Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis

摘要

When the book Phenomena by Annie Jacobsen first arrived, I expected it to be filled with all the facts that I know about the U.S. Army's involvement with ESP. Having been involved with the Army's use of remote viewing since the very beginning as Remote Viewer #001, and serving in that capacity for the entire 27 years of the Army's Star Gate program's existence, I have had direct access to all of the operational material, as well as the science. I also worked in the lab at Stanford Research Institute International (SRI) for a number of years, as well as the Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) lab for the entire time of its existence. So, I expected a pleasurable and comfortable read. Annie Jacobsen's book is supposed to be the definitive history of the Government's use of psychics for intelligence purposes. Unfortunately, the book does not start out in this direction. Within the first 200 pages, she attempts to entertain the reader with a less-than- concise history of the paranormal and its tangencies to the government; her purported connections to intelligence services are all over the map. They include the Air Force, CIA, and sometimes the Army. However, the way she presents the material is confusing and fails to identify which service or agency she is talking about. The reader must repetitively go to the index or chapter references to know which. The 'primary' behind the Star Gate Program was the United States Army, which is why this is important. The CIA funded approximately $160,000 at the very beginning of the program, which established the possibility of remote viewing research (RV). The U.S. Army and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) provided just short of $19,000,000, and established the RV threat as a collection methodology.