When asked why he kept it up, Stubblebine told Ronson: "Because I knew it was possible. The atoms are mostly empty space. I just had to convince my atoms to slip through the gaps in their atoms."
The infamous "Goat Lab" at Fort Bragg is the Holy Grail of this story. According to multiple first-hand accounts, including those of Guy Savelli and other veterans, the lab was a small concrete blockhouse. Inside, a goat was strapped to a table. Sensors monitored its heart rate.
For nearly two decades, with a budget of around $20 million, the government trained a small cadre of about 15 to 25 individuals in the art of psychic spying. These psychic spies were reportedly used to peer into Soviet weapons facilities, locate hostages in Lebanon, and sketch hidden tunnels in North Korea. The program went by various codenames over the years, including "Gondola Wish," "Grill Flame," "Center Lane," "Sun Streak," and finally "Star Gate."
Ronson’s journey began when he interviewed a man who claimed to have been trained by the U.S. Army to use psychic powers. This led him down a rabbit hole that would take years to navigate: a secret unit called the First Earth Battalion, founded in 1979, whose soldiers were meant to become “Warrior Monks” capable of turning invisible, reading minds, walking through walls, foreseeing the future, and even killing animals with nothing more than their gaze. The Men Who Stare At Goats
For weeks, nothing happened. The goat just chewed cud. Then, one day, the goat collapsed. The monitors showed a massive spike in stress, followed by a sudden flatline. The soldier stared; the goat fell.
The film focuses on the absurdity of the psychic spy, creating a fictionalized journey to uncover the missing founder of the unit.
Jon Ronson’s original non-fiction book uncovered a startling truth: the film’s most ludicrous elements are based on declassified documents. In 1979, at Fort Bragg, Colonel John B. Alexander created the “First Earth Battalion.” Its operational manual included techniques for “remote viewing” (clairvoyant espionage), walking through walls, and the titular goat-staring—killing a goat by simply stopping its heart through focused mental glare. When asked why he kept it up, Stubblebine
Journalist Jon Ronson brought these stories to the mainstream in his book, The Men Who Stare at Goats . Ronson’s investigation connects these "peaceful" New Age origins to the much darker tactics used in modern warfare, such as the use of repetitive music (like the Barney the Dinosaur theme) as a form of psychological torture in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay.
Channon’s manual advocated for non-violent warfare, using "disarming hugs" and "symbols of peace," which Ronson later juxtaposed against the darker "Goat Lab" experiments where soldiers tried to stop animal hearts with their minds. Time Magazine Project Stargate (The Official Records) While the film is a satire, it is heavily based on the Stargate Project , a secret unit established at Fort Meade in 1978. The Reality:
The unit was led by Colonel Charles Beckwith, who had a strong interest in the paranormal and had written a book on the subject. Beckwith believed that certain individuals possessed psychic abilities that could be harnessed for military purposes. For nearly two decades, with a budget of
If you want, I can provide a concise timeline of events, summarize the book chapter-by-chapter, or list primary declassified documents to read.
One of the most famous participants was Major Paul H. Smith. A skeptic at heart, Smith was recruited in 1983 by being told he was being asked to "become a psychic spy." He recalled that recruiters looked for officers who were not only strong in analytical left-brain thinking but also highly accomplished in "right-brained" activities like art, music, and languages. Smith would go on to work with the program for seven years. Others, like the flamboyant spoon-bender Uri Geller, claimed to have served as a psychic spy, feeding intelligence from a distance to U.S. agencies.
One of Ronson’s most unsettling findings is the connection between these New Age experiments and some of the darkest episodes of America’s war on terror. The line from the First Earth Battalion’s “warrior monks” to the psychological torture techniques used at Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, Ronson argues, is not as long as one might hope.
The program officially began in 1972 and operated for two decades, training roughly 25 remote viewers who were selected not only for their analytical abilities but also for their creative, “right-brained” talents in music, art, and language. According to retired Major Paul H. Smith, who participated in the program for seven years, the remote viewers were brought in when conventional intelligence failed—as a “last resort”. Viewers would describe their psychic impressions in broad strokes; if they saw large containers holding a viscous, harmful substance, analysts might determine that a facility housed biological weapons.
The Men Who Stare At Goats highlights a disturbing transition from harmless New Age experimentation to dark psychological operations (PSYOPs).