The Pentagon’s Brain
Operation Paperclip
Area 51
NOTES
Abbreviations used in Notes
ARCHIVES
Apollo 14 Transcript Apollo 14 Air/Ground Transcript (216 hours, 1,019 pages): Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Manned Spacecraft Center, Houston, TX
APS American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, PA
Author FOIA, Army author’s Freedom of Information Act request granted by U.S. Army
Author FOIA, CIA author’s Freedom of Information Act request granted by CIA
Author FOIA, DARPA: author’s Freedom of Information Act request granted by U.S. Department of Defense
Author FOIA, FBI author’s Freedom of Information Act request granted by FBI
CIA Central Intelligence Agency, digital collection
LOC Library of Congress, Washington, DC
NARA National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD
OSTI U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Scientific and Technical Information, digital collection
Star Gate Collection, CIA Pursuant to a 1995 congressional mandate, the CIA has since released more than 89,900 pages of declassified documents covering anomalous mental phenomena, presently available though the FOIA on DVD as .tif files or at the National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD
TNA, Kew The National Archives (United Kingdom), Kew, UK
U.S. GOVERNMENT AGENCIES & AFFILIATES
CIA Central Intelligence Agency
DIA Defense Intelligence Agency
DoD Department of Defense
FBI Federal Bureau of Investigation
INSCOM Intelligence and Security Command
LLNL Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
NASA National Aeronautics and Space Administration
NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization
SRI Stanford Research Institute (renamed SRI International in 1977)
Prologue
1. “extrasensory perception does exist”: Author FOIA, CIA: “An Overview of Extrasensory Perception,” January 27, 1975.
Chapter One: The Supernatural
1. he bailed out: “Hess Drama,” British Paramount News; 1941 official newsreel features an interview with the man who captured him.
2. Hess later said: Albert Speer, Spandau: The Secret Diaries, 176. According to Speer, Hess intended to tell the Duke of Hamilton, “We will guarantee England her empire; in return she will give us a free hand in Europe.” The full details of Hess’s subsequent interrogation by British intelligence remains classified until 2041.
3. “provide phony horoscopes”: “Sybil Leek, The South’s White Witch,” BBC Home, October 28, 2002.
4. “Mum stayed silent”: Interview with Julian Leek, Sybil’s son, who maintains her archive. In 1972, Sybil Leek was quoted in a classified DoD monograph on ESP that gives credence to the rumor that she became an American intelligence asset after the war; she moved to America in 1962.
5. Hitler declared Hess legally insane: Manvell and Fraenkel: Hess: A Biography, 142, 212.
6. “predict future events”: Wilhelm Wulff, Zodiac and Swastika, 112.
7. Führer told Albert Speer: Speer, Inside the Third Reich, 94. The rest of the quote is, “At least it had tradition. To think that I may some day be turned into an SS saint! Can you imagine it? I would turn over in my grave…”
8. “privilegium singulorum”: Wulff, Zodiac and Swastika, 110–111. Himmler had Wulff released from Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp and placed in his personal custody.
9. Schellenberg said: Ibid., 94.
10. same kind of manipulation: William Stephenson, A Man Called Intrepid, 363-365.
11. highest-profile astrologers: TNA, Kew, “Louis de Wohl File,” Minute Sheets, August 1, 1940–March 15, 1945, n.p.
12. “Seer Sees plot to Kill Hitler”: Ibid; “Press cutting from ‘New York Sun,’ 22.6.41.”
13. fabricated by MI6: Stephenson, A Man Called Intrepid, 364–365.
14. British spy agency first fed information to de Wohl: TNA, Kew, “Louis de Wohl File,” Minute Sheets, August 1, 1940–March 15, 1945, n.p. Stephenson ran the operational arm of UK intelligence inside the U.S., innocuously called the British Security Coordination Office, which was disguised as part of the British Passport Control Office in Rockefeller Center, New York.
15. “oversee U.S. intelligence collection”: “The Intrepid Life of Sir William Stephenson,” CIA Studies in Intelligence, News and Information, February 5, 2015.
16. “convinced of his supernatural powers”: Author FOIA, TNA, Kew, De Wohl File, Minute Sheets, National Archives, KV2/2821.
17. seized by the Gestapo: Wulff, Zodiac and Swastika, 95.
18. committed to a mental institution: Stephen E. Flowers, The Secret King: Karl Maria Wiligut, Himmler’s Lord of the Runes, Appendix E: “An Interview with Frau Gabriele Winckler-Dechend, 1997.”
