight of the "Gale Committee's" outside report before anyone else saw it, the working group holding it "misleading and inadequate." INSCOM's chronology records that on August 3, 1983, "the Honorable [[George H.W. Bush|George Bush]], Vice President of the United States, was briefed for thirty minutes concerning CENTER LANE related activities by Dr. Vorona, DIA," "Adm. Murphy, C/S," and "Mr. Gregg, Assistant to the Vice President, National Security Affairs," present: "The briefing was well received and the Vice President was interested and impressed."[^3]
+Vorona chaired the Defense Department's Grill Flame committee from its first meeting at DIA on November 28, 1978, where he "cautioned the Committee to maintain a low profile with minimal fanfare," "urged the development of experimental protocol and methods for validating experiments," and saw it agree "that all documents originating as a result of the GRILL FLAME program would undergo downgrading review only after 20 years." He missed the meeting of July 12, 1979, because he "was briefing Congressman Rose on DoD efforts and interest in parapsychology." In November 1979 the committee asked him to demand sight of the "Gale Committee's" outside report before anyone else saw it, the working group holding it "misleading and inadequate." INSCOM's chronology records that in 1983 (the chronology's date reads as March 31 or August 3), "the Honorable [[George H.W. Bush|George Bush]], Vice President of the United States, was briefed for thirty minutes concerning CENTER LANE related activities by Dr. Vorona, DIA," "Adm. Murphy, C/S," and "Mr. Gregg, Assistant to the Vice President, National Security Affairs," present: "The briefing was well received and the Vice President was interested and impressed."[^3]
+
+Vorona arranged the briefing of Senator [[Claiborne Pell]] on September 29, 1982, two days before Congress ended the Army's funding; "Senator Pell had had previous briefings concerning parapsychology from Dr. Vorona." On October 5, 1983, with Hal Puthoff and the [[Center Lane]] officers, he briefed Senator [[Malcolm Wallop]], "the individual who was responsible for the project being eliminated," and asked him "to insert language in the Congressional Conference Report that would permit the program to be included in the FY 85 GDIP submission"; Wallop "replied that he is only one person." On October 7 the committees' staff asked "what is the benefit of placing the program back in the NFIP since DIA has Program 6 (P-6) money," and when he answered "security," told him "that there was no security in the NFIP, and since P-6 money is available, it could be dangerous to reintroduce the subject to the Congressional Committees. Dr. Vorona did not continue the debate and terminated the briefing." As chairman of the working group he had answered the [[Grill Flame Scientific Evaluation Committee]]'s report of December 1979 with a memorandum supporting its finding that "unexplained observations of human capabilities to generate data of potential utility to intelligence have been documented" and objecting that "many of the difficulties in the report, especially those of fact and incompleteness, could have been avoided if the report had been collectively reviewed in draft."[^4]
 
 ### Footnotes
 
 [^1]: Schnabel, Jim. *Remote Viewers*. Dell, 1997.
 [^2]: Jacobsen, Annie. *Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis*. Little, Brown and Company, 2017.
 [^3]: Defense Intelligence Agency, minutes of the DoD Grill Flame Committee, November 28, 1978 (enclosed in Progress Report #1), July 12, 1979 (CIA-RDP96-00788R002000130008-9), November 27, 1979 (CIA-RDP96-00788R002000130015-1), and January 10, 1980 (CIA-RDP96-00788R002000100009-1). Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection. US Army Intelligence and Security Command, "List of Events from September 1977 to January 1986," CIA-RDP96-00788R001100020001-8. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.
+[^4]: Jachim, Robert J., memorandum "Information Briefing for Senator Clairborne Pell," October 6, 1982, CIA-RDP96-00788R001100320001-5; Buzby, Brian, information paper "GRILL FLAME Briefing Presented to Senator Pell," February 6, 1985, CIA-RDP96-00788R001100320004-2. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection. Buzby, Brian, memorandum "Briefing to Senator Wallop, 5 October 1983," October 14, 1983, CIA-RDP96-00788R001700270015-0. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection. Buzby, Brian, memorandum on the briefing of Congressional intelligence committee staff of October 7, 1983, October 14, 1983, CIA-RDP96-00788R001700270017-8; "ITAOPS Fact Sheet, Inputs for MG Stubblebine," April 10, 1981, CIA-RDP96-00788R001700220021-8. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection. *Report by the Grill Flame Scientific Evaluation Committee,* December 1979, Manfred Gale, chairman, CIA-RDP96-00788R001300120001-5; Vorona, J., "Comments on 'Report By: The GRILLFLAME Scientific Evaluation Committee,'" memorandum of the Grill Flame Working Group, CIA-RDP96-00788R001300060001-2. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.

