Phenomena—The Secret History of the U.S. Government’s Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis, written by Annie Jacobsen, published by Little, Brown and Company, 2017.

Phenomena is a history of the use of mental phenomena to control human behavior. As an example, during World War II, British intelligence used “phony horoscopes” to influence the decisions of Germans who “believed in astrology.” This technique is believed to have induced Rudolph Hess to impulsively fly to England where he was captured and interrogated resulting in a major intelligence coup.

Once World War II ended, the United States began developing various ESP research programs. In 1958, ESP experiments were conducted aboard the USS Nautilus, the world’s first nuclear-powered submarine. In 1967, U.S. Marines experimented with dowsing rods to locate hidden Viet Cong tunnels. In 1971, astronaut Edgar Mitchell conducted long-distance mental telepathy experiments while onboard Apollo 14 on his journey to the Moon. In 1972, a psychic research program sponsored by the CIA was established at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) and Uri Geller, who was renowned worldwide for his extraordinary telepathic and psychokinetic talents, was invited to participate and his services, in the words of Ingo Swann, a highly regarded SRI associate, put psychic research on the map “not just in the U.S. but around the world.” As it happened, Ingo Swann was a key player in the field of long-distance mental telepathy, or, what is otherwise known as “remote viewing,” which can, given the correct coordinates, enable a gifted viewer to physically identify and observe a distant enemy item or location. Pat Price, another individual recruited by the CIA to participate in the remote viewing program, was so successful in utilizing the technique that, the day after Patty Hearst was kidnapped, the Berkeley police asked Pat Price for his help in identifying the suspects. Price obligingly did so, identifying people who were “later proven to be involved.” Remote viewing techniques were also used in an unsuccessful effort to locate Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction.

As revealed by the author, the CIA and Department of Defense spent decades researching “anomalous mental phenomena.” Eventually, however, the government’s so-called Star Gate operations fell into disfavor with Congress and, on June 31, 1995, the Defense Intelligence Agency was ordered to discontinue the program because there was no evidence to support “the sources or origins of the phenomenon.” One has to wonder, however, if your neighborhood psychic got the message. In the words of the author, “To see the future, to know the unknowable, has been an ageless obsession.” Rest assured it will continue.