The Men Who Stare at Goats

1. The US Military's Secret Psychic Quest

Defying all known accepted military practice—and indeed, the laws of physics—they believed that a soldier could adopt a cloak of invisibility, pass cleanly through walls, and, perhaps most chillingly, kill goats just by staring at them.

Unconventional warfare. In 1979, the U.S. Army established a secret unit, the First Earth Battalion, driven by the belief that soldiers could develop psychic abilities. Major General Albert Stubblebine III, the Army's chief of intelligence, was a key proponent, personally attempting to walk through walls and levitate. This quest for superpowers was a desperate response to the trauma and perceived failures of the Vietnam War, seeking a new, "cunning" way to wage war.

Psychic experiments. Stubblebine commanded a secret psychic spying unit at Fort Meade, Maryland, where soldiers attempted remote viewing to gather intelligence. These "Black Op" psychics, despite their clandestine status and lack of basic amenities like a coffee budget, aimed to perceive Russian warships or future events. Their efforts, though often met with skepticism and internal disarray, highlight a period when the military seriously explored the paranormal as a strategic advantage.

Beyond the battlefield. The ambition extended beyond traditional espionage, envisioning soldiers who could:

• Achieve invisibility
• Pass through solid objects
• Heal psychically
• Stop animal hearts by staring

These ideas, however outlandish, were considered vital for defending America and avoiding future conflicts like Vietnam, reflecting a profound shift in military thinking towards the "unthinkable."

2. Jim Channon's New Age Army Vision

The US army doesn’t really have any serious alternative than to be wonderful.

Vietnam's impact. Lieutenant Colonel Jim Channon, traumatized by his Vietnam experiences, embarked on a Pentagon-funded odyssey in 1977 to find new ways for the army to be "cunning." He visited 150 New Age organizations in California, seeking methods to transform soldiers into "Warrior Monks" who could achieve superhuman feats and promote peace. His confidential "First Earth Battalion Operations Manual" became the blueprint for this radical transformation.

A new military ethos. Channon's manual proposed a military where soldiers would:

• Carry "symbolic animals" like baby lambs
• Greet enemies with "sparkly eyes" and "automatic hugs"
• Sense plant auras and bend metal with their minds
• Live off nature and be 90%+ vegetarian

He envisioned a future where the army would lead the world to "paradise," driven by ideals of conservation and ecological sanity, a stark contrast to traditional military aggression.

Inspiring the impossible. Channon's charismatic presentation of these ideas captivated top generals, who, also bruised by Vietnam, were open to his vision. Although he declined to command a real First Earth Battalion, his manual inspired many to pursue these "impossible" goals. His influence even extended to the famous recruitment slogan, "Be All You Can Be," which he helped inspire, suggesting a deeper, more spiritual meaning to military service.

3. The Bizarre Reality of "Goat Lab"

The covert nature of the goats was helped by the fact that they had been de-bleated; they were just standing there, their mouths opening and closing, with no bleat coming out.

Secret animal experiments. At Fort Bragg, North Carolina, a clandestine facility known as "Goat Lab" housed a hundred de-bleated goats. Initially, it was a surgical training ground where Special Forces soldiers practiced on goats shot in the leg. However, it also became the site for more bizarre experiments, including attempts to kill goats by staring at them, a direct application of the First Earth Battalion's psychic warfare concepts.

The "goat starer." Glenn Wheaton, a former Special Forces psychic spy, revealed that a master sergeant named Michael Echanis had successfully stopped a goat's heart by sheer force of will. This feat, however, came with a cost, as Echanis reportedly suffered "sympathetic injury" to his own heart. The secrecy surrounding these experiments, including the de-bleating of the goats to avoid attention from animal welfare groups, underscores the military's commitment to these unconventional pursuits.

Echanis's legend. Michael Echanis, a Vietnam veteran and martial arts expert, was a figure of legend, teaching "invisibility" and "death touch" techniques to Green Berets. His methods, though controversial, were part of a broader effort to create "super soldiers." While his death in Nicaragua remains mysterious, the story of his goat-staring ability highlights the extreme and often disturbing lengths to which the military explored psychic powers.

4. Non-Lethal Weapons: From Foam to Fiasco

It was, however, the first and last time that the foam was deployed in a combat situation.

Sticky Foam's origins. Colonel John Alexander, a key figure in the First Earth Battalion, developed "Sticky Foam" as a non-lethal weapon, directly inspired by Jim Channon's manual. This foam was designed to expand and harden upon contact, immobilizing targets. It represented the military's pursuit of "cunning and big-hearted" alternatives to lethal force, aiming to control situations without causing death.

Real-world failures. The foam's deployment, however, proved problematic. In Somalia in 1995, Marines sprayed it to create a barrier against rioters, but the crowd simply climbed over it. Later, in US prisons, it immobilized inmates so effectively that they couldn't be moved. These incidents, often mocked in the media, highlighted the gap between theoretical potential and practical application, leading to its eventual withdrawal from combat use.

