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  CHAPTER ELEVEN: BRAIN INVADERS—PSYCHIC WARFARE

  “There are weapons systems that operate on the power of the mind and whose lethal capacity has already been demonstrated.” These were the words of U.S. Army Lt. Col. John B. Alexander in his startling article published by the U.S. Army’s Military Review Journal in December 1980. In the article, Alexander discussed “psychotronic weapons” such as the use of telepathic hypnosis. He asserted: “The ability to heal or cause disease can be transmitted over distance, thus inducing illness or death for no apparent cause.”

  For those of you who are prone to believe that Lt. Col. Alexander possibly has lost his mind, consider the fact that this was an article published in a staid, conservative U.S. military journal read almost exclusively by senior military brass and civilian defense analysts. Actually, Alexander was merely summarizing some of the shocking conclusions already made by the Pentagon based on decades of ultrasecret research on mind control and psychic means of conducting warfare and intelligence operations.

  At least three books discussing these topics have been recently published. There is the 1983 book Psychic Warfare: Threat or Illusion? by Martin Ebon, and 1984’s Mind Wars by Ronald McRae. McRae’s book centers on the research done by U.S. intelligence and military agencies. A third book, The Mind Race by Russell Targ and Keith Harary, also partially reviews U.S. efforts, but it is particularly enlightening in its examination of the Soviet drive to develop mind warfare. Targ, a physicist at SRI International, a California think tank, conducted psychic studies under contract with the U.S. Navy in the 1970s.

  MIND WEAPONS: WHAT THEY ARE

  There are a number of different mind control and psychic warfare techniques being studied. These include:

  Remote viewing—the ability of psychic personnel to read the contents of documents at a distance or to visualize the geographic layout of an enemy’s distant military installation, or to discern troop, ship, or submarine whereabouts.

  Telepathic hypnosis—the use of mind power to command, at long distance, an enemy to do something he would otherwise not do. For example, order troops into an ambush or order an intelligence officer to divulge secret information to a planted spy.

  Disease projection—induce illness or death (especially heart attacks and asphyxiation) from a distance. Uncontrollable fright and fear could also be generated by mind power.

  Mind alteration—the long-distance ability to cause an opponent’s mind—say, that of a president or prime minister—to grow confused and unable to function.

  Psychokinesis—the moving of physical objects through mind power.

  MIND WEAPONS: WHO HAS THEM?

  It appears that the Soviet Union is far ahead in the mind race. In July 1985, columnist Jack Anderson revealed that information from classified CIA and Pentagon reports showed the Soviets are outspending the U.S. by at least 70 to 1 in mind war research. (Anderson called it “occult research,” a most appropriate term in my opinion.)

  The CIA’s latest top-secret report estimates that it would take a budget of anywhere from $500 million to $1 billion for the United States to play catch-up. As it is, the U.S. is spending about $6 million each year for psychic research, the Soviets as much as $350 million.

  Alarmed U.S. officials are taking the Soviet threat seriously. A 1972 Defense Intelligence Agency report, classified at the time as top-secret but declassified and released to the public in 1978, predicted that eventually the Soviets might be able to do some of the following:

  A. Know the contents of top-secret U.S. documents, the deployment of our troops and ships, and the location and nature of our military installations.

  B. Mold the thoughts of key U.S. military and civilian leaders at a distance.

  C. Cause the instant death of any U.S. official at a distance.

  D. Disable, at a distance, U.S. equipment of all types, including spacecraft.

  In 1977, August Stern, a Soviet dissident residing in the West, told U.S. intelligence agents of Soviet work on “psychic energy” at a laboratory at Science City in Novosibirsk, Siberia. Stern revealed that sixty Soviet scientists were receiving unlimited funds to carry out their investigations. Russell Targ (The Mind Race), who met with Soviet scientists and discussed their work with them, observed that they were surprisingly open about their experiments. Targ says that their comments suggested that in the USSR the subjects of such research were forced to endure pain and cruelty. According to Targ, the Soviet scientists were evidently curious to know how American researchers carried out research without such brutal methods. They asked, “What do you do to keep your subjects from cracking up or going crazy during the experiments?” 1

