If you visit this page often you surely have noticed grim dramas that play themselves out in the pronouncements of various national security experts.

Time and time again, prophets appear to warn that our safety and security are at stake or that fantastical threats and intrigue are mounting in the corridors of foreign power.

The solutions offered are always the same. Spend more taxpayer dollars. Give them to the Pentagon, proxies of the Pentagon, and/or consultants offering guidance to the Department of Defense.

In the mainstream media, no one ever questions the methods or results of the prophets of national doom even though the same prophets have racked up a startling number of foolish mistakes and false alarms in the past few years.

Few average Americans know how such mistakes are vended as truth or how intelligence information is twisted into unrecognizable analyses that share no relationship with their original sources. No one gets to look behind the doors of the national security apparatus except the carefully screened. Never you and certainly never anyone you know.

Well, this story gives you a peek behind that door. It's a look at the nuts-and-bolts constituting an intelligence analysis provided by a highly respected think tank. Buckle yourself in and grab the bottle of Tums because it's not a pretty picture.

In Crypt News 44, you read the tale of Mary C. FitzGerald, a Hudson Institute research fellow whose paper "Russian Views on Electronic and Information Warfare" dove into the realms of telepathy, the paranormal and their alleged military application.

In it, FitzGerald fell for an old April Fool's joke known as the Gulf War virus hoax, too.

The Hudson Institute paper stated:

"For example, one cannot exclude the use of software inserts in imported gear used in the Iraqi air defense system for blocking it at the beginning of the war," is one of the incarnations of it -- as reprinted from "Russian Views on Electronic and Information Warfare." Published on the Internet earlier this year, it was disseminated through Winn Schwartau's Information Warfare mailing list.

But where did this come from?

Ironically, the same statement can be found in an article retrieved from the CIA's Foreign Information Broadcast Surface (FBIS). Crypt Newsletter obtained an interesting FBIS English translation of an article published in October of 1995. Written by a Major M. Boytsov, it appeared with the title "Russia: Information Warfare" in a Russian publication entitled "In Foreign Navies."

Despite it's misleading title, Boytsov's article is not about Russian ideas on information warfare. Instead, it is more a survey and analysis of U.S. Department of Defense thinking and effort on the subject. Boytsov's sources are attributed in a footnote to the "foreign press."

So, in October of 1995, Boytsov writes in "Information Warfare," "For example, one cannot exclude the use of software inserts [programmnyye zakladki] in imported gear used in the Iraqi air defense system for blocking it at the beginning of the war." Since Boytsov's sources are the "foreign press," it's quite likely he read of the Gulf War virus hoax either from US News & World Report, the original mainstream media source to spread it, or others pulled along for the ride. (As we've learned, this particular hoax sprang from an April Fool's joke published in Infoworld magazine. The joke was accepted as reality by the national news media and now it's an inescapable part of computer virus lore.)

Since Mary C. FitzGerald's paper was provided as intelligence for the U.S. military, it is of further interest to taxpayers to know that money is being spent to educate the Department of Defense on issues that are normally reserved for television programs on the FOX network -- urban X-File-type myths.

Another section of the Hudson Institute research paper on Russian views in information warfare are worth reviewing when compared with a completely different article published in 1994 by a colonel in the Russian military.

Appearing in an August 1994 issue of Foreign Military Review, and again made available to Crypt Newsletter translated from Russian through the CIA's Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS), Colonel V. Pavlychev writes in the article "Psychotronic Weapons: Myth or Reality":

"The second direction [at the U.S. Department of Defense] includes an in-depth study of paranormal phenomena that are of greatest interest from the standpoint of possible military use -- clairvoyance, telekinesis, and so forth."

Most of Pavlychev's paper is written from the standpoint of discussing U.S. Department of Defense involvement in potential use of the paranormal as a weapon. Leaving aside the ridiculous nature of the topic for an instant, keep in mind that Mary C. FitzGerald's Hudson Institute paper is on "Russian" military views.

