An Inclusive Litany

1/29/96

The Washington Post, December 1, 1995:
A secret Defense Intelligence Agency program that posed tough military questions to a handful of full-time, salaried psychics was kept alive for years at the insistence of a few senators and a congressional staff aide despite opposition from senior military intelligence officials....

[C. Richard] D'Amato, who was assigned to the committee staff by Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-WV), a former Appropriations Committee chairman, confirmed in an interview yesterday that he kept the program alive because four to six senators had expressed unusual and sustained interest in its potential, and because similar psychic research was being pursued by the Soviet Union, China and "some of our European allies."

[Ed.: A CIA analysis of the $20 million project concluded that the psychics were accurate about 15 percent of the time. Among their tasks were to track down Moammar Gadhafi so that he could be hit in the 1986 bombing of Libya and to locate plutonium stashed away in North Korea.]