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Pat Price, an ex-police commissioner, was given map co-ordinates and asked if they meant anything, he replied with a five page report. He described the buildings in question, and the landscape. He even provided a tour of each building, and what was in each room, and the names on the desks. The only thing that did not make sense was at the end of the report: ‘Cue ball. Four ball. Eight ball. Side pocket.’ It was later determined that he was reading the file names of a group of reports that were in a locked drawer, in one of the offices.

He did not know it, but Price had just described a top-secret National Security Agency (NSA) communications centre 210 km outside Washington. He had never been there, and had written the report on the other side of the continent in California. His questioners were shaken, and understandably so were the NSA when they found out about the report, and they quickly called a security review.

Until he died in 1975, Price was at the heart of one of the most extraordinary military projects of the modern times. ‘Project Scanate’ was a series of CIA financed trials that were designed to test ESP (Extrasensory Perception) as an intelligence gathering tool. If everything went well, then a new type of agent would be created, the psychic spy.

World War 2 unleashed on the world a torrent of Clairvoyance, in 1941, Stalin’s psychic advisor, Wolf Messing, told of the death of Hitler an the defeat of Germany. and in Germany at the Nazi High Command, a Pendulum Institute was set up to try to detect boats and other weapons by pendulum dowsing.

When news of this reached London, a young Naval Intelligence Commander named Ian Fleming - later to create James Bond - leaked a story that Britain had its own pendulum swingers who were producing much better results. The Germans were dismayed, particularly as they were losing many U-boats at that time.

It was in the Cold War, however, that psychic spying really took off. Propaganda in those years makes it harder to separate fact from fiction, but the Communist Bloc was undoubtedly ahead of the west. It poured thousands - some say millions - into mind-power programmes.

Deadly Experiments.

The spending produced some unpleasant results, such as the ability to kill frogs by mentally stopping their hearts - the specialty of a St Petersburg psychic, Nina Kulagina. The ultimate goal, according to Dr Milan Ryzl, a Czech biochemist who defected to the US in 1967, and who had visited Soviet psychic labs, was thought control.

Dr Nikolai E. Khokhlov, a KGB assassin who defected in 1954, had a more alarming story to tell. The KGB were dabbling with ‘psychotronic’ weaponry - the psychic destruction of missiles, the blinding of radar systems and the disruption of computer electronics. In one experiment, he claimed, the had successfully succeeded in breaking a person’s spine by psychotronic energy.

Whether or not such stories were true, the US was not prepared to dismiss psychic power. In 1971, Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell attempted Esp. from space - unsuccessfully trying to make contact with a ground-based psychic. The following year, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) were intrigued enough to start developing a machine that could help astronauts to communicate telepathically.

The idea proved unworkable, but the scientists hired for the project, Harold Puthof and Russell Targ of the SRI in California, continued with the line of research, and NASA continued to partially fund it. In those days, 70% of SRI’s $90 million budget came through government contracts.

In 1972, Targ and Puthof, both quantum physicists specializing in laser and microwave technology, were approached by the New York psychic and modernist painter, Ingo Swann. As part of a research team at the American Society of Psychical Research (ASPR), Swann was involved in the study of remote viewing - a method of viewing locations psychically. Targ and Puthof realized the potential of this ability and set about developing a team of ‘super psychics’ headed by Swann and the retired police commissioner, Pat Price.

By their own accounts, Targ and Puthof’s experiments were a great success. And it was not long before the intelligence community became interested in their findings. In October 1972, a secret meeting was arranged between Puthof and an anonymous ‘scientist’. According to Ingo Swann, the result was a $50,000 grant to ‘find one repeatable phenomenon that might have intelligence applications.’

Top-Secret Funding.

This new sponsor was only ever referred to as the ‘East Coast Challenger’, but it was common knowledge tat it was the CIA. They gave SRI eight months to devise a method of psychic spying, and Targ and Puthof began work on Project Scanate.

By July 1973, after months of experiments and trials, finally found a ‘repeatable phenomenon’ that would satisfy the CIA. Puthof met with the ‘East Coast Challenger’ and presented the research findings. Within a week, Ingo Swann received his first set of co-ordinates from the intelligence agency. The psychic spying programme was under way.

The Cover-Up Begins.

Supporters of remote viewing now had less trouble persuading sceptical Pentagon budget managers of its military potential. As reports of success multiplied, however, so too did the secrecy surrounding he project. Then, in 1975, with the death of Pat Price, came the announcement that the psychic spying programme had come o an end.

At least, this was the official line. Yet a 1978 survey showed that out of 14 US parapsychology labs, 5 had been approached for information by the government. And in January 1980, when Iran was holding several Americans hostage, the government again turned to SRI for help.

Despite the denials, the US government continued to finance psychical research. In 1977, a new venture - Project Grillflame - provided US military and intelligence agencies with their own team of psychic spies. A remote-viewing station was set up at Fort Meade, Maryland, and manned by trained psychics from the army’s Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM).

Operation Stargate.

Grillflame officially continued secretly - the budget was simply transferred to the Pentagon ‘general’ budget. The codename also changed - first to Centerlane then Sunstreak then finally Stargate - and the project was taken over by the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA), but the objectives remained the same.

Sources: The X Factor