In "Russian Views on Electronic and Information Warfare," published by the Hudson Institute and FitzGerald on the Internet earlier this year, we see:

"The second direction includes an in-depth study of paranormal phenomena that are of greatest interest from the standpoint of possible military use -- clairvoyance, telekinesis, telepathic hypnosis, and so forth."

But wait. These aren't Russian views at all. Instead, Colonel Pavlychev attributes them to two Americans: Russell Targ and Keith Harary, who authored a book called "Mind Race: Understanding and Using Psychic Abilities" in 1984. (Pavlychev refers to this book as "The Psychic Race.") Targ was a known as a psychic researcher at Stanford Research Institute in the Seventies and Eighties until this type of fringe science became badly discredited. Harary was a psychic who worked with Targ and who occasionally published in unusual periodicals like the "Journal of the American Society of Psychical Research."

Pavlychev also writes on the U.S. use of remote-viewers, or clairvoyants -- which is what most people, including the Russians, call them. ("Remote viewer," in Crypt Newsletter's estimation, was nothing but a clever dodge used by the crackpots in the U.S. Army and intelligence agencies in the Eighties to avoid immediately tipping off supervisors, the press and the skeptical that they were involved in using the equivalent of "crystal ball gazers" for military reconnaissance.)

Anyway, Pavlychev's article states:

"The framework of this phenomenon is quite broad: on a strategic scale, it is possible to penetrate the enemy's main command and control facilities to become familiar with his classified documents; on the tactical level, reconnaissance can be conducted on the battlefield and in the enemy's rear area (the "clairvoyant-scout" will always be located at a safe place). However, problems do exist -- the number of individuals possessing these abilities is limited, and the data received cannot be checked."

Once again, this is material roughly attributed to Targ and Harary in 1984 -- not Russians in 1997.

In the Hudson Institute research paper, this year, we read:

"The framework of this phenomenon is quite broad: on a strategic scale, it is possible to penetrate the enemy's main command-and-control facilities to become familiar with his classified documents; on the tactical level, reconnaissance can be conducted on the battlefield and in the enemy's rear area (the 'clairvoyant-scout' will always be located at a safe place). However, problems do exist -- the number of individuals possessing these abilities is limited, and the data received cannot be checked."

In Pavlychev's "Psychotronic Weapons," we see:

"According to military experts, using psychokinesis to destroy command and control systems and disrupt the functioning of strategic arms is timely. The ability of a human organism to emit a certain type of energy today has been confirmed by photography of a radiation field known as the Kirlian effect. Psychokinesis is explained by the subject's generation of an electromagnetic force capable of moving or destroying some object. Studies of objects destroyed as a result of experiments conducted have shown a different form of breakage than under the effect of physical force."

The Hudson Institute researcher writes in 1997:

"The ability of a human organism to emit a certain type of energy has been confirmed by photography of a radiation field known as the Kirlian effect. Psychokinesis is explained by the subject's generation of an electromagnetic force capable of moving or destroying some object. Studies of objects destroyed as a result of experiments conducted have shown a different form of breakage than under the effect of physical force."

In 1994, Pavlychev says:

Using telepathic implantation, an enemy formation, "instead of exploiting the success, will try to consolidate on the line achieved or even return to the starting line."

In 1997, the Hudson Institute research paper states of the power of implanted telepathic command: "For example, personnel of an enemy formation executing a sudden breakthrough of defenses, instead of exploiting the success, will try to consolidate on the line achieved or even return to the starting line."

In 1994, Pavlychev states:

"Many western experts, including military analysts, assume that the country making the first decisive breakthrough in this field will gain a superiority over its enemy that is comparable only with the monopoly of nuclear weapons. In the future, these type of weapons may become the cause of illnesses or death of an object (person), and without any risk to the life of the operator (person emitting the command). Psychotronic weapons are silent, difficult to detect, and require the efforts of one or several operators as a source of power. Therefore, scientific and military circles abroad are very concerned over a possible 'psychic invasion' and note the need to begin work on taking corresponding countermeasures."

