What does spy-agency polygraph technology have in common with brain scanning fMRI and extraterrestrial telepathy?

The application of fMRI technology for detection of a “telepathic information channel” between distant tests subjects would provide an objective framework for serious research into an area of anomalous observation already of interest to the Defense Intelligence Agency and the U.S. Air Force: alleged encounters with non-human intelligence and telepathic transmission of information.

(Spies, Lies and Polygraph Tape) — Over the years, I have been involved in several informal discussions with scientific experts concerning telepathy — direct mind-to-mind communication of meaning — following a reported incident at aerospace entrepreneur Bob Bigelow’s allegedly haunted Skinwalker Ranch in Utah.

According to Bigelow physics adviser Dr. Eric Davis, hostile telepathic messages were perceived by an unnamed Bigelow scientist. The alleged telepathic source? An unfriendly alien intelligence rumored to have warned Bigelow’s paranormal investigative team to leave the area.

I imagine that most professionals would dismiss the Skinwalker Ranch claims as delusional. One the other hand, they might be the result of some kind of hypnotic suggestion related to tales of high strangeness and the odd social circumstances surrounding the alleged paranormal activity. After reading a good portion of the U.S. government’s 80,000 pages of declassified STAR GATE psychic spy files, I was left wondering if there was more to this story than mere delusion.

Casting aside the possibility of a supernatural presence behind the reported telepathic incident, a handful of researchers are now considering what kind of technology might be responsible for sending and receiving real-world mind-to-mind signals.

Grabbing hold of a TIGER’s Tale

It’s called the “Military and Intelligence Methodology for Emergent Neurophysiological and Cognitive/Neural Science Research in the Next Two Decades.”

The intelligence community faces voluminous amounts of scientific information produced and available on a global scale. To improve the analysis of the information, the Technology Warning Division of the Defense Intelligence Agency’s Defense Warning Office asked the National Research Council, in 2004, to establish the Committee on Defense Intelligence Agency Technology Forecasts and Reviews … the DIA [requested] that the NRC establish a standing committee on Technology Insight — Gauge, Evaluate and Review (TIGER).

The special TIGER study committee — headed by Bigelow adviser Dr. Eric Davis’ colleague, former CIA analyst and assistant national intelligence officer for science and technology Dr. Christopher Kit Green — counted among its many notable members Dr. John Gannon, former chairman of the CIA National Intelligence Council.

The goals for the study were laid out at the National Academies of Science:

This study will develop approaches to identification of trends in neurophysiological and cognitive/neural science research that may help the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) anticipate the state of such research internationally in the year 2027 and, especially, to help prepare for possible implications affecting future U.S. warfighting capabilities.

I have — sitting on my desk as a definitive reference — the prepublication copy of the final report, currently available from Amazon.com as “Emerging Cognitive Neuroscience and Related Technologies.”

(A free online version is available at the National Academies of Science website.)

The project was one of many programs run by the Air Force Studies Board and sponsored by the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Is the Defense Intelligence Agency interested in telepathy?

Dr. Kit Green, the previously mentioned former CIA analyst and member of the National Academies DIA TIGER Committee, has been involved in adapting the technology of fMRI brain scanners for detection of confabulation — essentially a high tech lie detector.

Green has also expressed personal interest in the use of fMRI to demonstrate the existence (or non-existence) of a telepathic connection between distant human test subjects.

It’s all part of an agenda to reverse-engineer exotic (often identified as extraterrestrial alien, or non-human) technology for use in the war on terror. At least that is how it appears based upon a superficial examination.

Green described to us an idea for a telepathy experiment, using fMRI brain scanners, involving a remote viewer sender and a receiver.

“I want to put a remote viewing person with proven skills at receiving mentation from a sender in one magnet, and the proven sender in a second magnet simultaneously — and see if the (sure and certain) activation in the specific occipital primary visual cortex — responsible for processing the image I would present him or her — would be apperceived in the recipient [receiver] thousands of miles away, at the same moment (within 500 milliseconds) in the same cortical substrate.”

The big question, besides the obvious “is this for real?” should involve the legality of mindtaps, since the application of fMRI technology to enhance lie detection schemes is already in the works — we have seen copies of government proposals for some of the basic research.

“We can watch a person decide to lie in real-time … in these recent experiments, the experimenter was ‘blind’ to the results but able to tell, in real time, that an incorrect pattern was chosen …”

The proposals for fMRI detection of confabulation we have seen involve enhancing traditional (polygraph-based lie detection) methods by finding a correlation between the traditional sensors and fMRI signals, using a special software model.

