NSA-RDP96X00790R000100040017-6

Approved For Release 2008/04/01 : NSA-RDP96X00790R000100040017-6
Sunday, June 19, 1977
The Washington Star
Is ESP Really Part of a Soviet 'Secret Weapon'?
By Flora Lewis
New York Times News Service
RIS - An emigre Soviet physi-
says that the Soviet Union has
doing secret work in parapsy-
gy with what appear to be mili-
and police purposes.
French scientist and former
igence agent, Jacques Bergier,
written that extrasensory per-
on, one of the theories studied
arapsychology, may be used in
onage, thought control, surveil-
e and as a form of weapon.
le Soviet emigre, August Stern,
son of Dr. Mikhail Stern, an
crinologist who was imprisoned
re being allowed to leave the
et Union in March. August Stern
.t several years in a secret Sibe-
laboratory in the late 1960s
ig to find a physical basis for
:hic energy - or "psi particles."
wiet concern on the issue was
onstrated recently in the case of
ert C. Toth, the Los Angeles
es newsman interrogated in Mos-
by the KGB and accused of hav-
received "state secrets" about
apsychology.
HE INCIDENT had the earmarks
n entrapment in the view of diplo-
.s and others. There is no sign the
age document on parapsychology
handed Toth just before he was
seized contained important informa-
tion. However, there is a record of
Soviet sensitivity and August Stern's
information indicates that parapsy-
chology is a matter of concern to the
authorities.
Stern, who now lives in Paris, said
he was told before leaving the Soviet
Union two years ago that an even
more secret laboratory than the one
'he knew in Siberia had been set up in
Moscow under the direction of the
KGB.
Parapsychology covers four
specific fields of nonphysical phe-
nomena. They are telepathy (trans-
mission of thought without use of the
senses), extrasensory perception,
telekinesis (transmission of motion
without any evident use of physical
energy) and clairvoyance (the ability
to see distant or future events with-
out physical intervention).
Most scientists remain skeptical
such phenomena actually exist, but
there are researchers throughout the
world dedicated to proving them.
SOVIET RESEARCH has gone on
for years, sometimes publicly
vaunted and at other times de-
nounced and even denied.
At one time in the late 1950s and
early 1960s, the U.S. Navy and the
Stanford Research Institute did ex-
periments in telepathy to see
whether it could provide an undetect-
able means of communicating with
submarines. So far as is known, the
experiments failed. But word of them
reached Moscow and apparently pro-
voked high-level interest.
In 1975 some Soviet parapsycholo-
gists were persecuted and the whole
subject was publicly attacked. Ed-
uard Naumov, a researcher, was
tried on a charge of accepting fees
for lectures without permission, and
was sentenced to two years in labor
camp. His colleagues were dismissed
from their jobs and otherwise har-
assed. At the trial much was made of
the fact that he had contacts with
Western parapsychologists.
On June 13, 1975, Leonid I. Brezh-
nev, the Soviet leader, urged the
United States to agree on a ban of re-
search and development of new kinds
of weapons "more terrible"
than
anything the world has known. U.S.
to find out what he had in mind, but
they have not learned anything more
than that he meant "some kind of
rays," according to U.S. officials.
AT FIRST American intelligence
thought hy might have been referring
to laser beams, or some way of focus-
ing cosmic rays, but they no longer
believe this to be the case. They say
they are baffled by the reference.
There is no evidence that Brezhnev
was referring to something in the
possibility that has occurred to some
observers, especially because of the
vacillating treatment of parapsy-
chologists, the evident involvement
of the KGB and what some regard as
a traditional Russian interest in
mysticism.
The laboratory that Stern worked
in was in Novosibirsk's Science City,
a complex belonging to the Siberian
branch of the Academy of Sciences.
It was in a separate building, and the
door could be opened only by a coded
lock with the code changed every
week. It was known as "Special De-
partment No. 8" and was referred to
.mation and Electrometry.
Workers were recruited from
around the country until there were
arms control negotiators have tried about 60 persons at the laboratory.
The scientists among them were
given virtually unlimited funds for
elaborate equipment. "It cost many
millions," Stern said.
HIS OWN WORK was in theoreti-
cal physics. His view was that there
might be an orderly system in which
all kinds of energy could be charted.
similar to Mendeleyev's periodic
table of chemical elements.
If such a chart could be discovered
for energy, Stern thought, it, too,
field of parapsychology. But it is a . might be found to have blank spaces
that might lead to physical identifica-
tion of particles to explain the mys-
tery of psychic energy, the "psi
particles."
He worked for two years and found
nothing. Other experiments at the
laboratory involved applying electric
shocks to newly born kittens to see
whether their mothers, three floors
upstairs, registered any reaction
through some mental connection;
television surveillance of people in a
room to see whether they responded
to attempts by others several rooms
away to send them telepathic orders;
studies involving monkeys and elec-
as a branch of the Institute of Auto- ' tromagnetic fields.
There also were experiments with
photon waves, in which frogs' eyes
were used as a more sensitive meas-
uring instrument than a machine.
One involved putting bacteria on two
sides of a glass plate to see whether a
fatal disease could be transmitted
through the glass. It was reasoned
that if this could be done, it .would
show that photons - light particles
- were accounting for some inex-
plicable forms of communication.
SUDDENLY IN 1969 the la:
tory was shut down. Stern said h
not know the reason and did not t
it was really the team's lack of
cess or the poor quality of its sci
as officially suggested at the 1
but a change of attitude or powe:
ance in the Kremlin.
He was back in Moscow by .
He heard that the military, and
ticularly the navy, was condu
parapsychology research in L
grad.
A friend of his, a Leningrad s
tist named Gennadi Sergeyev,
him he was receiving permission.
funds to open a new laboratory
offered him a job. But the pr.
was canceled.
Friends told Stern the work do
Novosibirsk and planned in L
grad had been combined in a
laboratory in Moscow uner the
pices of the KGB. He never lea
any more about it.
By the time he left in 1974, he
told that all parapsychology
had been curtailed except for th
cret KGB laboratory. He said he
heard rumors that somet
"important, very dangerous"
been discovered, but he comment
"I never believed it. How ca.
KGB do effective research?
need real scientists."
Woodies
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Approved For Release 2008/04/01 : NSA-RDP96X00790R000100040017-6