Author | Jon Ronson |
---|---|
Country | United Kingdom United States |
Language | English |
Genre | Non-fiction, Investigative Journalism |
Publisher | Picador (UK) Simon & Schuster (US) |
Publication date | 2004 |
Media type | Print (Hardcover and Paperback) Audiobook |
Pages | 277 (first edition, hardback) |
ISBN | 978-0-330-37547-4 |
OCLC | 56653467 |
The Men Who Stare at Goats (2004) is a non-fiction book by Jon Ronson concerning the U.S. Army's exploration of New Age concepts and the potential military applications of the paranormal. The title refers to attempts to kill goats by staring at them and stopping their hearts. The book is a companion to a three-part TV series broadcast in Britain on Channel 4—Crazy Rulers of the World (2004)—the first episode of which is also entitled "The Men Who Stare at Goats". The same title was used a third time for a loose feature film adaptation in 2009.
The book's first five chapters examine the efforts of a handful of U.S. Army officers in the late 1970s and early 1980s to exploit paranormal phenomena, New Age philosophy, and elements of the human potential movement to enhance U.S. military intelligence-gathering capabilities as well as overall operational effectiveness. These include the First Earth Battalion Operations Manual (1979) and a "psychic spy unit" established by Army Intelligence at Fort Meade, Maryland, in the late 1970s. (This was the Stargate Project, [1] [2] [3] [4] which the book never mentions by name.) Ronson is put on the historical trail of the "men who stare at goats"—Special Forces soldiers who supposedly experimented with psychic powers against de-bleated goats at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, at the now-decommissioned "Goat Lab" medical training facility. He examines, and dispenses with, several candidates for the legendary "master sergeant" (Chapter 2) who was reported to have killed a goat simply by staring at it, in the earliest days of the program. A martial arts instructor named Guy Savelli claims to be the one.
In the middle third of the book (Chapters 6–11), the author leaps to the present day—i.e., 2004, just after the Abu Ghraib abuse revelations—and attempts to make connections between the earlier (now terminated, and mostly discredited) military programs and the abuses resulting from the post-9/11 War on Terror (Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, psyops in Iraq, etc.). This includes the use of the children's song "I Love You" from Barney & Friends on Iraqi prisoners-of-war. A purported linking element is the alleged use of music and subliminal messaging at the 1993 Waco siege and other FBI operations. Another is the private business "franchises" and consultancies that retired members of the "psychic unit" later pursued as civilians. A connection is also proposed between these "privatized" psychics and the mass-suicide of members of the Heaven's Gate cult in 1997.
The final section of the book (Chapters 13–16) leaps backward to the 1950s and attempts to connect the Army psychic program, and later interrogation techniques, with the CIA's MK-ULTRA "mind control" research program and the notorious death of Army researcher Frank Olson in 1953. Ronson spends time with Olson's son Eric as he attempts to uncover the mystery of his father's death. Eric suggests that Frank Olson was murdered, not simply because he knew too much but, rather, that he was having a crisis of conscience and seriously entertaining the notion of going public with all that he knew. The narrative ends with the suggestion that the "psychic warriors" are now back in business working for the U.S. military again, possibly in support of assassinations.
Ronson's book was met with mostly positive, often glowing, reviews: the Boston Globe opined that it is "a hilarious and unsettling book.... Ronson comes off as an unusual cross between Comedy Central's Jon Stewart and The New Yorker 's Seymour Hersh." The New York Times ' Janet Maslin stated that "Ronson sets up his book perfectly. It moves with wry, precise agility from crackpot to crackpot in its search for the essence of this early New Age creativity....".
Some critics, however, were skeptical of what they considered Ronson's shaky logic and some of his bolder assertions. Alex Heard's review in U-T San Diego was subtitled "Goats tries hard to link psychic-spy projects from the past to today's events, and mostly fails". In many instances, he wrote, "...there isn't a link. Instead there's a progression of occurrences that don't connect in a meaningful way. The result is a strange new blend: Conspiracy theory meets Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.... You're left feeling like you've been told a shaggy-goat story." [5]
This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (November 2015) |
The 2004 series Crazy Rulers of the World was aired in three parts:
It was broadcast in Britain on Channel 4.