The extension of the above for detection of a “telepathic information channel” between distant tests subjects would provide an objective framework for serious research into an area of anomalous observation already of interest to the U.S. Air Force: encounters with non-human intelligence and telepathic transmission of information.

The U.S. Air Force has long been associated with all-things ET, presumably part of a reverse engineering mandate to make operational suspected or observed anomalous phenomena. The Air Force and other services have a long history of injecting phenomena that are not scientifically understood into active operational programs; the best known example being the STAR GATE psychic spy programs. Apparently understanding the theoretical basis for an observed anomaly is not a prerequisite for obtaining operational funding.

The author of the official U.S. Air Force “Teleportation Study,” Bigelow adviser Dr. Eric Davis, provided details of an encounter by a physicist with a non-human “telepathic” intelligence at Skinwalker Ranch.

“There were multiple voices that spoke in unison, telepathically. Four senses were in their control so there was no odor, sound, smell, or touch, and overall body motion was frozen (as in the muscles that would not respond). Afterwards, when completely freed from this event (after the dark shadow) disappeared, there was no lingering or residual odors, sounds, etc. in the immediate environment.”

Clearly the reported encounter resembles hypnagogic and hynopompic reports of extraterrestrial abductions; the finer details of this event remain unknown to us.

The DIA study compared reports of alien abduction to false memory syndrome.

“The abductees studied had experienced apparent sleep paralysis and hypnopompic hallucinations, which are vivid dreamlike hallucination that occur as one is waking up, such as seeing figures hovering near their beds … their physiological reactions were similar to those seen in Post Traumatic Stress Disorder patients who listened to audiotaped scripts of their traumas. Thus, expressed emotion is no guarantee that a memory is true.”

The report serves as an example of why the U.S. Air Force and certain TIGER team members might have an interest in exploring the possibility of directly inducing mental impressions. The ability to shut down other sensory functions of the human brain is certainly of direct military interest, even if the phenomenology behind the effect is not well understood.

In 2008, I assisted in arranging a meeting between Dr. Green and a Chinese researcher who was also interested in an experiment to test for a telepathic connection between two human test subjects.

(Spies, Lies and Polygraph Tape) — In the 1990s, aerospace entrepreneur Robert Bigelow purchased a remote ranch in Utah where strange paranormal experiences had become a way of life. Bigelow’s National Institute Discovery Science (NIDS) team soon descended on the ranch in search of an alleged source behind the strange stories told by the previous owner.

The attack that followed — although not unexpected — was intense, if brief.

According to sources, one of Bigelow’s scientists experienced a close encounter of the most unnerving kind.

Like the smoke monster on the fictional ABC TV series “Lost,” an eerie fog had appeared, described as “a multiple intelligence manifested in the form of a dark shadow or cloud-type effect which had an unusual turbulence effect when it shrunk to a point and disappeared.”

We approached Bigelow adviser Dr. Eric Davis, a physicist who had, in 2001-2003, surveyed the field of teleportation, including reports of supernatural teleportation, while under contract by the U.S. Air Force.

With regard to Skinwalker-like reports of anomalous mind-matter interactions, Davis advised the Air Force, “We will need a physics theory of consciousness and psychotronics, along with more experimental data, in order to test … and discover the physical mechanisms that lay behind the psychotronic manipulation of matter. [Psychic] P-Teleportation, if verified, would represent a phenomenon that could offer potential high-payoff military, intelligence and commercial applications. This phenomenon could generate a dramatic revolution in technology, which would result from a dramatic paradigm shift in science. Anomalies are the key to all paradigm shifts!”

Davis told us, “NIDS folded in October 2004 and ceased routine intensive staff visits to the ranch back in 2001. I was the team leader from 1999-2001.”

“There were multiple voices that spoke in unison telepathically,” Davis candidly explained, regarding the Skinwalker attack, “The voices were monotone males with a very terse, threatening tone … Four senses were in their control so there was no odor, sound, smell, or touch, and overall body motion was frozen (as in the muscles that would not respond). Afterwards, when completely freed from this event — after the dark shadow disappeared — there was no lingering or residual odors, sounds, etc. in the immediate environment.”

Was Bob Bigelow’s remote ranch possessed by an evil supernatural entity?

“How do you interpret that?” I asked Davis. “Sounds like the Exorcist?”