10 - PEOPLE/(T-Z)/Jessica Utts.md

@@ -34,8 +34,11 @@ In June 1995 the CIA contracted the American Institutes for Research to review t
 
 Hyman's report of September 11 agreed that the SAIC experiments "were free of the methodological weaknesses that plagued the early SRI research" and that their effect sizes were "too large and consistent to be dismissed as statistical flukes," but answered no to whether they established anomalous cognition, whether flaws had been eliminated, and whether they matched other laboratories, "ten experiments, especially from one laboratory," being "far too few." Utts's reply cited the psychologist Sybo Schouten's estimate that all parapsychology funding since 1882 "is at best equivalent to the expenditures devoted to fewer than two months of research in conventional psychology in the United States," and the Physicians Health Study of aspirin: "had it been conducted on only 2,200 men with the same reduction in heart attacks, it would not have achieved statistical significance." AIR's own synthesis found that "the two reviewers agreed far more than they disagreed," and that the significant results rested on "the same remote viewers, the same judge, the same target set, and the same scoring procedures." The report of September 29 recommended against continuing the operational program. Both reviews were published in the *Journal of Scientific Exploration* in 1996.[^3]
 
+On *Nightline* on November 28, 1995, she said: "I'm a statistician, and when I look at the data I have to say that there's something there," and "what it proves to me is that we don't quite understand either the nature of the mind or perhaps the nature of time and space." In a letter to Edwin May of December 19, 1995, which he published, she wrote that "I was explicitly asked by AIR staff NOT to mention the NRC report in my review! This is very troubling to me," since the NRC's "vote-counting" method "has been completely discredited," a point "substantiated by Stanford Statistics Professor Lincoln Moses" at the panel's July meeting; that "despite the claims Ray Hyman is making in the media, we were shown very little of the 'operational' remote-viewing work"; that after May sent her a memorandum she "was contacted by the AIR staff and told that I was NOT to contact any of those individuals"; and of Hyman, "I don't know how he can substantiate the claims he's making about remote viewing being useless for intelligence. He may be correct, but he has very little data on which to base that conclusion."[^4]
+
 ### 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]: Utts, Jessica. "An Assessment of the Evidence for Psychic Functioning," September 1, 1995, reproduced in the AIR report, pp. 3-2 to 3-40, and published in *Journal of Scientific Exploration,* vol. 10, no. 1, 1996, pp. 3-30. https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB438/docs/doc_57.pdf
 [^3]: 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. 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. 3-76 to 3-84.
+[^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. 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.

10 - PEOPLE/(T-Z)/Malcolm Wallop.md

@@ -0,0 +1,28 @@
+---
+category: "Political Figure"
+tags:
+  - Person
+  - MalcolmWallop
+  - Senate
+  - SenateSelectCommitteeOnIntelligence
+  - Wyoming
+  - GrillFlame
+  - RemoteViewing
+alias:
+  - Senator Malcolm Wallop
+summary: "Wyoming senator who as chairman of the Senate intelligence committee's budget subcommittee removed the Army's remote-viewing operations from the National Foreign Intelligence Program at the end of fiscal 1982."
+location: "Wyoming"
+created: 2026-09-21
+updated: 2026-09-21
+---
+
+Malcolm Wallop, senator from [[Wyoming]], chaired the budget subcommittee of the [[Senate Select Committee on Intelligence]] in the early 1980s. An INSCOM memorandum of October 1983 called him "an important player in DoD's involvement in psychoenergetics. He is the individual who was responsible for the project being eliminated under the NFIP (GDIP) at the end of FY 82," the cut of October 1, 1982, that ended the Army's part of [[STARGATE PROJECT|Grill Flame]] and drove [[United States Army Intelligence and Security Command|INSCOM]] to continue it as [[Center Lane]] on security funds.[^1]
+
+### The Briefing of October 5, 1983
+
+From 2:45 to 3:39 that afternoon, in room SR206 of the Russell building, [[Jack Vorona]] of the DIA, [[Hal Puthoff]] of SRI, Lieutenant Colonel [[Brian Buzby]], and Captain [[Frederick Atwater]] briefed him. "At the conclusion of the briefing, Dr. Vorona reiterated that the purpose of the briefing was to illustrate that psychoenergetics; remote viewing did in fact have intelligence application, and that it should be placed back in the National Foreign Intelligence Program (NFIP) to give the program the protection it needed. He requested that the Senator insert language in the Congressional Conference Report that would permit the program to be included in the FY 85 GDIP submission. The Senator replied that he is only one person, and that perhaps the briefing should be presented to the entire SSCI Budget Subcommittee," and that "internal political infighting" might mean a continuing resolution instead of an appropriations bill. "The intelligence applications of remote viewing as illustrated in the briefing book definitely impressed him." Two days later the staff of the two intelligence committees told Vorona "that there was no security in the NFIP, and since P-6 money is available, it could be dangerous to reintroduce the subject to the Congressional Committees."[^1][^2]
+
+### Footnotes
+
+[^1]: Buzby, Brian, memorandum "Briefing to Senator Wallop, 5 October 1983," October 14, 1983, CIA-RDP96-00788R001700270015-0. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.
+[^2]: Buzby, Brian, memorandum on the briefing of Congressional intelligence committee staff of October 7, 1983, October 14, 1983, CIA-RDP96-00788R001700270017-8; "ITAOPS Fact Sheet, Inputs for MG Stubblebine," April 10, 1981, CIA-RDP96-00788R001700220021-8. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.

