Stories of odd forms of torture are also recounted in the book, viz., the stories where the theme songs of Sesame Street and Barney & Friends were used to torture those caught in Afghanistan and Iraq. This is the version of events also maintained by England herself after media interviews in 2004. In these revelations, it is claimed that the incidents of prisoner abuse in Abu Ghraib, and specifically the photographs involving Lynndie England, were staged by the CIA as a form of propaganda. The War on Terror Īmong the New Age-inspired projects and psychic conspiracy research mentioned in the book are several anecdotes relating to the War on Terror and the use of psychological operations by the military. Much of the First Earth Battalion's manual can be found online and Channon explains that the original purpose was to get the military thinking 'out of the box' for how to train front-line soldiers in a potential war with the Soviet Union, where being outnumbered and out-gunned would mean that traditional approaches (not least to keeping discipline and morale) would struggle.

As the project progressed, it degenerated from 'psychic peace activists' to 'kill enemies with our brains.' Channon and company claimed to be able to 'burst' clouds just by staring at them and eventually worked their way up to killing small rodents by staring them to death and finally moving on to goats.Įven though there is zero evidence that any of these psychic powers actually worked, like MKULTRA and related projects, there is evidence to suggest the people involved took them very seriously indeed. This project included trying to train soldiers to see 'plant auras,' whatever that means, and attempting to put together a corps of soldiers who would win battles by parachuting into enemy territory and walking calmly towards hostile soldiers while carrying 'symbolic peace animals.' While a lot of the First Earth Battalion mentality focused on mysticism, a 'warrior monk' ethos and a few pacifistic ideas, it also described the use of every kind of psychic power known.

The Battalion's 'operations manual' was written by Lieutenant Colonel Jim Channon, who is also involved with those founding the Human Potential Movement - and many of the ideas are the same, but adapted for military purposes. Central to the New Age themes of these special projects is something known as the First Earth Battalion.

This was said to have taken place at Fort Bragg in a building known as the 'Goat Lab', where de-bleated goats were routinely shot in order for Special Forces medics to train to respond to battlefield injury. Among the many claims revealed in the book was that the US military ran a project to kill the eponymous goats by staring at them.

The men who stare at goats book