A fictionalized feature film version of the book was released in 2009 under the same name. Grant Heslov directed from a script by Peter Straughan. [6] It is set in Iraq, but was filmed in Comerío Street, Bayamón, Puerto Rico and at the New Mexico Military Institute. The story centers on "Bob Wilton" (Ewan McGregor) a desperate reporter who stumbles upon the story of a lifetime. He meets "Lyn Cassady" (George Clooney) who claims to be a former secret U.S. military psychic soldier re-activated post-9/11. Jeff Bridges plays "Bill Django", the founder of the psychic soldier program and Lyn's mentor. Kevin Spacey plays "Larry Hooper" who is a former psychic soldier now running a rogue PsyOps unit in Iraq. [7] The film is prefaced with a title card stating "More of this is true than you would believe". The DVD release of The Men Who Stare at Goats includes a bonus documentary featuring Ronson and many of the people who feature prominently in his book.
Coinciding with the release of the feature film in 2009, John Sergeant, the producer of the TV series Crazy Rulers of the World, accused Ronson of "airbrushing him out of the story". While Ronson dedicated his book to Sergeant and included an afterword commending his research and guidance, the feature film did not mention his contributions. [8] [9]
Project MKUltra was an illegal human experimentation program designed and undertaken by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and intended to develop procedures and identify drugs that could be used during interrogations to weaken people and force confessions through brainwashing and psychological torture. It began in 1953 and was halted in 1973. MKUltra used numerous methods to manipulate its subjects' mental states and brain functions, such as the covert administration of high doses of psychoactive drugs and other chemicals without the subjects' consent, electroshocks, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, isolation, verbal and sexual abuse, and other forms of torture.
Frank Rudolph Emmanuel Olson was an American bacteriologist, biological warfare scientist, and an employee of the United States Army Biological Warfare Laboratories (USBWL) who worked at Camp Detrick in Maryland. At a meeting in rural Maryland, he was covertly dosed with LSD by his colleague Sidney Gottlieb and, nine days later, plunged to his death from the window of the Hotel Statler in New York. The U.S. government first described his death as a suicide, and then as misadventure, while others allege murder. The Rockefeller Commission report on the CIA in 1975 acknowledged their having conducted covert drug studies on fellow agents. Olson's death is one of the most mysterious outcomes of the CIA mind control project MKUltra.
The Stargate Project was a secret U.S. Army unit established in 1978 at Fort Meade, Maryland, by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and SRI International to investigate the potential for psychic phenomena in military and domestic intelligence applications. The Project, and its precursors and sister projects, originally went by various code names – 'Gondola Wish', 'Stargate', 'Grill Flame', 'Center Lane', 'Project CF', 'Sun Streak', 'Scanate' – until 1991 when they were consolidated and rechristened as the "Stargate Project".
Project Artichoke was a project developed and enacted by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for the purpose of researching methods of interrogation.
Jon Ronson is a British-American journalist, author, and filmmaker whose works include Them: Adventures with Extremists (2001), The Men Who Stare at Goats (2004), and The Psychopath Test (2011). He has been described as a gonzo journalist, becoming a faux-naïf character in his stories. He produces informal but sceptical investigations of controversial fringe politics and science. He has published nine books and his work has appeared in publications such as The Guardian, City Life and Time Out. He has made several BBC Television documentary films and two documentary series for Channel 4.
Joseph McMoneagle is a retired U.S. Army Chief Warrant Officer. He was involved in remote viewing (RV) operations and experiments conducted by U.S. Army Intelligence and the Stanford Research Institute. He was among the first personnel recruited for the classified program now known as the Stargate Project (1978–95). Along with colleague Ingo Swann, McMoneagle is best known for claims surrounding the investigation of RV and the use of paranormal abilities for military intelligence gathering. His interests also include near-death experiences, out-of-body travel, and unidentified flying objects.
'Why We Fight' is a 2005 documentary film by Eugene Jarecki about the military–industrial complex. The title refers to the World War II-era eponymous propaganda films commissioned by the U.S. Government to justify their decision to enter the war against the Axis Powers.
The First Earth Battalion was the name proposed by Lieutenant Colonel Jim Channon, a U.S. soldier who had served in Vietnam, for his idea of a new military of supersoldiers to be organized along New Age lines. A book of the same name was published in 1982.