  Laura Vilenskaya, a Soviet-trained engineer now living in California who participated in a number of Soviet experiences, described in The Mind Race some of the experiments that she knew about, some that she said were “inhumane.” She confirmed that the Soviet Union has uncovered a number of psychically gifted persons able to perform uncanny tasks unaided by anything other than their minds. One woman was capable of psychokineticaIly moving small objects about at will. This same woman was able to induce burns on bystanders’ skin and to completely stop an isolated frog’s heart from beating. According to Vilenskaya, the professor in charge of this experiment, Gennady Sergeuev, explained later, “We found that [the frog’s heart] was torn apart, as if bombarded by lightning balls of microscopic size. The energy flow can reach such incredible intensity.”

  Vilenskaya and other Soviet emigres tell of a great number of research centers in the USSR devoted to psychic research for warfare. The Soviets are also increasingly examining the occult traditions of Eastern religions. The researchers believe that yoga and other Hindu disciplines may reveal methods that can be used to gain military advantage through mind control techniques. 2

  THE UNITED STATES EFFORT

  The U.S. is concerned about the apparent Soviet successes. Although the Pentagon and service chiefs don’t wish to be branded by the news media as advocating “witch doctors” or “voodoo magic,” they have been able to discreetly funnel tens of millions of dollars into the battle to develop mental tools of war. Up to now, the U.S. effort has met with only limited success. However, in a few instances, the success has been significant enough to influence Congress to continue funding such projects. One successful project was SRI International’s long distance remote-viewing experiments, sponsored by the U.S. Navy. In the experiments, persons with psychic skills were remarkably accurate in describing buildings and objects at geographically remote sites. 3

  In an interview in Omni magazine (July 1979), Congressman Charles Rose, chairman of the House Subcommittee on Intelligence, said of the SRI study: “What these persons saw was confirmed by aerial photography... It seems to me that it would be a hell of a cheap radar system. And if the Russians have it and we don’t we are in serious trouble.”

  Based on the SRI study as well as other experimentation, in 1981 the Committee on Science and Technology of the U.S. House of Representatives reported:

  Experiments on mind to mind interconnectedness have yielded some encouraging results.... Given the potentially powerful and far-reaching implications of knowledge in this field, and given that the Soviet Union is widely acknowledged to be supporting such research at a far higher and more official level, Congress may wish to undertake a serious assessment of research in this country. 4

  MIND WEAPONS: THE CHRISTIAN PERSPECTIVE

  From a Christian perspective, it might be assumed that psychic and mind power abilities being demonstrated in labs run by the Soviets or other nations are of Satan. It could well be that Satan seeks to convince the world that such feats are not exclusively the province of God but instead are natural, controllable, scientific phenomena.

  Psychic “spying” for use in intelligence work is a jarring notion. But even more jarring are mind alteration and telepathic hypnosis. Christians should tremble at the prospect of any government—even our own—being able to affect a person’s m
ental state from a long distance. We are already painfully aware of the mental abuse of many persons, including many Christians, in the Soviet Union, persons whose minds have become so confused by drugs and chemicals that the state declares them insane and has them incarcerated. That mental disturbance could be accomplished without drugs—and at a considerable distance—is terrifying. Such tactics show a total lack of respect for human worth and a brutal disregard for the mind of man, made in God’s image.

  Humanity teeters on the very edge of the demonic when it not only brings into war tools that damage bodies and property but tools that can wreck the human mind. Torturers and masters of war have, through the ages, shown their inventiveness in causing agonizing physical pain, but the mind has been largely untouchable. That is no longer necessarily true. Now, even without the use of drugs or chemicals, man may have the power to carefully manipulate and possibly destroy the mind.

  This should not surprise us. In a world beset with war fever, men will use any weapons available. In Part III we will look at just how pervasive this war fever is.

