psychoceramics: (fwd) Re: CIA confirms 'psychic' spies

[acb @ bruce.cs.monash.edu.au (Andrew C Bulhak)]

You don't suppose that the operations described here were a result of 
Nancy Reagan's influence, do you?

From: NLQR70A @ prodigy.com (Robert Dunn)
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy
Subject: Re: CIA confirms 'psychic' spies

 
  U.S. Secretly Used Psychics in Spy Cases

  Source: AP
  Byline: Richard Cole
  Date: 11/29/95


  San Francisco - For 20 years, the United States secretly has used 
psychics in attempts to hunt down Moammar Gadhafi, find plutonium in 
North Korea and help drug enforcement agencies, the CIA and others 
confirmed Tuesday.

  The ESP spying operations - codenamed "Stargate" - were unreliable, but 
threee psychics continued to work out of Fort Meade, Md., at least into 
July, said researchers who evaluated the program for the CIA.

  The program has cost the government $20 million, said Ray Hyman, a 
psychology professor at the University of Oregon in Eugene, who helped 
prepare the study. [Hyman is also a prominent CSICOP debunker - BD]

  He said the psychics were used by various agencies for remote viewing - 
to help provide information from distant sites.

  Up to six psychics at any time worked at assignments that included 
trying to hunt down Gadhafi before the 1986 bombing of Libya, find 
plutonium in North Korea in 1994, and locate kidnapped Brig. Gen. James L.
 Dozier in Italy.

  Gadhafi was not injured in the bombing. Dozier, kidnapped by the Red 
Brigades in Italy in 1981, was freed by Italian police after 42 days, 
apparently without help from the psychics. News reports at the time said 
the police were assisted by an undisclosed number of U.S. State and 
Defense Department specialists using sophisticated electronic 
surveillance equipment.

  The study reported mixed success with the psychics. Hyman was skeptical,
 while his co-author, Jessica Utts, a professor of statistics at the 
University of California-Davis, said some of the results were promising.

  "My conclusion was that there's no evidence these people have done 
anything helpful for the government," Hyman said.

  Utts, however, said the government psychics were accurate about 15 
percent of the time. In some tests, when given a series of four choices, 
they picked the right answer a third of the time. [A whopping 8% above 
random chance - BD]

  "I think they would be effective if they were used in conjunction with 
other intelligence," she said.

  CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield confirmed the existence of Stargate and 
the study.

  "The CIA is reviewing available programs regarding parapsychological 
phenomena, mostly remote viewing, to determine their usefullness to the 
intelligence community," he said.

  Utts said the statistical results were promising enough that research 
should continue.

  I would like to see funding in the open science world - I think we're 
at the point that something needs to be explained," she said.

-=END=-


  One thing that needs to be explained is how the government can spend 
$20 million on a program that yields such meager results - BD.




-- 
a--@c--.monash.edu.au        "These crazy words of mine,
http://www.zikzak.net/~acb      so wrong they could be..."