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Key Figures |
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Jack Vorona was the Assistant Director for Scientific and Technical Intelligence at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and served as the overall manager of the Grill Flame program. |
Jack Vorona was the Assistant Director for Scientific and Technical Intelligence at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and served as the overall manager of the STARGATE PROJECT program. He played a crucial role in the continuation and restructuring of the U.S. government's psychic research programs after the Central Intelligence Agency scaled back its involvement12.
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 and Psychokinesis2.
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 time2.
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 abilities2.
Vorona chaired the Remote Viewing Tasking Group for Sun Streak, which included representatives from the CIA, NSA, State Department, and various military and intelligence agencies. This group handled targets such as underground tunnels in Korea, Silkworm Missile launch facilities in Iran, and the errant nuclear-powered Cosmos 1900 satellite2.
He received Hal Puthoff's sixty-page classified report, "Psychoenergetics Research in the People’s Republic of China (1982)," which confirmed the extensive research into Extraordinary Human Body Function and its military applications in China, driven by Qian Xuesen2.
Vorona, along with General Edmund Thompson, briefed Congressman Charlie Rose on the Grill Flame program in the late 1970s. He accompanied Rose on tours of the remote viewing facilities at both Stanford Research Institute and Fort Meade, and was a staunch supporter of the program, despite the skepticism it faced1.
Jack Vorona retired after twenty-five years of service at DIA and was inducted into the DIA's Torch Bearers Hall in 20112.
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 in 1983 (the chronology's date reads as March 31 or August 3), "the Honorable George H.W. 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
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Schnabel, Jim. Remote Viewers. Dell, 1997. ↩︎
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Jacobsen, Annie. Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis. Little, Brown and Company, 2017. ↩︎
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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. ↩︎
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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. ↩︎