Psychic Warrior - The True Story Of Americas Foremost Psychic Spy And The Cover-Up Of The CIAs Top-Secret Stargate Program

Psychic Warrior is the memoir of David Morehouse, a decorated United States Army officer who claims to have served in Stargate, the government programme devoted to “remote viewing”—the alleged ability to observe distant places, hidden objects and past events using only the mind. This was espionage stripped of its traditional inconveniences: no false passports, poisoned umbrellas or uncomfortable nights behind enemy dustbins, merely a quiet room, some paper and a consciousness willing to travel without claiming mileage.

The Stargate programme itself was real. For more than two decades, American military and intelligence agencies investigated whether psychic phenomena might be useful for gathering information, largely because the Soviet Union was rumoured to be conducting similar research. Cold War logic therefore demanded that if Moscow might employ clairvoyants, Washington must immediately acquire better-funded clairvoyants with security clearance.

Morehouse’s own journey reportedly began during a military exercise in Jordan, when a stray machine-gun bullet struck his helmet. He survived, but afterwards began experiencing disturbing visions, nightmares and apparent out-of-body episodes. In an ordinary institution this might have resulted in medical leave. In the world of classified military intelligence, it apparently qualified him for specialist recruitment.

He describes being trained as a remote viewer, learning to direct his mind towards targets concealed across space and time. Theoretically, a psychic spy could examine a secret installation without approaching it, visit the scene of a disaster without leaving Fort Meade and investigate enemy activity while remaining safely beyond the reach of enemy catering. Whether this constitutes extrasensory perception, altered consciousness or extremely ambitious imagination is left for the reader to decide.

The missions described are not modest. Morehouse claims to have psychically encountered the destruction of Pan Am Flight 103, the burning oilfields of the Gulf War, Beirut terrorism, Hiroshima and episodes from Nazi Germany. At one point the narrative reaches towards the lost Ark of the Covenant, because once the human mind has escaped the restrictions of geography and time, there seems little reason to waste the opportunity checking an ordinary warehouse.

Yet Psychic Warrior is not presented merely as a catalogue of paranormal adventures. Morehouse describes the psychological cost of his work, the strain placed upon his family and his growing fear that remote viewing was being developed for darker purposes than passive intelligence gathering. The gifted officer gradually becomes a troubled insider, increasingly suspicious of the programme and increasingly inconvenient to the people allegedly protecting it.

His decision to expose Stargate then transforms the story into a conspiracy thriller involving surveillance, intimidation, professional destruction and an institution determined to keep its secrets secret. This is where the reader confronts the central difficulty of all clandestine memoirs: the most extraordinary claims concern material that was supposedly classified, concealed, destroyed or known only to people unable to confirm it. Convenient for the conspiracy, admittedly less convenient for footnotes.

The eventual declassification of Stargate confirmed that the United States really had spent years investigating remote viewing. A 1995 evaluation concluded that it had not demonstrated sufficient value for intelligence operations, and the programme was closed. This either proves that psychic spying did not work or, according to the more dedicated reader, proves that it worked so brilliantly that the government needed everyone to believe it had stopped. Conspiracy theories possess excellent suspension.

Morehouse tells his story with the pace and drama of a military thriller, moving between covert operations, paranormal experiences and personal collapse. Believers will find testimony from someone claiming to have stood inside one of the strangest programmes of the Cold War. Sceptics will find a fascinating study in military experimentation, belief and the ability of national-security institutions to spend money on almost anything once the Russians are mentioned.

This is a natural companion for readers of The Men Who Stare at Goats, books about CIA secrecy, paranormal espionage, Cold War experiments and governmental departments with reassuringly meaningless names. It may also appeal to anyone who has tried to find a missing set of keys through intense concentration, though the Stargate method appears to have had similarly variable operational results.

This 1998 St Martin’s Paperbacks edition is in As New condition. The covers are clean, the spine is untroubled and the pages show virtually no evidence of previous reading. It is possible that its former owner absorbed the contents remotely and therefore never needed to open it.

From Crappy Old Books—psychically transmitting quality second-hand literature across the country, although for reliability we still put it in the post.

Keep browsing: See more War books Other books by David Morehouse