“It does sound like it,” Davis responded, “But it wasn’t in the category of demonic possession. More like an intelligence giving a warning to the staff by announcing its presence and that they (the staff) were being watched by this presence. Demonic possessions are not short lived nor as benign as this, and they always have a religious context.”

What, exactly, was behind the reported experiences at Skinwalker Ranch? Was an unknown and highly capable and intelligent entity guarding its territory?

Physicist Beatriz Gato-Rivera proposed a “sub-anthropic principle” and “undetectability conjecture” to explain why an alien intelligence might covertly occupy our local region of space and time: because the multiverse is very dangerous, an advanced intelligence must remain hidden for their own safety. Was our solar system a small piece of a galactic hyper-civilization that relies on ultra-technology to conceal its very presence? And was it possible our exposure of their presence (at Skinwalker Ranch?) represented a potential threat to the safety of that civilization from less friendly hyper-civilizations?

Gato-Rivera suggested that the human race might be under the protection of an advanced intelligence, safely inside their territory, thus we experience only minor incursions from hostile forces from deep space.

The question many of us were asking was what level of government involvement, if any, was behind the Bigelow purchase of Skinwalker Ranch.

Davis’ NIDS colleague, Dr. Kit Green, the former CIA analyst with Life Sciences Division had joined a special Defense Intelligence Agency advisory committee at the National Academies of Science. Green had noted with some disdain that Skinwalker had been discussed “ad nauseum” at meetings of the DIA committee, however the topic was never discussed as part of any official agenda.

The DIA committee, Technology Insight — Gauge, Evaluate, Review, or TIGER, was thought by some to have been co-created by Dr. Ron Pandolfi, who had been working with the CIA National Intelligence Council. One TIGER committee member, Dr. John Gannon, had chaired the National Intelligence Council before leaving for private sector intelligence. Pandolfi, a senior CIA adviser, had long been associated with all things tiger-related, and had moved to the MASINT office at DIA. In the 1990s, Pandolfi had created the TACP Network, “to provide the international endangered species protection community with advanced surveillance systems to counter growing poaching threats from organized crime … to assist in counter poaching of wild tigers.” According to Pandolfi’s friend Dan Throop Smith, Pandolfi would sometimes call meetings of his associates near the tiger cages at the National Zoo.

The TIGER committee, which included Kit Green and John Gannon, would soon produce an extensive review of “Emerging Neuroscience and Related Technologies” to “identify areas of cognitive neuroscience … that could have military applications that might be of interest to the intelligence community,” including “mind reading and psychological states.”

Davis seemed concerned that Bigelow’s NIDS might be connected to an official government science advisory group sponsored by the Defense Intelligence Agency.

“National security had nothing to do with NIDS and NIDS had nothing to do with national security … NIDS was a privately owned and funded UFO think-tank … I doubt NIDS was the topic of any Air Force TIGER committee discussion on a formal official basis. It is very likely and not at all surprising if NIDS was discussed on an informal unofficial basis during meals or breaks.”

Davis also noted in his Air Force study, “There are numerous supporters within the U.S. military establishment who comprehend the significance of remote viewing and [the] psycho-kinetic phenomenon, and believe that they could have strategic implications.”

Clearly, at least some officials in the intelligence community maintained an interest in bringing to life the kind of exotic technologies portrayed in science fiction.

And in February 2008, I provided Dr. Green with an experimental proposal by Dr. Shan Gao in Beijing, China, to test for and prove the existence of a quantum physics based mind-to-mind telepathy channel.

“This is fascinating, Gary,” Green replied, adding, “I will be moving to Beijing next month.”

Kit Green’s Mindtap: Sleight of Planet SERPO

John Gannon, former head of CIA National Security council, was tossed into the muddy mess of a tale of an extraterrestrial alien human exchange program turned viral Internet legend. CIA’s Dr. Ron Pandolfi investigated the outrageous claim that Gannon had been the anonymous source behind the so-called SERPO tale.

(Spies, Lies and Polygraph Tape) — According to the Associated Press, among the names thrown around for Obama’s first CIA Director was Dr. John Gannon, former deputy director for intelligence during the Clinton Administration.

Gannon has since left the CIA and the White House Transitional Planning Office for Homeland Security to join the privatized and outsourced intelligence community.

And, perhaps, he was also party to alleged discussion of the strange and disturbing events at aerospace entrepreneur Bob Bigelow’s haunted Skinwalker Ranch in Utah. The ranch, according to another government intelligence consultant, retired Col. John B. Alexander, is a very strange place where very strange things are reported to happen.

