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OMNI
JULY 1979
PSI ON CAPITOL HILL
OFFICIAL CIRCLES
By William K. Stuckey
t is not clear whether Charlie Rose
seeks the ever-growing Mind-Over-
Far-Out (Mofo) vote-Governor Jerry
Brown of California certainly does-or
what Rose would do with it if he got it. The
Mofo vote is not very conspicuous in the
tidewater district of North Carolina that
Rose represents as a Democratic
congressman. But Charlie (that's what he
puts on his letterhead) certainly has the
pulpit and connections, possibly the
power, and definitely the inclination to
produce a Moto spectacular.
What Representative Rose would like to
do is call a congressional hearing soon to
confirm publicly that the CIA and the
Pentagon have successfully demonstrated
that certain psi powers are real and can be
used for intelligence purposes, and the
Soviet Union is probably ahead of the
United States.
Rose is the chairman of the evaluation
subcommittee of the House Permanent
Committee on Intelligence and, as such, is
a principal watchdog of spook affairs. In
that capacity, he has recently witnessed
several classified demonstrations of
"remote viewing" by Stanford Research
Institute (SRI) and intelligence per-
sonnel-in which the experimental
subjects "viewed" persons and places
thousands of kilometers away in certain
"interesting" countries.
"All I can say is that if the results were
faked, our security system doesn't work,"
Rose told me cryptically. "What these
persons 'saw' was confirmed by aerial
photography. There's no way it could have
been faked."
As for the Soviet Union's undertakings in
this area, Rose disclosed, "I've been told
by the CIA that the Russians are very
interested in psychic phenomena and that
their whole effort is underground. They
have a national screening program to
detect mathematical, artistic, or psychic
abilities in schoolchildren. The CIA, on the
other hand, spends next to nothing in this
area, except to find out what the Russians
are doing."
The witnesses Rose would call include
CIA officials who, Rose said, "know this
remota-viewing stuff works but who have
been blocked by publicity-shy superiors."
Another key witness might be Dr. Robert
Jahn, dean of engineering and applied
science at Princeton University, who .
with graduate student Carol Curry is
developing an instrument to detect
small-scale psychokinetic effects-not of
the theatrical Geller spoon-bending type,
but a more modest effort to determine
whether a subject might "will" a grain of
sand to move.
Diehard Mofoers will also recognize the
names of other potential witnesses, such
as Edgar Mitchell, the astronaut who
conducted an ESP experiment (with
apparently ambiguous results) between'
the moon's surface and Earth; Dr. Harold
Puthoff and Russell Targ, two Stanford
Research Institute psychic researchers
whose reports, claiming that literally every
person they have tested can perform
remote viewing. have been published in
Nature and the IEEE Proceedings; and Dr.
Willis Harman, an SRI futures researcher,
---
.
Rep. Charlie Rose in front of the Capitol.
widely sought after by major corporations
and foundations, who is so convinced of
the reality of psychic phenomena that he
"wouldn't walk across the street to witness
a levitation:"
Congressman Rose, like Harman and
the other potential witnesses, in other
words, has seen and believes.
"Some of the intelligence people I've
talked to know that remote viewing works,
although they still block further research
on it, since they claim it's not yet as
accurate as satellite photography." Rose
asserted. "But it seems to me that it would
be a hell of a cheap radar system. And if
the Russians have it and we don't, we are
in serious trouble. This country wasn't
afraid to look into the strange physics
behind lasers and semiconductors, and
I don't think it should be afraid to look
at this."
When I first met him, Charlie was
concerned that some of the academic
debunkers of the psychic -whose
principal spokesman is Martin Gardner, of
Scientific American -might stille
objective, High Science research in this
fiercely debated area. That he might even
"investigate" the debunkers adds another
dimension to the hearings Rose proposes.
Charlie might also find himsell in a
locked-hom mode with some of the keen-
est thinkers of the day: Dr. John Wheeler,
for example, a renowned physicist, who
wrote the first paper on nuclear fission with
Niels Bohr and who associated with:
Einstein for more than 20 years, recently
suggested the expulsion of
parapsychology groups from the
respected umbrella organization, the
American Association for the
Advancement of Science.
