How Men Really Stare at Goats

At the very beginning of the movie "The Men Who Stare at Goats," Brigadier General Dean Hopgood rises from his desk, announces to a secretary he is going “into the next office” and then charges the wall ahead of him. His intention is to control the movement and energy of his molecules in a way that will allow him to “phase through" the wall. The general's attempt fails spectacularly, and he collapses onto the floor in pain, again.

In reality, the now-retired Major General Albert Stubblebine (the character upon whom Hopgood is based) once tried the exact same thing in his office during the Cold War with similar results. Stubblebine was an early proponent of “psychic warfare” and started the first U.S. Army probes into military applications of paranormal phenomena.

The movie "The Men Who Stare at Goats" is first and foremost a military satire, but it is a satire that stays admirably true to its unusual (and once highly-classified) real-life roots.

George Clooney's character, Lyn Cassady, is paranormally gifted but is not always taken seriously by his peers due to his eccentricity and spastic interactions with others, much like Joseph McMoneagle, the most talented of the U.S. Army's original remote viewing team.

McMoneagle was awarded the Legion of Merit for his service as a U.S. Army psychic spy, for “producing crucial and vital intelligence unavailable from any other source.”

McMoneagle's how-to guide, "Remote Viewing Secrets: A Handbook," is a down-to-Earth instructional manual on the subject available from the Mobile Public Library at either the Moorer or West Regional branches.

Apparently, remote viewing is something almost anyone can do. Although mystics have been paranormally collecting information for millenia, in 1972 physicists Harold Puthoff and Russell Targ formally developed a standardized, scientific method for gathering intelligence paranormally.

Here's how remote viewing works. The remote viewer is assigned a target, which could be an object, location, or, less commonly, a person. The remote viewer then enters an altered state of consciousness by attempting to block out as much psychological and environmental “noise” as possible and eliminating the influence of the ego completely. Many novice viewers note this is the hardest part.

In his book, McMoneagle recommends the Buddhist art of Zen as an excellent way to discipline one's mind to block out all outside interference.

Once the remote viewer's mind is clear, they focus on the target; it's like tuning an FM knob. Once an image or descriptor comes to the viewer's awareness, it is absolutely vital that it be recorded without any viewer analysis.

All analysis of target information must be done once the remote viewing session has concluded. Analyzing the information as it is discovered is strictly discouraged, as conscious examination of these things distracts the viewer and creates bias, which can then taint information obtained immediately afterward.

If this seems outlandish to you, consider that the U.S. Army Intelligence division trained soldiers in remote viewing (RV) for 23 years, from 1972 to 1995, in cooperation with both the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Once kickstarted by Stubblebine, the military RV program was initially referred to as project “Grill Flame,” then progressed through several more esoteric titles such as “Gondola Wish” and “Center Lane” before the umbrella term “Star Gate” was used to label the entirety of the project.

Although McMoneagle was considered the top army remote viewer, with an unheard-of accuracy rate of more than 65 percent, Star Gate employed an entire team of trained viewers and monitors.

For a detailed account of the government RV program from conception to death, check out Paul H. Smith's "Reading the Enemy's Mind: Inside Star Gate," available from the Mobile Public Library, West Regional branch. Smith's book details his service as a viewer for the Center Lane Project and offers a unique insider perspective that complements McMoneagle's instructional manual.

Of course, there's more to "The Men Who Stare at Goats" than just remote viewing, and the U.S. government did way more research into psi phenomena than "Star Gate."

The Army also explored the military applications of psychokinesis, the ability to influence physical reality with the mind. Believe it or not, soldiers did attempt to stop the heart of a goat through concentration and focus of mental effort, with some apparent success.

“Project Jedi” used altered states of consciousness to improve soldiers' handgun accuracy.

Also, the Army developed (and later scrapped) protocols for the First Earth Battalion, a highly-specialized detachment of “warrior monks” trained to use herbs, positive influence, and non-lethal combat tactics to dissolve conflicts before military force became necessary. Although the First Earth detachment was never formally mobilized, its field manual still exists in print today.

USA Parapsychological Investigations will be doing a secondary article in the future on the government experimentation with psi phenomena and their military applications.

While you're waiting, go see "The Men Who Stare at Goats." You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll bend things with your mind.