A broader arsenal. Despite Sticky Foam's mixed success, the pursuit of non-lethal technologies continued, as detailed in reports co-authored by Alexander. This arsenal included:

• Acoustic Weapons (Blast Wave Projector, Infra-sound causing nausea or death)
• Race-Specific Stink Bombs
• Chameleon Camouflage Suits
• Pheromones to release bees on targets
• "Death Holograms" to scare individuals to death

These inventions, ranging from the plausible to the fantastical, demonstrate the enduring influence of Channon's vision on military innovation, even as the definition of "non-lethal" became increasingly flexible.

5. Music as Torture: Barney and the Bucha Effect

I guess if they play them Barney and Sesame Street once or twice,’ I said, ‘that’s lightening and comforting, but if they play it, say, fifty thousand times into a steel box in the desert heat, that’s more…uh…torturous?

PsyOps in Iraq. In May 2003, US Psychological Operations (PsyOps) units in al-Qa'im, Iraq, used children's music, including the "I Love You" song from Barney the Purple Dinosaur and Sesame Street tunes, as an interrogation technique. Prisoners were subjected to these songs on continuous loops, combined with flashing lights, inside steel shipping containers. This practice, initially reported humorously, was a direct, albeit twisted, legacy of Jim Channon's First Earth Battalion ideas about using "discordant sounds" to confuse the enemy.

The Bucha Effect. Commander Sid Heal, a leading non-lethal technologies expert, suggested the technique might be an attempt to induce the "Bucha Effect." This phenomenon, discovered in the 1950s, involves strobing lights interfering with human brainwave frequencies, causing nausea, disorientation, and incapacitating shock. The goal was to seize the "amygdala moment"—the crushing seconds of incapacitating shock—to force compliance in interrogations.

Ethical ambiguities. While Jim Channon initially believed the music was meant to "lighten the environment" and "comfort" prisoners, the reality was far darker. The use of such methods raised significant ethical questions, particularly regarding the Geneva Convention, which had not anticipated "frequencies" or children's music as tools of interrogation. The military's willingness to explore these "psycho-spiritual" dimensions of warfare highlights a continuous search for unconventional means to break resistance.

6. CIA's Dark Mind Control Legacy: MK-ULTRA and Artichoke

Where else could a red-blooded American boy lie, kill, cheat, steal, rape and pillage with the sanction and blessing of the all-highest?

Mind warfare's origins. The CIA's director, Allen Dulles, declared "mind warfare" the great battlefield of the Cold War in 1953, initiating covert projects like MK-ULTRA and Artichoke. These programs explored extreme methods of interrogation and mind control, including administering LSD to unsuspecting individuals and developing brutal torture techniques. This historical context reveals a long-standing government interest in manipulating the human mind, predating the First Earth Battalion.

Frank Olson's tragic fate. Frank Olson, a civilian scientist and CIA operative involved in Artichoke, was unwittingly given LSD by his boss, Sidney Gottlieb, during a retreat in 1953. Days later, he died after falling from a New York hotel window. Initially ruled a suicide, his son Eric Olson's decades-long investigation revealed a more sinister truth: Olson was likely murdered to prevent him from exposing the horrific "terminal experiments" he witnessed in Europe.

A legacy of unethical experimentation. The MK-ULTRA project also involved:

• Creating a brothel in New York to spike drinks with LSD and observe sexual positions for information extraction.
• Employing a Broadway magician, John Mulholland, to teach agents how to surreptitiously administer drugs and toxins.
• Attempting assassinations with poisoned cigars and toothbrushes (e.g., Fidel Castro, Patrice Lumumba).

These revelations, often dismissed as "fraternity boys out of control," underscore a disturbing pattern of government-sanctioned unethical experimentation, where human lives were treated as expendable in the pursuit of mind control.

7. Abu Ghraib: A Deliberate PsyOps "Product"?

We think about how an Iraqi will react to our products, not how an American will react to our products.

The scandal's emergence. The Abu Ghraib prison scandal, revealed by photographs in 2004, depicted US military police, notably Private Lynndie England, humiliating and abusing Iraqi prisoners. These images, showing naked men in human pyramids, on leashes, and subjected to sexual degradation, shocked the world and fueled anti-American sentiment, particularly in Iraq. The defense that these acts were "softening up" prisoners for interrogation pointed to a deeper, more calculated strategy.

PsyOps involvement. Lynndie England claimed she was acting under orders from higher-ranking Military Intelligence and PsyOps personnel, who explicitly told her to "stand there, hold this leash and look at the camera" for "PsyOps reasons." A senior cultural analyst at PsyOps confirmed their focus on how "an Iraqi will react to our products," suggesting the photographs themselves might have been a deliberate "product" designed to terrorize the target audience.