  PART III: WAR FEVER

  CHAPTER TWELVE: THE WORLD POWDERKEG—WHY WAR PREVAILS

  The Center for Defense Information, a Washington, D.C., think tank that keeps a box score on the wars, rebellions, and violent uprisings that plague our modern world, tells us that war is on the rise. In the last three years alone, says the center, over 4 million people have been engaged in combat, with 45 of the world’s 164 nations involved. The number of people killed? An estimated one to five million. Citing these gruesome statistics, political columnist James Reston commented, “They remind us of the madness and cost of violence in a world where half the human race is going to bed hungry every night.” Reston firmly states that “the causes of war need debating.”

  He’s right. We do need to debate the issue. The key question is, Why do we have wars?

  The human behavior experts and the philosophers offer a variety of reasons for war and violence. Benedict Spinoza believed that basic human passions lay at the roots of conflict. Sigmund Freud believed that conflicts were inevitably resolved by violence due to man’s psychological makeup. Konrad Lorenz theorized that humans have inherent aggressive instincts just as do other animals.

  Karl Marx, father of communism, believed that man himself is good, but that the economic structures of society cause him to make war and create violence. Social welfarists agree. They feel that if only the economic rewards of society were more equally distributed to the poor and deprived, violence would abate. Many political scientists hold that war is inevitable because we do not have a supranational body—a “super-government” capable of enforcing order. Create such an all-powerful center of government, they claim, and wars will cease. Unfortunately, the minds of men have not been able to conceive of a one-world super-government that works. Both the 1920s’ League of Nations and today’s United Nations have proved dismal failures.

  Peace has been unattainable in our generation—as in all generations—primarily because men are not willing to share, to love, and to put aside selfish motives and the desire for personal gain. Furthermore, man cannot develop these caring and beneficial attitudes when left to his own devices. Man is a being torn between Satan and God. He must choose to serve one or the other. If he denies God, the inevitable result is a clouded, imperfect, and potentially dangerous perception of the world and the way things should be. War is a natural, unavoidable outgrowth of man’s rejection of God.

  James was inspired by the Lord to explain the causes of war. In the New Testament, James explained it this way:

  From whence come wars and fightings among you? Come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members? Ye lust and have not: ye kill, and desire to have; and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not... (James 4:1,2)

  According to the Bible, war is caused by selfish, ungodly men who lust after what they do not have and willingly kill to attain the objects of their desires. The answer to war would be for man to accept the spiritual riches that come from commitment to Christ. The Christian, the man of God, does not start wars nor commit violence in a vain and angry quest for material possessions that are of this world. For as Paul reminds us, “God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thess. 5:9). But evil seems to dominate the world scene because so many are not committed to life in Christ.

  THE REALITY OF EVIL

  On an international scale man’s selfish attitude reflects itself in envy, greed, hatred and, eventually, conflict. Modern warfare, in its savagery and lethality, is unparalleled in the annals of history. Already this century we have seen hundreds of wars and millions of casualties. World Wars I and II brought untold misery to mankind. Since 1945—the year World War II ended—warfare has been experienced in Southeast Asia, Africa, Central and South America, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe. And terrorism has reared its head in almost every city on the globe.

  Terrorism and conflict between nations is something that most people in America, the West, and other civilized democratic countries cannot fully grasp. War and killing, we tend to believe, are alien to our way of life and to our ways of thinking. But the truth which many seek to avoid is that every one of us is susceptible to evil if we exclude God and his Holy Spirit from our hearts. Within the darkness of every unenlightened human heart is the capability to have been a cruel guard at Dachau, a murderer on death row, or a terrorist who indiscriminately slays women and children. If God is absent from our lives, the only difference between us and “them” is circumstances. “There, but for the grace of God, go I.”