But Wheeler and Gardner are not close
to His Leadership and Democratic
Highness Boston's own Thomas "Tip"
O'Neill, and Charlie Rose is. Rose fits
some, but far from all, of the stereotypes
that New York parochials would attach to
Southern congressmen. It is true that he is -
a Southern Presbyterian, and a "religious
one"; that he loves his chairmanships of
various agriculturalsubcommittees on
poultry, dairy products, and tobacco
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( PleasApproved For Release 2001/03/26 -CJA-RDB96.00787R000209080084-0 Rose was
and that he is not a scientist or intelligence
professional, but a Chapel Hill, North
Carolina, lawyer and former county prose-
Gutor. You see that trap jaw and hear the
accent and you think of those relaxed rural
DA s who might say. "Now Jake. we know
you kired your wife. So don't go lyin' about
i Just get your story together while I go get
you a cup of coffee."
The other Charlie Rose. however, is a
protégé of Terry Sanford. the former south-
ernly liberal governor of North Carolina,
ex-university president. and a once-
hopeful entrant into Democratic presiden-
tial primary elections - which attracted "all
the bright young Southern liberals like
Charlie Rose," and not one veteran Capitol
observer. Elected to Congress in 1972.
Rose made a key early commitment to
support O'Neill for House majority leader.
Tip. now speaker of the House, considers
Charlie one of his key Southern lieutenants.
one who doesn't mind doing the necessary
but dirty and no-publicity-value jobs that
keep Congress functioning. The House In-
telligence Committee (chaired by another
of Tip's buddies, Massachusetts Repre-
senfative Edward Boland) is one super job,
since most of its hearings are closed to the
life-giving (to congressmen) press and
back home.
There are two more Charlie Roses that
don't fit country stereotypes. One is the
Rose who is the House's acknowledged
expert on computers. according to Gary
Hymel, the speaker's right-hand man. And
Rose is founder of Capitol Hill's most Mofo
activity. the Congressional Clearinghouse
on the Future- "the science-fiction wing
of Congress." according to a science -ori-
ented congressman.
The Mofo aspect of the clearinghouse is
detected in the pages of its fascinating
monthly newsletter, "What's Next?" There
one finds the news and views of the L-5
space colony people, the anarchistic ap-
propriate technology of wondrous Karl
Hess, the soft-energy boys. the worker-
owned-corporation boosters, the cosmic-
consciousness kids, and the Committee for
the Elimination of Death. Under its imagin-
ative director, Ann Cheatham, the clearing-
house also holds its monthly "Chautauqua
Congress"-think-and-talk sessions with
both "futures." and more conventional, ex-
perts, who produce recommended legisla-
tion with a longer-than-usual-term twist.
(For the remainder of the year Chautauqua
will deal with future housing; "soft" appro-
priate technology vs. "hard" conventional
technology, the scientific nature of life, in-
cluding genetic manipulation; the future
social culture; and even "cosmic con-
sciousness.")
ved to lead the Mofo prophets? Well. he
Y yet another convert to Alvin Toffier, the
respected futurist-author of Future Shock
Totfler convinced Rose that Congress was
playing Russian roulette with the future by
ignoring it in most of its legislation. He in-
troduced Rose to that growing think-tank
industry of futurology which according to
one (of several conflicting) definitions, uses
available information and mixes in hunches
and personal theories to predict what is
going to happen in crucial and vital areas.
In 1974 Congress passed an internal act
requiring its committees to conduct
periodic futures research. and by 1976
Rose and Cheatham were sending the
House a stream of both close-in and
farthest-out futurists to prophesy what lay
in store for all of us.
Today the clearinghouse functions as a
"caucus." not an official congressional
committee, but rather an informal Hili-
based activity financed by contributions
from interested members of Congress and
other supporters. Many Senate luminaries
are firmly behind the project.
Though it can't yet claim many legislative
victories. Rose's clearinghouse-in con-
junction with Rose's hearings on psychic
intelligence gathering -will no doubt lead
to some of the oddest debates, most
astounding legislation, and weirdest wit-
nesses in congressional history. California
has set up shop on Capitol Hill. CO
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