10 - PEOPLE/(T-Z)/Russell Targ.md

@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 ---
 created: 2026-05-17
-updated: 2026-05-17
+updated: 2026-09-21
 title: Russell Targ
 aliases:
   - Russell Targ
@@ -14,7 +14,7 @@ tags:
   - 1970s
   - 1980s
 category: "Intelligence & Government"
-summary: "Russell Targ is a laser physicist who co-founded the Stanford Research Institute remote viewing program with Hal Puthoff in 1972 under CIA contract, co-authored the program's landmark 1974 Nature paper and 1976 IEEE paper, and continued parapsychology research and writing after leaving SRI."
+summary: "Laser physicist who founded the SRI remote-viewing program with Puthoff in 1972, published it in Nature in 1974, ran the Price and Geller sessions, and in 1995 forced the CIA to release its files."
 born: 1934-04-11
 location: "Chicago, Illinois"
 ---
@@ -23,9 +23,20 @@ Russell Targ is a physicist who, in the early 1970s, joined [[Hal Puthoff]] at [
 
 Targ was responsible for many of the early experiments at SRI, including the development of an ESP "teaching" machine, a primitive computer designed to give subjects feedback on their psychic guesses. He often clashed with [[Ingo Swann]] over the use of this machine, as Swann found it to be a "depressing remnant of old-time parapsychology." He also conducted experiments with other psychics, including [[Pat Price]] and [[Uri Geller]], and explored various psi phenomena such as psychokinesis and telepathy. He was instrumental in developing and refining remote viewing protocols, including "outbound remote viewing" and "coordinate remote viewing" (CRV).[^1]
 
-As a monitor in remote viewing sessions, Targ would prompt psychics with questions and record their impressions. He was involved in the testing of [[Uri Geller]], and while often suspecting sleight of hand due to Geller's hyperkinetic style, he was also impressed by Geller's genuine abilities. He and Puthoff would sometimes search the laboratory rafters and acoustic tiles for hidden audio or video bugs after Geller's sessions, though they never found anything.[^1]
+As a monitor in remote viewing sessions, Targ would prompt psychics with questions and record their impressions. He was involved in the testing of Uri Geller, and while often suspecting sleight of hand due to Geller's hyperkinetic style, he was also impressed by Geller's genuine abilities. He and Puthoff would sometimes search the laboratory rafters and acoustic tiles for hidden audio or video bugs after Geller's sessions, though they never found anything.[^1]
 
 Despite the personality conflicts and the controversial nature of the research, Targ was a key figure in the remote viewing program. He was the co-author, with Hal Puthoff, of a number of influential papers on remote viewing, including a 1974 article in *Nature* and a 1976 article in the *Proceedings of the IEEE*. He eventually became convinced of the reality of remote viewing, even conducting his own informal experiments. He was present during many of Price's most impressive remote viewing feats, including the glider experiment where Price accurately perceived the numbers Kennett was carrying and the "ankh" around his neck, and the precognitive viewing of the Redwood City Marina and the Rinconada Park water tanks.[^1]
 
