Nexus - 0804 - New Times Magazine-pages

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However, several sources in France appeared which claimed one else except for one sailor who brought him meals and per- otherwise. My own efforts to obtain confirmation of the French formed other routine services. reports were unsuccessful. The reports held that such major US The final segment of these events, as reported in France, began corporations as Westinghouse, General Electric in Schenectady, with the arrival of the Nautilus at Groton, its cruise completed. New York, and Bell Telephone in Boston had begun telepathy The envelopes were removed from the commander's safe, sent by research in 1958. The aim was to develop thought transmission car under escort to the nearest military airfield, flown to by telepathy, to record and produce telepathic signals, and to Friendship Airport near Baltimore, and then taken to Colonel determine the amplitude and frequencies on which telepathy oper- Bowers's laboratory. There the two sets of sheets were taken from ated. their envelopes, dates and times matched with each other and the According to the French sources, President Eisenhower had results tabulated. In over 70 per cent of the cases, the figures tal- received a study prepared by the Rand Corporation of Los lied: Jones had correctly "guessed" three-fourths of the images Angeles, a "think tank" under contract to the armed forces and seen by Smith. other US Government agencies. The report was said to recom- I was put off by these reports, particularly by the high score mend studying the use of telepathy to establish communication ascribed to these experimental subjects and by their all-too-typical with submarines—particularly those cruising in waters under the American names. polar ice-cap, where radio communication channels are particular- On the other hand, the New York Herald Tribune had reported ly difficult. on 8 November 1958 that the Westinghouse Electric Corporation Westinghouse's Friendship Laboratory had begun to study ESP using specially allegedly undertook just such an experiment designed apparatus. Dr Peter A. Castruccio, with the USS Nautilus, linking one person director of the company's newly organised on land (the sender or inductor) with another Astronautic Institute, had spoken of the ESP person in the submarine (the receiver or studies as "very promising", with the caution inductee) while the vessel was submerged. that "a lot more work must be done before Representatives of the US Navy and Air we can come up with anything practical". Force were present during the experiment, . I questioned W. D. Crawford, Staff according to the reports. The aim was to develop Section, Air Arm Division, Westinghouse, : The original French reports fixed the start- thought transmission by on the project and he said that "while these ing date as 25 July 1959. The tests contin- studies have scientific value, any conclusion ued daily for a total of 16 days. The person telepathy, to record and at this time would be premature and incon- in charge was identified as Colonel William produce telepathic clusive". These statements were published H. Bowers, director of the Biological . . in the Newsletter of the Parapsychology Department of the Air Force research signals, and to determine Foundation (Jan-Feb 1959), as was a institute and the man who directed the i report that Bell Telephone Laboratories experiments at Friendship. Later f the amplitude ane h had considered an ESP research project requencies on wnic telepathy operated. accounts identified the sender or induc- but had abandoned it. tor as "Smith", a student at Duke The Nautilus story is often referred University, who was confined to one of to as a hoax, since the French and other the Westinghouse Laboratory's build- sources remain unconfirmed. ings during the experimental period. However, the telepathic part of the The procedure was designed to have story might have added interest to the Smith transmit "visual impressions" Soviet effort, already four decades old twice daily at specified times. Using by 1958. methods developed by J. B. Rhine at the In any event, Raphel Kherumain, a Parapsychology Laboratory, Duke prominent member of the Paris Institut University, Durham, North Carolina, a Métapsychique International, collected controlled timing device shuffled 1,000 articles on the Nautilus story and ESP cards in a revolving drum in such a manner as to drop five mailed them to his long-time professional friend, Leonid Vasiliev. cards on a table, one at a time, at one-minute intervals. Smith The implications that the Americans might be conducting ESP picked up each card as it came out of the drum, looked at it and experiments did enter into the Soviet Union's ongoing monolithic sought to memorise the image. At the same time, he drew a picture research machine, which influenced the lives of countless men of the symbol (square, cross, star, wavy lines or circle) on a piece and women and caused expenditures that by 1983 were supposed of paper before him. Each test thus produced a sheet of paper to amount to US$500 million annually. covered with five symbols. Smith sealed each paper into an envelope, which Colonel Bowers locked into a cage. EXPERIMENTS WITH PSI PARTICLES At the same time, a Navy lieutenant, identified as "Jones", sat Across the Ob River from Novosibirsk, a pioneer town in west- isolated in a stateroom on the Nautilus, functioning as the recipi- ern Siberia, lies Academgorodok, or Science City. For some four ent of the images Smith sought to convey by telepathy. Twice years, its Institute of Automation and Electrometry maintained a daily, Jones drew five symbols on a sheet of paper, choosing from research unit with the nondescript name of "Special Department among the same symbols used by Smith. He placed the sheet No. 8". The building which housed the department could only be inside an envelope, sealed it and turned it over to his superior, entered if one knew the code, changed each week, for opening the Captain William R. Andersen. The captain wrote the time and main door's lock. The "No. 8" operation was devoted to experi- date of the experiment on the envelope and put it into a safe in his ments in information transmission by bioenergetic means. As part own cabin. During the 16-day experiment period, Jones saw no of its program, physicists sought to discover the nature of "psi EXPERIMENTS WITH PSI PARTICLES Across the Ob River from Novosibirsk, a pioneer town in west- ern Siberia, lies Academgorodok, or Science City. For some four years, its Institute of Automation and Electrometry maintained a research unit with the nondescript name of "Special Department No. 8". The building which housed the department could only be entered if one knew the code, changed each week, for opening the main door's lock. The "No. 8" operation was devoted to experi- ments in information transmission by bioenergetic means. As part of its program, physicists sought to discover the nature of "psi JUNE — JULY 2001 NEXUS 45 www.nexusmagazine.com