disinfozone/The_Info_Web
1
0
Fork 0
Code Issues Pull requests Projects Releases Packages Wiki Activity Actions

vault backup: 2026-09-21 23:37:10

Browse source
This commit is contained in:
disinfo.zone 2026-09-21 23:37:10 -04:00
parent 698f6427f6
commit a697678725
No known key found for this signature in database
49 changed files with 603 additions and 294 deletions
Download patch file Download diff file Expand all files Collapse all files

17
10 - PEOPLE/(T-Z)/Edmund Thompson.md
View file

@ -4,19 +4,20 @@ aliases:
- Edmund Thompson
- Edmund R. Thompson
- Ed Thompson
- E. R. Thompson
created: 2026-05-17
updated: 2026-05-18
updated: 2026-09-21
category: "Key Figures"
tags:
- Person
- Stargate
- Military
- ArmyIntelligence
summary: "Major General Edmund R. Thompson served as U.S. Army Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence (ACSI) from 1977 to 1981 and was the key early supporter of the Grill Flame remote viewing program, approving the Fort Meade unit, augmenting its budget, and personally participating in remote viewing sessions."
summary: "Army assistant chief of staff for intelligence from 1977 to 1981 who cancelled Gondola Wish in 1978, put the Army's psychic work under the code name Grill Flame, and ordered INSCOM to build a remote-viewing unit."
location: "Washington, D.C."
---
Major General Edmund R. "Ed" Thompson served as the [[U.S. Army]] Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence (ACSI) from 1977 to 1981. He was a key figure in the establishment and early support of the [[STARGATE PROJECT|Stargate Project]], then codenamed [[STARGATE PROJECT|Gondola Wish]] and later [[STARGATE PROJECT|Grill Flame]], having developed a personal interest in [[Psi|psi]] phenomena after reading [[Arthur Koestler]]'s pro-paranormal book *The Roots of Coincidence*.[^1]
Major General Edmund R. "Ed" Thompson served as the [[U.S. Army]] Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence (ACSI) from 1977 to 1981. He was a key figure in the establishment and early support of the [[STARGATE PROJECT|Stargate Project]], then codenamed Gondola Wish and later Grill Flame, having developed a personal interest in [[Psi|psi]] phenomena after reading [[Arthur Koestler]]'s pro-paranormal book *The Roots of Coincidence*.[^1]
Thompson approved [[Frederick Atwater|Skip Atwater]]'s proposal to assemble a remote viewing team at [[Fort Meade]], seeing it as an opportunity to involve the Army in psychic spying without relying too heavily on the [[Central Intelligence Agency]] or [[Stanford Research Institute]]. He provided initial funding, assigned Major [[Murray Watt|Scotty Watt]] to lead the unit alongside Atwater, and later augmented the unit's resources by increasing the budget and allocating positions for three full-time remote viewers. His support was crucial in the project's early survival despite the skepticism of many within the military and intelligence communities, including his successor [[William Odom]].[^1]
@ -24,6 +25,16 @@ Thompson participated in a remote viewing session himself, attempting to remote-
Later in his career Thompson expressed concerns about [[Albert Stubblebine]]'s management of [[United States Army Intelligence and Security Command|INSCOM]].[^1]
### The Documents
Major General Edmund R. Thompson was the [[United States Army|Army]]'s assistant chief of staff for intelligence from 1977 to 1981. By the spring of 1978 he "concluded there was sufficient evidence to warrant the development of a comprehensive program" in remote viewing; he "cancelled the Gondola Wish effort, placed a complete security envelope over Army's interest in psychoenergetics, and implemented a new program directed towards intelligence collection using remote viewing," and in October 1978 tasked INSCOM to build it, verbally. He told a British television series: "I had one or more briefings by SRI and was impressed. The decision I made was to set up a small, in-house, low-cost effort in remote viewing." He sat on the Grill Flame oversight committee formed on November 28, 1978, with Jack Vorona of DIA, Rear Admiral S. Shapiro, commander of the Naval Intelligence Command, Major General J. L. Brown of Air Force intelligence, and Lowell Dailey for the under secretary for research, "responsible for insuring that research and experiments fall within the legal guidelines."[^2][^3]
His eyes-only memorandum on the steering committee warned that Representative Charles Rose had an "oft-repeated desire to be kept up to date on a continuing basis" and that "a situation as before in which the last briefing was done at his instigation, forcing us to be reactors rather than action takers, should be avoided." By January 1980 he "has briefed the DDO on the INSCOM program." On April 16, 1981, he sat with Lieutenant Colonel Murray Watt to brief Rose, assuring him that the Army wished to keep working with SRI, and on May 8, 1981, asked the Secretary of the Army to approve work with civilian contractors under Procedure 18 of the Defense Department's rules on human subjects, granted on May 27 on condition that it serve "an important foreign intelligence or counterintelligence purpose." In 1981 his office transferred management of the project to INSCOM.[^4][^5]
### Footnotes
[^1]: Schnabel, Jim. *Remote Viewers*. Dell, 1997.
[^2]: US Army Intelligence and Security Command, "Briefing - Project Center Lane," c. 1984, CIA-RDP96-00789R002100180002-8. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection. Puthoff, H. E. "CIA-Initiated Remote Viewing Program at Stanford Research Institute," *Journal of Scientific Exploration,* vol. 10, no. 1, 1996, quoting the Channel 4 series *Equinox*.
[^3]: US Army Intelligence and Security Command, "INSCOM Project Grill Flame: Progress Report #1," February 21, 1979, with enclosures, CIA-RDP96-00788R001100070001-3. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.
[^4]: Thompson, E. R., Major General, memorandum "GRILL FLAME Steering Committee" to Dr. La Berge, eyes only, undated, CIA-RDP96-00788R002000250013-0. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection. 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. Watt, Murray B., memorandum for the record, "INSCOM GRILL FLAME Briefing for Congressman Rose, 16 April 1981," April 17, 1981, CIA-RDP96-00788R001100190007-4. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.
[^5]: Defense Intelligence Agency, "Grill Flame - Action Memorandum," December 11, 1981, with the memorandum of Major General E. R. Thompson of May 8, 1981, CIA-RDP96-00788R001100240001-4. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.