+### The Nature Paper
+
+The paper he and Puthoff published in *Nature* on October 18, 1974, "Information Transmission under Conditions of Sensory Shielding," reported thirteen drawing experiments with Uri Geller in "a double-walled steel room" and later "a double-walled, copper-screen Faraday cage," in which two judges "each matched the target data to the response data with no error"; a hundred-picture series on which Geller "passed" every day, with results that "do not depart significantly from what would be expected by chance"; a die in a steel box called correctly eight times of eight; nine double-blind remote-viewing trials with Pat Price against Bay Area sites chosen by the division director with a random-number calculator, of which five judges matched six of nine; and an EEG series in which one subject of six, "H.H.," showed "a consistent alpha blocking effect" when a distant light flashed. It concluded that "a channel exists whereby information about a remote location can be obtained by means of an as yet unidentified perceptual modality," that "the information channel appears to be imperfect, containing noise along with the signal," and that the ability "may be widely distributed in the general population." The acknowledged sponsor was "The Foundation for Parasensory Investigation, New York City," with thanks to Judith Skutch and [[Edgar Mitchell]] of the [[Institute of Noetic Sciences]]. In 1978 [[David Marks]] and Richard Kammann reported in *Nature* that they had failed to replicate the work and argued that the Price transcripts held cues such as "second place of the day" that let judges match them; Targ, Puthoff, and [[Charles Tart]] answered in January 1979 with re-edited transcripts and a new judge who matched seven of nine.[^2]
+
+### The 1996 Memoir
+
+Targ requested his CIA files in May 1994, "moved from number 540 in line to number 474" in a year, and with "two Washington lawyers, two congressmen, and a senator" obtained them on August 11, 1995. His memoir of 1996 recounts Price telephoning Puthoff in June 1973 to say he had been "doing that kind of psychic thing for years, catching crooks when he was the police commissioner in Burbank"; the protocol of sixty target cards and a calculator with a random-number key, run by the laboratory director Bonnar Cox, with Targ and the viewer in a Faraday cage on the second floor of the Radio Physics building; Price's drawing of the Rinconada Park pools, "about a hundred feet in diameter (it was actually hundred and ten feet)," with water tanks that the city's centennial report showed had stood there in 1913; and the session of July 10, 1974, in which Price, given coordinates by "a physicist from the CIA," said: "I am lying on my back on the roof of a two or three story brick building. It's a sunny day. The sun feels good. There's the most amazing thing. There's a giant gantry crane moving back and forth over my head. As I drift up in the air and look down, it seems to be riding on a track with one rail on each side of the building." Targ added that Price described "a giant, 'sixty-foot diameter metal sphere'" being assembled from "thick metal gores" with welding difficulties, and that *Aviation Week* of May 2, 1977, reported satellite photographs of Soviet technicians manufacturing "huge extremely thick steel gores" for "a large sphere estimated to be about 18 meters (57.8 feet) in diameter." He quoted the *Chicago Tribune* of August 13, 1977, on Director [[Stansfield Turner]]'s disclosure that the agency "had found a man who could 'see' what was going on anywhere in the world through his psychic powers," dropped in 1975: "'He died,' Turner said, 'and we haven't heard from him since.'" Of the agency's position in 1995 he wrote: "It is as though the CIA discovered that there were indeed little men on Mars, but concluded that since they were pretty small and didn't have weapons, they weren't worth investigating any further."[^3]
+
+### Footnotes
 
 [^1]: Schnabel, Jim. *Remote Viewers*. Dell, 1997.
+[^2]: Targ, Russell, and Harold Puthoff. "Information Transmission under Conditions of Sensory Shielding," *Nature,* vol. 251, October 18, 1974, pp. 602-607, read in the CIA Reading Room copy CIA-RDP96-00787R000100220001-8 on archive.org. Marks, David, and Richard Kammann. "Information Transmission in Remote Viewing Experiments," *Nature,* vol. 274, 1978, pp. 680-681, not obtained; quoted from Puthoff, Targ, and Tart, "Information Transmission in Remote Viewing Experiments: II," with Tart, "Reanalysis of SRI Remote Viewing Experiments," submitted to *Nature,* January 1979, CIA-RDP96-00787R000200090017-5, archive.org mirror.
+[^3]: Targ, Russell. "Remote Viewing at Stanford Research Institute in the 1970s: A Memoir," *Journal of Scientific Exploration,* vol. 10, no. 1, 1996, pp. 77-88, reprinted from Targ and Katra, *Mind-to-Mind* (1996); read in a Wayback Machine copy of the journal's PDF.