The supersoldier is a fictional concept soldier, often capable of operating beyond normal human limits or abilities either through genetic modification or cybernetic augmentation.
Andrija Puharich — born Henry Karel Puharić — was a medical and parapsychological researcher, medical inventor, physician and author, known as the person who brought Israeli Uri Geller and Dutch-born Peter Hurkos (1911–1988) to the United States for scientific investigation.
Samuel Provance is a former U.S. Army military intelligence sergeant, known for disobeying an order from his commanders in the 302nd Military Intelligence Battalion by discussing with the media his experiences at the Abu Ghraib Prison, where he was assigned from September 2003 to February 2004. After being disciplined for his actions, he eventually brought his case to the United States Government in February 2006, resulting in a congressional subpoena of the Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. The main points of his testimony are that military intelligence soldiers and contracted civilian interrogators had abused detainees, that they directed the military police to abuse detainees, the extent of this knowledge at the prison, and the subsequent cover-up of these practices when investigated.
Albert "Bert" Newton Stubblebine III was a United States Army major general whose active duty career spanned 32 years. Beginning as an armor officer, he later transferred to intelligence. He is credited with redesigning the U.S. Army intelligence architecture during his time as commanding general of the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM) from 1981 to 1984, after which he retired from active service.
James B. Channon was a U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, New Age futurologist, and business consultant. He was primarily known for authoring the First Earth Battalion Operations Manual, a popular book pointing the way toward a New Age transformation in the U.S. military. The graphic-heavy publication was inspired by Stewart Brand's Whole Earth Catalog.
Michael Dick Echanis was an American enlisted soldier and self-styled "soldier of fortune". In 1970, he served briefly in "C" Company, 75th Ranger Regiment Infantry in Vietnam. Echanis then made his living as a martial artist, writer and editor. He was the martial arts editor for the magazine Soldier of Fortune (SOF) from 1974 to 1976. He died while working as a private security contractor in Nicaragua at the behest of the Nicaraguan National Guard. This was reported by SOF in an article published after the incident.
John B. Alexander is a retired United States Army colonel. An infantry officer for much of his career, he is best known as a leading advocate for the development of non-lethal weapons and of military applications of the paranormal. He has written and lectured on UFOs. He characterizes his career as having "evolved from hard-core mercenary to thanatologist". Alexander figures prominently in journalist Jon Ronson's book The Men Who Stare At Goats (2004), which was later made into a Hollywood film starring George Clooney (2009). Ronson continued to draw on Alexander's former status and knowledge in several related Channel 4 documentaries, where Ronson examined the subject of New Age ideas influencing the U.S. military.
Between Heaven and Hell is a 1956 American Cinemascope war film based on the novel The Day the Century Ended by Francis Gwaltney that the film follows closely. The story is told in flashback format detailing the life of Sam Gifford from his life as a Southern landowner to his war service in the Philippines during World War II.
The Men Who Stare at Goats is a 2009 satirical black comedy war film directed by Grant Heslov, adapted by Peter Straughan, and starring George Clooney, Ewan McGregor, Jeff Bridges, and Kevin Spacey. It was produced by Clooney's and Heslov's production company Smokehouse Pictures. The film is a fictionalized version of Jon Ronson's 2004 book of the same title of an investigation into attempts by the U.S. military to employ psychic powers as a weapon — which, in turn, is a companion to a British miniseries Crazy Rulers of the World.
Guy Savelli was a martial artist, teacher, and spiritual healer. He taught the spiritual and mental aspects of martial arts, especially Kuntao.
Michael Chase Behenna is a former United States Army First Lieutenant who was convicted of the 2008 murder of Ali Mansur Mohamed during the occupation of Iraq. Behenna is colloquially associated with a group of U.S. military personnel convicted of war crimes known as the Leavenworth 10. He was sentenced to 25 years imprisonment, which was later reduced to 15 years, and served his sentence in the United States Disciplinary Barracks on Fort Leavenworth, a United States Army post in Kansas. He was granted parole on March 14, 2014, after serving less than five years of his sentence. Since his release from prison he has worked as a farmhand. On May 6, 2019, Behenna received a pardon from President Donald Trump.
Frank Lee Burns was a U.S. Army lieutenant colonel who served in Vietnam and, in retirement, became an information specialist.