Gannon also participated as a member of a special committee chaired by former CIA life sciences analyst Dr. Christopher Kit Green at the National Academies of Science.

A strong denial — rumors spread that the high strangeness experienced by Bigelow’s science team at the ranch was part of the formal discussion by committee members — was subtly underlined by the admission that the topic had been discussed “ad nauseum” between formal sessions.

“I know John Gannon very, very well,” Green confided to me.

Gannon’s name had been tossed into the muddy mess of a tale of an extraterrestrial alien human exchange program turned viral Internet legend.

CIA’s Dr. Ron Pandolfi investigated the outrageous claim that Gannon had been the anonymous source behind the so-called SERPO tale.

“I am trying to keep the focus on just the issue of claims that DIA employees were in communications with [former Air Force agent Rick] Doty concerning the activities of John Gannon or any other personnel involved in classified work.”

We may never know if SERPO was an Internet joke gone wild or a more nefarious attempt to penetrate classified information via a viral marketing scheme (see my book “The UFO Spy Games” for more information) or if the affair damaged Gannon’s future options within the outsourced intelligence community. The SERPO affair did illustrate the higher-level connections between Bigelow’s science advisers, including Green, who sat on Bigelow’s Science Advisory Board, and senior U.S. intelligence officials.

Meetings attended by Gannon and chaired by Green resulted in a report on the threat of “emerging cognitive neurosciences” — a field that might someday include the induction and reading of thoughts directly from the human brain.

The final report explores a vast landscape of related topics of interest to the Department of Defense.

At the first meeting of the group in June 2007, Defense Intelligence Agency interests were represented by Jim Dearlove, a senior intelligence officer. Curiously, I had come across Dearlove’s name in the voluminous material concerning the SERPO affair — material that included a series of email messages provided by CIA’s Pandolfi, who had been working out of a DIA office.

“I have concluded the John Gannon connection was fabricated,” opined Pandolfi, “most likely by Doty with possibly the assistance of others.”

“Your expansion of the story of the two DIA employees visiting Los Alamos National Laboratory being known to others has me concerned,” Pandolfi would later write to Green, in a series of emails Pandolfi leaked to us, “If the story of the sources — visitors — is true, they are falsely representing themselves as DIA employees, possibly to access sensitive facilities and acquire classified information for a foreign service.”

“I am fully prepared to believe,” Green would later reply to Pandolfi, according to email provided by Pandolfi, “that there is ample room in all this for Rick [Doty] to be fabricating. I do not believe for one single instant that Jim Dearlove is fabricating. He was, however, decidedly nervous and uncharacteristically upset — sweating, apologetic to an absolute extreme — apologized for ‘failing’ me in what I needed at least three separate times in the discussion, which was in a classified setting … [he] said nothing like that had ever happened to him after such a routine request in his over 30-years at DIA — and especially since the question was, he thought, banal: ‘Have we two guys with this name, and can Dr. Green meet with them?’”

The SERPO affair added an otherworldly “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” inspired nonsense that covered over the serious discussion of Bigelow, his aerospace effort, and the private intelligence his group had collected while spending time at Skinwalker Ranch — intelligence that might have uncovered a secret privatized psychological warfare experiment using very advanced technology that had been developed in the black world of government contractors.

At least, that was one possibility suggested by Bigelow sources.

The other, more disturbing and popular explanation involved an extraterrestrial presence doing more or less the same with the unfortunate humans living on the property.

Gannon and Green had been tasked to provide the DIA with an early warning of potential mind-altering methods for reading and controlling the human brain.

The report summarized a list of questions in the minds of key decision makers:

• Can the cognitive states and intentions of persons of interest be read?
• Can cognitive capacities be enhanced?
• Can cognitive states and intentions be controlled?
• Can cognitive states be used to drive devices?

The alleged telepathic incidents, including one well-reported takeover of the mind of a Bigelow scientist would superficially appear to answer “yes” to all the above. One question remains largely unanswered: If the Skinwalker Ranch incidents represent real and objective interaction with the human mind, then who — or what exactly — is hiding behind the curtain?

But is telepathy — and in particular, quantum mind based telepathy, real? An experiment designed by a scientist in Beijing would soon attract Dr. Green’s attention. And we know — based upon the small amount of foreign collection intelligence released in the STAR GATE psychic spy files by the CIA — that the Defense Intelligence Agency was very interested in paranormal research in China in the 1990s.

Story continues in part four … “We can watch a person decide to lie in real time”