10 - PEOPLE/(T-Z)/Vernon Walters.md

@@ -74,7 +74,7 @@ In June 1976 Walters went to [[Paraguay]] to remove the CIA station chief, who h
 
 One of the two, Captain René Riveros Valderrama, gave a sworn statement in Santiago on March 22, 1978, to the Chilean court investigating Contreras and Espinoza. He and Captain Rolando Mosqueira Jarpa had left for Washington on August 21, 1976, on official passports in the names Juan Williams Rose and Alejandro Romeral Jara, prepared by DINA's passport section, on a mission given them by Contreras "to make contact with the North American General Don Vernon Walters in order to receive certain information relating to the names of certain persons." They could not reach him: he was handing over his post and on leave, and "finally a CIA secretary whom we could not identify told us that General Walters no longer worked at that intelligence agency." They then called on a Chilean general Mosqueira knew, giving their real names and ranks but not their errand, and when every approach failed telephoned Espinoza, DINA's chief of operations, who authorized them to return.[^21]
 
-Contreras told the Chilean military prosecutor on March 22, 1978, that "around June or early July 1976, CIA Chile informed me that the Deputy Director of the CIA, General Vernon Walters, needed a contact in the US to give us a list of lobbyists and people who could cooperate with Chile before the US Senate and also for the UN's forthcoming session that year." Espinoza testified on April 24 that Contreras ordered him to designate an agent for the mission with a companion fluent in English; he chose Fernández Larios, and "the name of the second man was suggested by then-Major [[Raúl Iturriaga Neumann|Iturriaga]], under the name Andrés Wilson," who "turned out to be the same person I had known since November or December 1974 as Michael Townley." Fernández Larios said he was told "once in the US I had to speak with a CIA chief named Vernon Walters, because he was going to give me a list of people sympathetic to Chile for purposes of presenting the Chilean position before the United Nations." The second pair, Captains [[René Riveros]] and [[Rolando Mosqueira]], could not find him; General [[Nilo Floody]] of the Chilean military mission, who had known Walters since 1974, had his secretary telephone Walters's office and was told "that he was out of town, that he no longer belonged to the CIA, and that upon his return he would presumably rejoin the Army." The FBI interviewed Walters on June 14, 1978, at the Chilean prosecutor's request. "When told that several DINA officials were claiming that their trip to the US in August of 1976 was to see him, the General laughed and dismissed the idea as being ludicrous on its face, saying it was impossible since he had retired during the previous month." He said his trip to Paraguay "had been completely unrelated to the Letelier assassination," that "at no time had he discussed with any Paraguayan officials the issuance of false passports," that his only contact with Contreras had been the 1975 visit, and he "offered to take a polygraph examination." Propper added: "I have been advised by the CIA that General Vernon Walters retired from the CIA on July 2, 1976. He was no longer there at the time either mission to the United States by DINA personnel took place."[^22]
+Contreras told the Chilean military prosecutor on March 22, 1978, that "around June or early July 1976, CIA Chile informed me that the Deputy Director of the CIA, General Vernon Walters, needed a contact in the US to give us a list of lobbyists and people who could cooperate with Chile before the US Senate and also for the UN's forthcoming session that year." Espinoza testified on April 24 that Contreras ordered him to designate an agent for the mission with a companion fluent in English; he chose Fernández Larios, and "the name of the second man was suggested by then-Major [[Raúl Iturriaga Neumann|Iturriaga]], under the name Andrés Wilson," who "turned out to be the same person I had known since November or December 1974 as [[Michael Townley]]." Fernández Larios said he was told "once in the US I had to speak with a CIA chief named Vernon Walters, because he was going to give me a list of people sympathetic to Chile for purposes of presenting the Chilean position before the United Nations." The second pair, Captains [[René Riveros]] and [[Rolando Mosqueira]], could not find him; General [[Nilo Floody]] of the Chilean military mission, who had known Walters since 1974, had his secretary telephone Walters's office and was told "that he was out of town, that he no longer belonged to the CIA, and that upon his return he would presumably rejoin the Army." The FBI interviewed Walters on June 14, 1978, at the Chilean prosecutor's request. "When told that several DINA officials were claiming that their trip to the US in August of 1976 was to see him, the General laughed and dismissed the idea as being ludicrous on its face, saying it was impossible since he had retired during the previous month." He said his trip to Paraguay "had been completely unrelated to the Letelier assassination," that "at no time had he discussed with any Paraguayan officials the issuance of false passports," that his only contact with Contreras had been the 1975 visit, and he "offered to take a polygraph examination." Propper added: "I have been advised by the CIA that General Vernon Walters retired from the CIA on July 2, 1976. He was no longer there at the time either mission to the United States by DINA personnel took place."[^22]
 
 As ambassador at large for President [[Ronald Reagan]], Walters visited Pinochet in February 1981. "We spoke as old friends," he reported. "He offered full support and said he would do anything we wanted to help us in the Salvadoran situation." He told a congressional committee that the Letelier bombing had been "a mistake," like [[Napoleon]]'s execution of the Duke of Enghien: "You can't rub their noses in it forever."[^19]