  Over 50 million people perished in the World War II holocaust, in which unspeakable acts occurred with official government sanction. Some protest that such evil could not happen again. They say we are too educated today, too knowledgeable, too enlightened, too humanitarian. Many teachers, especially those involved with the New Age movement, profess belief in a modern world where goodness and peace are winning out because man’s consciousness is ever-expanding. In truth, the opposite is the case. Each year, corrupt and heartless authoritarian and totalitarian dictatorships in dozens of nations perpetrate grotesque acts of terror and violence against their own citizenry. Mass arrests, brutal torture, confinement without trial, and political suppression are the rule rather than the exception as we move toward the last days.

  Reports from respected journalists and reliable witnesses indicate that the world is becoming a den for sadistic, incredibly cruel masters. Last year, for example, at Evin prison in Iran, children were forced to watch as their mothers were tortured. In Syria police employ the “black slave,” an electrical apparatus with a heated skewer, and in Chile military interrogators are skilled in applying methods such as the “parrot’s perch,” in which a trussed prisoner is hung upside down from a pole and brutalized. In Guatemala during 1978-82, government dissidents were routinely burned with cigarettes, castrated, slashed, or suffered amputations. In the Soviet Union, prisoners continue to live in gulags, remote, rat-infested prison camps where the daily gruel is served with roaches and rat fecal material floating on top.

  There are over 160 nations on earth, less than 30 of which are true democracies. Furthermore, citizens of America, Britain, Australia, Canada, and other democratic countries hardly understand the desperate nature of most of the earth’s population. Noted science author Nigel Calder, in his recent book 1984 and Beyond, made this keen observation:

  Our cosy liberal democracies now seem like small rafts of reasonableness on an ocean of irrationality, injustice, and terror... They look more like happy accidents, extremely rare in history, and confined to a few parts of the globe. 1

  MODERN MARTYRS, MODERN HITLERS

  “In the past 65 years, more Christians have given their lives in witness to Christ than in the 300 years which followed the crucifixion,” wrote Mary Craig in her moving book Six Modern Martyrs. “Not even the gladiators and wild beasts of Decius and Diocletian have matched
in ferocity the tidal waves of hatred unleashed in our century.” 2

  Across the planet, unknown martyrs are giving their lives for Christ. Many languish and eventually perish in communist prisons in the Soviet Union, Poland, Vietnam, North Korea, and elsewhere. Others become the victims of authoritarian Marxist dictators in such countries as Ethiopia, Nicaragua, and Cuba.

  There is no dearth of modern-day martyrs—or modern-day Hitlers. A review of only a few recent mass murderers shocks us into understanding the real and present danger confronting us today.

  Uganda and Amin. In the 1970s, Ugandan dictator ldi Amin, an admirer of Hitler’s treatment of Jews, put to death hundreds of thousands of his fellow Ugandans. Rape, torture, and brutalization were rampant. Reportedly, the eyes of some who fought the dictatorship were gouged out, and other dissidents were killed and their bodies fed to crocodiles. Shocking though it may seem, many nations in the Arab world and in the United Nations supported Amin. As perverse as Amin’s reign was (he was overthrown in 1979), it pales in comparison with the gory example set a few years ago by the leader of another Third World nation—Cambodia.

  Cambodia and Pol Pot. In April 1975, the Communist Khmer Rouge led by Pol Pot seized power in the Southeast Asian nation of Cambodia. For centuries this small country had been known as the land of the gentle people, an oasis of tranquility and peace in Asia. The Khmer Rouge ended that. Their disturbing reign of terror began the day they gained control of the government. Pol Pot, their leader, announced his intention to “cleanse” the country. By the time Pol Pot was overthrown four years later in 1979 after a war with neighboring Vietnam, his regime had seen to the massacre of over 3.5 million of Cambodia’s total population of 7 million. (That’s one-half of the population slain—the equivalent of 115 million persons in America!) To spare bullets, mass graves were dug and men, women, and children bludgeoned with tree limbs, clubs, and baseball bats. Among the first ordained to be murdered were those with an education. Even a high school diploma guaranteed an individual unmerciful torture and death.