19. mission of Ahnenerbe: Samuel Goudsmit, Alsos, 203. Literal translation is “something inherited from the forefathers.”
20. Survey of the So-called Occult Sciences: Fritz T. Epstein, War-Time Activities of the SS-Ahnenerbe, 79–81.
21. human experiments: Goudsmit, Alsos, 207.
22. “a thorough investigation”: Ibid., 207. In 1943, after the Royal Air Force bombed Hamburg, Himmler began the evacuation of the Ahnenerbe’s collections into secret places across the occupied territories. Until these collections were located, Alsos hoped that what was left behind in the Ahnenerbe’s former headquarters might offer clues.
23. “weird Teutonic symbols and rites”: Ibid., 124.
24. Ahnenerbe science first appeared outside Nazi Germany: Interview with Serge Kernbach. Also see Kernbach, “Unconventional Research in USSR and Russia,” International Journal of Unconventional Science, Cornell University (Fall 2013): n.p.
25. truth serum: Annie Jacobsen, Operation Paperclip, “Chapter Nineteen, Truth Serum,” 364-372. The Maryland Facilities were Fort Detrick in Frederick, and the Army Chemical Center, in Edgewood.
26. CIA hired magicians, hypnotists: John Marks, The Search for the “Manchurian Candidate,” 87, 194-198; interview with Julian Leek.
27. Nazi scientists to measure and monitor results: International Military Trials, Nurnberg: Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, Supplement A, Office of the United States, Chief of Counsel for Prosecution of Axis Criminality, United States Government Printing Office, Washington, 1947; Translation of Document 087, “Ahnenerbe Society: Institute for Military Scientific Research, June 21, 1943,” “Excerpts from 1944 diary, ‘Das Ahnenerbe,’ regarding medical experiments in concentration camps, GB 551.”
28. programs required countermeasures: Kernbach, “Unconventional Research in USSR and Russia,” n.p.
29. “Very early accounts”: Memorandum for the Record, Subject Project ARTICHOKE, November 21, 1952, signed by Sheffield Edwards (National Security Archives). See also Boxes 3 and 10, MKUTLRA 58: J.P. Morgan and Co. Agency Policy and Conferences; Wasson File.
Chapter Two: The Puharich Theory
1. worked as a milk delivery boy: Transcript, “Talk Given By Dr. Andrija Puharich at the Understanding Convention at Astara, Upland, California, Nov. 6, 1982.”
2. the natural world: Library of Congress (LOC), Marcella du Pont Papers (1861–1976); also discussed in H. G. M. Hermans, Memories of a Maverick, “Early Life and Adolescent [sic].” Much of the information in this chapter comes from Puharich’s papers and letters located inside the Marcella du Pont Papers. These rare original documents provide information about the Round Table Foundation previously unreported.
3. “few people really know their own mind”: Andrija Puharich, “An Intellectual Autobiography of Henry Puharich,” quoted in Hermans, Memories of a Maverick, “College and Medical School,” 37. (Hermans uses several pseudonyms in her book.)
4. “untangle the jungle”: LOC, Marcella du Pont Papers, Letter to Dr. Garfi
eld, director of Kaiser Permanente Hospital, from Henry Karel Puharich, 1947. Also in Hermans, Memories of a Maverick, 39.
5. mentor, Dr. Andrew C. Ivy: Author FOIA, CIA, “Henry (Andrija) Karl Puharich, Career Résumé,” n.p., n.d. (15 pages). By the late 1950s and early ’60s, Dr. Ivy had become associated with a bogus cancer treatment called krebiozen. The drug, developed from the blood serum of horses in Argentina, promised to reduce the size of tumors in cancer patients. The American Medical Association led a campaign that eventually denounced the drug as a fraud; Ivy never recovered his once stellar reputation.
6. elemental to his character: I discussed Puharich with Andy Puharich, Uri Geller, Edgar Mitchell, Charles Tart, John Alexander, Jacques Vallée, Hal Puthoff, Stephanie Hurkos, and others.
7. “Watch long trails of birds”: LOC, Marcella du Pont Papers, Puharich, “Introduction to the Round Table Laboratory of Experimental Electrobiology,” Camden, Maine, 1949, n.p. “This force,” wrote Puharich, “existed in man since the Golden Age of Greece. And it exists in our frenetic age.”
8. “nature of the nervous system”: Ibid., n.p.
9. Joyce Borden Balokovic: LOC, Marcella du Pont Papers, “Trustees, February 8, 1947” (appears to be Puharich’s handwritten notes).