In 1997, the Hudson Institute publication reads:

"Many 'Western experts,' including military analysts, assume that the country making the first decisive breakthrough in this field will gain a superiority over its enemy that is comparable only with the monopoly of nuclear weapons. In the future, these types of weapons may become the cause of illness or death of an object (person), and without any risk to the life of the operator (person emitting the command). Psychotronic weapons are silent, difficult to detect, and require the efforts of one or several operators as a source of power. Therefore, scientific and military circles abroad are very concerned over a possible 'psychic invasion' . . . "

Pavlychev's 1994 article also distinctly points to sources derived from U.S. writers, specifically, the eccentrics -- colleagues of Hal Puthoff, and employees of military men Albert Stubblebine and John B. Alexander's "spoon-bending" and "out of body experience" programs -- in residence at Stanford Research Institute (SRI) and the U.S. Army to study the paranormal in the Eighties.

Other material from the Pavlychev paper is roughly attributed to another U.S. source, a book called "Mind Wars: The True Story of Government Research Into the Potential of Psychic Weapons," written by Ronald McRae and published by St. Martins in 1984.

And still other sources include American network television shows and the New York Times -- obviously also published in the U.S..

It needs repeating that Pavlychev's article is not a monograph on Russian military views on the paranormal, but rather his analysis of the U.S. military's involvement in the area with information obtained from open source literature published in the United States.

Paradoxically, the Hudson Institute's Mary C. FitzGerald uses the same subject material as Pavlychev's 1994 article and turns it around 180 degrees to show "Russian Views on Electronic and Information Warfare."

What does all this gobble on telepathy and psychotronic brain weapons from books on the paranormal and comments from fringe researchers written in the Eighties have to do with Russian views on information warfare today? Does it have anything to do with information warfare and Internet security at all? Excellent questions! Ask the mandarins at the Hudson Institute. Perhaps they know.

All of this serves to demonstrate that the environment in which these weird stories of strange pseudo-science and technology in service to the military machine circulate is like a hall of mirrors in which the equivalent of techno-myths and modern ghost stories bounce back and forth through Cold War minds until few can even tell where they originally came from.

Like any good ghost story, they gain credibility when passed through supposedly expert sources -- think tanks. But the only thing remarkable about them is how they're used to frighten the ignorant -- in this case, military men, political leaders or uncritical journalists.

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Notes:Mary C. FitzGerald responded to having her report written up with regards to the Gulf War virus hoax in the Netly News. Her comments are appended to the original (URL below) and they are republished here in contrast with this issue's analysis.

Mary C. FitzGerald replied:

"According to George Smith, the sun revolves around the earth, the earth is flat, the Conquest of the Skies will never fly, and the new Revolution in Military Affairs is a Pentagon war-theory euphemism wherein futuristic contraptions are predominantly products of wishful thinking.

"Mr. Smith debunks the potential use of computer viruses in warfare. He further argues that they are merely a conspiracy by the Pentagon and conservative think tanks designed to enhance a non-existent threat -- presumably to increase defense spending. He has the right to say whatever he thinks, but the only thing he has demonstrated is his own selective paranoia.

"The paper he cites is my presentation of Russian views on the nature of future war, a subject to which the Russians for many decades have devoted extensive resources and manpower. The Chief of the Russian General Staff, Marshal Ogarkov, not the Pentagon, used the phrase the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) over two decades ago to point out the impact of technology on future warfare. His writings and those of other Russian military theorists on the RMA are proving to be very prophetic. Ogarkov in the mid-70s correctly envisioned the type of warfare that was demonstrated in Desert Storm. Russian military theorists are evaluating not only the impact of computer viruses, but also all other types of information weapons, logic bombs, special microbes, and micro-chipping. They are also studying the impact of other new technologies (such as precision-guided munitions, third-generation nuclear weapons, and weapons based on new physical principles). George Smith may refuse to accept the potential of new technologies on modern warfare, but the Russians clearly disagree with him.

"P.S. Throughout his commentary, Mr. Smith erroneously takes my discussion of what Russian military theorists have said and presents it as direct quotes from me."

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