Army’s Psychic Animal Pals

In 1953 the U.S. Army com­mis­sioned a report by Dr. Joseph Banks Rhine to ascer­tain “whether dogs could, as claimed, locate buried land­mines under con­di­tions that gave no nor­mal sen­sory cues.” The con­clu­sions of this report were con­sid­ered so dan­ger­ous embar­rass­ing they remained clas­si­fied until today.
The Memory Hole has been hard at work obtain­ing a copy of Rhine’s “Final Report for Contract DA-44–009-ENG-1039″ — code­name “Animal E.S.P.“
According to Dr Rhine, “an inves­ti­ga­tion of the avail­able reports, and vis­its to England to learn what the British Army had found, led to a seri­ous ques­tion as to whether the claim was well founded”. Dr Rhine’s exper­i­ments focused on German Schu mines buried in a few inches of moist sand. A tough nut to crack, you’ll agree. Only 2 years and 15 gru­el­ing typed pages later, Dr Rhine con­cluded “dogs can be trained to locate mines…and there can be no doubt but that, for the most part, this is a sen­sory func­tion, ole­fac­tory in type”. Stop the presses.
That didn’t end the Pentagon’s fas­ci­na­tion with E.S.P., author Jon Ronson notes in his book The Men who Stare At Goats. He explains, “In 1979 a secret unit was estab­lished by the most gifted minds within the US Army. Defying all known accepted mil­i­tary prac­tice — and indeed, the laws of physics — they believed that a sol­dier could adopt the cloak of invis­i­bil­ity, pass cleanly through walls and, per­haps most chill­ingly, kill goats just by star­ing at them.” However, it’s not entirely clear from Mr. Ronson’s work whether the clas­sic ‘crook’ or more painful ‘stink eye’was used.
Unfortunately the affects of Dr Rhine’s work pen­e­trated deep within the Army psy­che alter­ing the course of ‘black’ oper­a­tions for years to come. Disasters asso­ci­ated with pro­grammes such as pSy­chic Warfighter Insertion/​Nautical Extraction, or the “Bay of Pigs” as it was known, forced many sub­jects under­ground and left the rest of us with mem­o­ries of psy­chic ani­mals we’d rather for­get.
– Steven Snell

May 23rd, 2006 | Bizarro | 18873 Comments »http://defensetech.org/2006/05/23/armys-psychic-animal-pals/Army%27s+Psychic+Animal+Pals2006-05-23+15%3A06%3A13david_axe You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.