10. Astor’s space-traveling protagonists: John Jacob Astor, A Journey in Other Worlds: A Romance of the Future, 321.
11. “mother of magic”: LOC, Marcella du Pont Papers, Andrija Puharich to Marcella du Pont, n.d.
12. “my great friend Admiral John Gingrich”: LOC, Marcella du Pont Papers, Letter from Marcella Miller du Pont to her brother, Victor A. Miller, Esq., July 15, 1953.
13. Navy man, Rexford Daniels: Dan Hoolihan, “EMC Society History on Rexford Daniels—One of the Founders of the EMC Society,” EMC.org newsletter, 50th Anniversary Edition, 2007. Daniels worked at the MIT Rad Lab Transitions Department Group 39 in the 1940s.
14. quest for the elusive sixth sense: LOC, Marcella du Pont Papers, Puharich, “Introduction to the Round Table Laboratory of Experimental Electrobiology,” Camden, Maine, 1949,” Appendix, n.p.; Round Table Foundation: Progress Report, 1950, n.p. Puharich’s pursuits were not confined to extrasensory perception but welcomed all things parapsychological, including precognition, psychokinesis, and spirit channeling. Board meetings and weekly séances were held in the library, with subjects ranging from teleology to palm reading.
15. his eponymous torpedo: “Radio Controlled Torpedo Wins Favor of Navy and Army Experts,” Aerial Age Weekly 3 (September 4, 1916): 744.
16. mentored by three of the most famous inventors: Tesla, unsuccessful in dealings with the military, taught Hammond about radio remote control. After the Navy endorsed Hammond’s remote-controlled torpedo, Congress appropriated $750,000 ($16 million in 2016 currency) for the acquisition of what was hailed as a “wonderful invention.”
17. seamlessly balanced success: “Castle Is Inventor’s Vision of the Past,” New York Times, October 9, 1988.
18. “He taught me the art of invention”: LOC, Marcella du Pont Papers, Puharich Notes, n.p. Mentorship also discussed in Hermans, Memories of a Maverick, 48-49.
19. precedent for this idea: Alli N. McCoy and Yong Siang Tan, “Otto Loewi (1873–1961): Dreamer and Nobel laureate,” Singapore Medical Journal 55, no. 1 (January 2014): 3–4; Banting, “The Discovery of Insulin,” Nobel.org; Webb Garrison, “How to Produce New Ideas,” Popular Mechanics (March 1954): 102–105.
20. symbol of the ouroboros: At least one historian has dedicated his research efforts to try to prove that Kekulé “may have been involved in [a] joke.” Malcolm W. Browne, “The Benzene Ring: Dream Analysis,” New York Times, August 16, 1988.
21. [Tesla] experienced extrasensory perception as a child: “Nikola Tesla,” Time, The Weekly Newsmagazine XVIII, July 20, 1931; Andrija Puharich, “Effects of Tesla’s Life and Inventions,” 2-4.
22. establishment scientist and CIA asset: APS Records, Warren Sturgis McCulloch Papers, B: M139, Series 1, “Puharich, Henry K.” The Macy Foundation was a CIA front, as discussed in John Marks, The Search for the “Manchurian Candidate,” 63, 120.
23. “metal fillings were coated with carborundum dust”: Ibid., Letter to Dr. Henry K. Puharich, from Warren S. McCulloch, May 23, 1951. Puharich, “Paper No. 2,” Sixth Ozone World Conference of the International Ozone Association, May 22–26, 1983, Washington, D.C.: 112–115.
24. Krock compared Puharich’s quest to that of Louis Pasteur: Arthur Krock, “One Phase of the Unending Quest,” New York Times, September 7, 1951.
25. Navy: Puharich’s connection to the Navy’s alleged ESP research on submarines has long since been denied, so these letters add insight to that debate. Admiral Gingrich was former chief of security and intelligence for the Atomic Energy Commission. When Marcella du Pont made the introduction, the admiral served as Chief of Naval Material, making him responsible for all Navy procurement programs. The connection between Rexford Daniels (who went on to serve as a science adviser to President Kennedy) and Andrija Puharich has also now been established.
26. new government psyops organization: Alfred H. Paddock, Jr., US Army Special Warfare: Its Origins, 89–90.
27. Stanley also served: Author FOIA, CIA: Memorandum for Brig. General John L. Magruder, OSD, Subject: Psychological Warfare Organization, May 28, 1951. It’s worth noting that the OCPW was created on January 15, 1951, to combine propaganda—including leaflets and loudspeakers—with radical, new unconventional warfare activities.
