A pair of excited TV news anchors led into their 11 pm show on Nov. 28, 1995, with a story on exciting new evidence that psychic powers do exist. Furthermore, according to Sacramento stellar news readers Alan Frio and Beth Ruyak, the exciting new evidence provides exciting new evidence that the government did not waste the taxpayers' monies during all those years its spent millions on psychic spies, psychic weapons, psychic psychics. The program, called "Stargate", was run by the CIA and was used for such operations as the tracking down of Gadhafi of Libya. Those of us in northern California who were tuned in to KXTV 10 that night were treated to a special report on this exciting new development. A professor from the University of California at Davis, Dr. Jessica Utts, was interviewed and gave startling new testimony to her studies which indicate in exciting new ways that Joe McMoneagle has psychic powers.
Mr. McMoneagle claims he helped locate the U.S. hostages taken by Iran during Jimmie Carter's presidency. I am sure he helped, but was his help of any use....well, that is up to you to decide. McMoneagle was in the army for 16 years, apparently serving some or most of that time as an army psychic spy. Now a civilian psychic consultant, McMoneagle has turned his talents to more significant feats in recent days, as Dr. Utts demonstrated. She held up a drawing allegedly done by McMoneagle and declared that it was done by remote viewing. Another scientific researcher had gone to the Altamont pass, known around here for its miles of funny looking windmills on acres of rolling hills. McMoneagle tried to see what the researcher at Altamont was seeing and then draw what he was seeing. Of course, McMoneagle wasn't seeing in the ordinary sense of seeing, since he was in Davis or Chicago or who knows where. He was seeing with psychic powers what someone somewhere else was seeing with their eyes. This exciting phenomenon is known as remote viewing.
True believers will be disappointed to know that our excited newscasters did not ask Dr. Utts for any evidence that she had the slightest clue as to how to do a controlled experiment to demonstrate these exciting powers Mr. McMoneagle has. The sum total of the evidence for this exciting new evidence of government economy and the value of psychic spying consisted of only one drawing and Dr. Utts's word that it looks like the Altamont pass. I will testify that in fact the drawing did have a strong resemblance to the Altamont pass. It also had a strong resemblance to ships on a stormy sea and to debris in a cloudstorm. Nevertheless, it would seem unseemly to doubt a researcher in statistics at a prestigious university such as UC Davis. So, we must take it on faith that she has examined the matter thoroughly....well, at least more thoroughly than our local newscasters.
As a public service, I notified both Channel 10 and Dr. Utts of James Randi's challenge: $10,000 of his own money [plus pledges from others which at this writing amount to $500,000] to anyone who can prove they have psychic powers. I don't think a heartfelt testimonial from Dr. Utts or Mr. McMoneagle will qualify. In any case, there is little doubt about how they will respond to this challenge.
However, in a startling new development CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield says that "The CIA is reviewing available programs regarding parapsychological phenomena, mostly remote viewing, to determine their usefulness to the intelligence community." He also notes that the Stargate program was found to be "unpromising" in the 1970s and was turned over to the Defense Department. At one time as many as sixteen psychics worked for the government and the Defense Intelligence Agency made them available to other government departments.
Our tax dollars were used to test these psychics at the Stanford Research Institute (no connection with Stanford University) by the illustrious Targ and Puthoff and by another outfit with the unassuming name of Science Applications International Corp. The psychics were tested for powers of remote viewing, precognition and clairvoyance. In an Associated Press article by Richard Cole, the studies are briefly described by Dr. Utts. (Apparently the Cole article, which appeared in the Sacramento Bee is what stimulated our local TV newscasters to report on these startling new discoveries.)
Remote viewing was tested by having a "sender" travel to a remote site and view an object while the "viewer" in the laboratory tried to describe and draw the object. It was reported without comment by Mr. Cole that "A particularly talented viewer accurately drew windmills when the sender was at a windmill farm at Altamont Pass."
Precognition was tested by having the psychics "try to guess an answer that had not yet been reached." I must admit that I have no idea what that means.
Clairvoyance was tested by having the psychics try "to discover something that has happened but is not yet known." To Mr. Cole's credit, he does mention that Utts and Ray Hyman, who apparently collaborated with her in evaluating Stargate, stated that "the research was faulty in some respects. The government often used only one 'judge' to determine how close the psychics had come to the right answer. That should have been duplicated by other judges." Hyman is a psychologist at the University of Oregon and well-known skeptic and author. I would assume that Hyman, if not Utts, would have required a bit more of these studies than that they have more judges.
Cole concluded his article with an absolutely unintelligible statement attributed to Utts which I will not duplicate here. The gist of the statement was that she would like to see more funding of psychic research.
Well, we may not sleep better tonight, knowing that we no longer have psychics working for the Defense Department and the CIA. But we can be comforted by the fact that we still enjoy an eager scientific and academic community ready and willing to investigate anything for the sake of knowledge and national security, and a vigilant press corp keeping an eye on things. What more could we ask for?
See related articles on astral projection and the psychic detectives and their blue sense.
further reading
"U.S. didn't forsee faults in psychic spies program," Richard Cole, Associated Press, Sacramento Bee, Nov. 29, 1995, A2.
"Psychics and Spooks, How spoon-benders fought the cold war," by Gregory Vistica, Newsweek, Dec. 11, 1995, p. 50.
Hyman, Ray. "'Cold Reading': How to Convince Strangers That You Know All About Them" in The Skeptical Inquirer Spring/Summer 1977.
James Randi, Flim-Flam! (Buffalo, New York: Prometheus Books,1982).