The Men Who Stare At Goats -

The most famous member of this group was a retired Vietnam War intelligence officer named Major General Albert Stubblebine. Stubblebine was the head of the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM). He was in charge of 14,000 spies and analysts. And he was convinced he had a problem: his physical body kept getting in the way.

Stubblebine spent months trying to "astral project" his body across the Potomac River. Then he focused on a more tangible goal: walking through a wall. Day after day, he would stand three feet from the cinderblock wall in his office, close his eyes, and run into it. He broke his nose several times. He chipped a tooth. The Men Who Stare At Goats

As one former interrogator told Ronson: "We stopped trying to kill the goat. We started trying to convince the goat it was already dead." So, why does this story matter today? The most famous member of this group was

The absurdity of the 1970s—meditation in the jungle—had curdled into the brutality of the 2000s: a Global War on Terror where prisoners were hooded, shackled, and forced to stare at walls for 72 hours. He was in charge of 14,000 spies and analysts

This wasn't a sci-fi novel. It was a formal military briefing. To the astonishment of rational officers, the Army brass didn't laugh Channon out of the Pentagon. They funded it. The unit was known as the "Remote Viewing" program, later codenamed Project Stargate , based out of Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

But the system that funded them? That took a silly goat manual and turned it into a torture manual? That is the real horror.

The infamous goat-staring experiment took place at Fort Bragg. The protocol was rudimentary: A soldier would sit in a room staring at a monitor. A goat was in another building, wired with a bio-feedback machine. The soldier’s job was to "stop the goat's heart."