26 lines
3.5 KiB
Markdown
26 lines
3.5 KiB
Markdown
---
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created: 2025-07-22
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updated: 2026-10-08
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title: Disinformation
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tags:
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- concept
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- intelligence
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- propaganda
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description: Disinformation is false information deliberately and often covertly spread in order to influence public opinion or obscure the truth.
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category: "Intelligence Concept"
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summary: "Disinformation is false information deliberately and often covertly spread in order to influence public opinion or obscure the truth."
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---
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Disinformation is false information deliberately and often covertly spread in order to influence public opinion or obscure the truth. In accounts of Cold War [[Parapsychology|psi]] research it figures in the origins of the [[Soviet Union|Soviet]] research program.[^1]
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The French accounts of 1959 and 1960 describing telepathy tests between a shore laboratory and the USS Nautilus ([[The Nautilus (Telepathy Project)]]) were cited by [[Leonid Vasiliev]] in 1960, in a lecture at Leningrad and, according to [[I. V. Tsykunov]], in a report to Defense Minister [[Rodion Malinovsky]], when he argued for renewed Soviet psi research.[^2][^3] The [[U.S. Navy]] denied the reports, and the submarine's first captain, [[William R. Anderson]], said in 1963 that the Nautilus was in dock on the date given.[^4] [[Martin Ebon]] recorded that some Americans entertained the hypothesis that the story was a "Soviet plant," a piece of "disinformation" launched in France to provide a reason for a start-up of Soviet psychic studies, and that [[Gerard Messadie|Gérald Messadié]] told him in 1980 that the whole thing was probably a hoax and that [[Jacques Bergier]], who had ties to French intelligence, was his source.[^5] [[Jim Schnabel]] wrote that the story may have been Bergier's private fraud or a disinformation ploy designed to stir up valuable data about American psi research or to encourage Russia to undertake wasteful psi research.[^6] A 1975 [[Defense Intelligence Agency|DIA]] study described the Nautilus "experiments" as "probably mythical," while saying the claims had "one tangible consequence" for Soviet research.[^7]
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### Footnotes
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[^1]: Schnabel, Jim. *Remote Viewers*. Dell, 1997.
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[^2]: Anfilov, Gleb. "Is Telepathy Possible?" *The Soviet Review*, vol. 2, no. 6 (June 1961), pp. 3-7, translated from Znanie-Sila, 1960, no. 12. https://archive.org/details/sim_russian-social-science-review_1961-06_2_6
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[^3]: Tsykunov, I. V. "От фантазии к реальности: как история «Наутилуса» открыла гонку сверхъестественных вооружений между СССР и США" [From fantasy to reality: how the story of the Nautilus opened the race for supernatural weapons between the USSR and the USA]. Aliter, no. 20 (2023), pp. 34-55. https://cyberleninka.ru/article/n/ot-fantazii-k-realnosti-kak-istoriya-nautilusa-otkryla-gonku-sverhestestvennyh-vooruzheniy-mezhdu-sssr-i-ssha.
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[^4]: Newsletter of the Parapsychology Foundation, "Nautilus Hoax Exposed," vol. 10, no. 6, November-December 1963, citing This Week, September 8, 1963. NSA-RDP96X00790R000100040002-2, https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/nsa-rdp96x00790r000100040002-2.
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[^5]: Ebon, Martin. *Psychic Warfare: Threat or Illusion?* McGraw-Hill, 1983, chapter 3, pp. 28-31.
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[^6]: Schnabel, Jim. *Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies*. Dell, 1997, pp. 90-93.
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[^7]: Maire, Louis F., III, and J. D. LaMothe. *Soviet and Czechoslovakian Parapsychology Research*, DST-1810S-387-75, September 1975, CIA-RDP96-00787R000500420001-2, https://cia.gov/readingroom/document/cia-rdp96-00787r000500420001-2.
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