A calculated humiliation. The specific nature of the abuses—sexual humiliation and degradation—was particularly effective in repelling young Iraqi men, aligning with existing conspiracy theories about American decadence. This suggests the acts were not random but carefully calculated to achieve a psychological effect, blurring the lines between interrogation, torture, and propaganda. The scandal highlighted how the military's pursuit of "cunning" could lead to morally reprehensible actions, with the photographs serving as both evidence and weapon.

8. Psychic Spies Go Civilian: Cults and Cataclysms

He said an alien race had attached a canister to Hale-Bopp and it was going to drop this canister on the Earth and some kind of virus was going to come out and eat all the plant life and we’d have to live on earthworms and live underground.

Post-military psychic ventures. After the CIA officially declassified and shut down the secret psychic unit in 1995, many former military psychic spies transitioned to the civilian world. Major Ed Dames, a former Stubblebine recruit, became a media sensation, appearing on the Art Bell show to make outlandish predictions. He capitalized on his military background to lend credibility to his claims, attracting a large following.

Prophecies of doom. Dames's predictions included:

• Millions of babies dying from bovine AIDS
• 300mph winds ravaging America
• A solar flare wiping out most life on Earth
• An alien canister on Comet Hale-Bopp releasing a plant pathogen, forcing humanity underground to eat earthworms

These sensational prophecies, combined with his military credentials, created a fervent belief among his listeners, illustrating the powerful influence of former intelligence figures in the burgeoning New Age and conspiracy communities.

Tragic consequences. One of Dames's first civilian students, Dr. Courtney Brown, further amplified these predictions, claiming Martians would arrive on Earth within two years. This led to the tragic mass suicide of the Heavens Gate cult in 1997, whose members believed they would hitch a ride to "the level above human" on the Hale-Bopp comet's "companion object." The incident exposed the dangerous intersection of government-trained psychics, media sensationalism, and vulnerable civilian populations.

9. The Unseen Battlefield: Subliminal Sounds and Frequencies

You don’t know how deep the rabbit hole goes, do you? But you know it is deep. You know it is deep.

Silent Subliminal Presentation System. Dr. Oliver Lowery (aka "Bud" or "Hamish McLaren") patented a "Silent Subliminal Presentation System" in 1992, capable of inducing specific emotional states (positive or negative) in humans using non-aural carriers. His company claimed the US government classified the schematics and used the system successfully in Operation Desert Storm, "warping their brains for a hundred days." This technology suggests a covert capability to influence minds without conscious awareness.

Guantanamo's strange music. The experience of Jamal al-Harith, a British detainee at Guantanamo Bay, further hints at these technologies. Interrogators played him CDs of Fleetwood Mac and Matchbox Twenty at normal volume, then left the room. While seemingly innocuous, Jamal's astonishment upon learning the same music was used in Iraq suggests a deliberate, programmatic intent beyond simple entertainment or sleep deprivation.

The "Psycho-Correction Device." Colonel John Alexander, despite publicly denying knowledge of such devices, co-authored a military report listing a "Psycho-Correction Device" that "involves influencing subjects visually or aurally with embedded subliminal messages." The military's ability to transmit silent sounds through various media, even a "crappy old tape recorder," and the interrogators' absence from the room during Jamal's "music sessions," suggest a sophisticated, covert application of these mind-altering technologies.

10. The Enduring Pursuit of Unconventional Warfare

The traditional response (over millennia) is to kill them or put them into slavery. Tough to do in today’s environment.

A continuous quest. From the Cold War to the War on Terror, the US military and intelligence agencies have consistently sought unconventional methods to gain advantage, often blurring ethical boundaries. General Stubblebine's psychic ambitions, Jim Channon's New Age army, and the CIA's MK-ULTRA experiments all represent a continuous, desperate search for "cunning" in warfare, driven by crises and a desire to avoid past failures.

The "dark side" of innovation. This pursuit has led to a "casserole of intelligence" and a willingness to "question everything," resulting in bizarre and often horrific applications:

• Goat-staring experiments
• Sticky Foam failures
• Barney-themed torture
• Subliminal sound manipulation
• The abuses at Abu Ghraib

These incidents highlight a recurring pattern where the military's innovative spirit, when unchecked by clear ethical guidelines, can lead to actions that are both ineffective and morally reprehensible.

The cost of "closure." The book ultimately reveals that the military's embrace of the "unthinkable" has had profound and often tragic consequences, not only for its adversaries but also for its own personnel and the public's trust. The narrative of "closure" or "healing" often masks a deeper, unresolved history of experimentation and abuse, leaving a legacy of ambiguity and unanswered questions about the true nature of modern warfare.

Last updated: March 5, 2026