28. “quite interested” Puharich, Sacred Mushroom, 5. See also LOC, Marcella du Pont Papers, Puharich personal papers (handwritten notes). Puharich writes, “Reason for securing interest of USN [U.S. Navy] in RTF [Round Table Foundation] is Electrophysical Enclosure Technique, also called treated Faraday Cage.”
29. some kind of supernatural force: There are numerous YouTube video interviews of Puharich discussing his belief that there are nine principal forces overseeing reality.
30. “whistling between his teeth”: Puharich, Uri, 13.
31. some kind of extraterrestrial intelligence: “The Nine were interested in helping mankind further evolution,” Puharich believed, as per YouTube interviews cited above.
Chapter Three: Skeptics, Charlatans, and the U.S. Army
1. Fads and Fallacies: Martin Gardner’s book was originally titled In the Name of Science: An Entertaining Survey of the High Priests and Cultists of Science, Past and Present. I cite the retitle as it is generally referred to this way.
2. “Since the bomb exploded over Hiroshima”: Gardner, Fads and Fallacies, 5–7.
3. “an enormous self-deception”: Ibid., 303–304, 308.
4. ESP and animals: Author FOIA, Army: “Memo, To O’Goff and O’Toole. From J. N. [sic] Rhine, Director, Duke University, Parapsychology Laboratory,” July 10, 1953.
5. “an utter failure”: Author FOIA, Army: Rhine Study, “Research on Animal Orientation with Emphasis on the Phenomenon of Homing in Pigeons,” January 26, 1954, 11.
6. “Why do some pigeons get lost?”: Ibid., 12.
7. The cat experiment was designed: Ibid., 10–11; in 1952, Osis wrote several unclassified papers on similar studies, including “A test of the occurrence of a psi effect between man and the cat,” The Journal of Parapsychology 16, no. 4 (1952): 233.
8. After two hundred trials: Rhine Study, 13.
9. “There is a wide range of military uses of basic [research] programs”: Ibid., 15. It is likely that Rhine worked on still-classified Navy programs; in numerous monographs he thanks the Navy for its support of his work—work that is never described. The Navy had reason to be involved in such research. With its revolutionary new nuclear-powered submarine, the USS Nautilus, Navy physiologists studied reports of anomalous perception manifested by sailors in extremely close quarters, underwater, for extended periods of time. Scientists with the Naval Submarine Medical Research Laboratory examined a variety of reported instances in which sailors experienced auditory and visual hallu
cinations in these extreme conditions. Of the 550 papers published by the NSMRL in the 1950s and 1960s, at least seven appear to have addressed extrasensory perception (my interpretation); all remain classified.
10. deliver a classified briefing on extrasensory perception: Author FOIA, CIA: “Henry (Andrija) Karl Puharich, Career Résumé,” n.p., n.d. Puharich had been personally invited by the commandant of the U.S. Air Force School of Aviation Medicine to give a lecture on ESP. The doctors there included a large number of former Nazi doctors who were researching human physiology performance in extreme conditions. See Annie Jacobsen, Operation Paperclip. These meetings are also cited in Kenneth A. Kress, “Parapsychology in Intelligence: A Personal Review and Conclusions,” Studies in Intelligence, 21 (Winter 1977).
11. “to find [a] drug”: Author FOIA, CIA: “Henry (Andrija) Karl Puharich, Career Résumé,” n.p., n.d.; Puharich, Sacred Mushroom, 35.
12. MKULTRA Subproject 58: Marks, The Search for the “Manchurian Candidate,” 122. In 1973, the CIA deliberately destroyed most of the MKULTRA files on the orders of then CIA Director Richard Helms; Church Committee Hearings, Record Book I, 404. See also Puharich, Sacred Mushroom, 36.
13. secret to conceal: Hermans, Memories of a Maverick, 65.
14. Harry Stump: “Harry Stump, WWII Resistance Fighter,” Associated Press, August 31, 1998. In Puharich’s writings and elsewhere, Stump is given various pseudonyms. In his autobiography, published posthumously, the connection to Puharich is established. Stump was a war hero in his native Holland, honored by the Dutch government for resistance work against the Nazis. Acting as a courier, Stump, age seventeen, was captured by the Gestapo, beaten, and tortured to the edge of death.
15. “began to draw Egyptian hieroglyphs”: Puharich, Sacred Mushroom, 15-16. All of the information about this event comes from Puharich’s book; no second source was located.