Secrets Declassified with David Duchovny 1x5

1. - Throughout time, governments and the people

2. who work for them have done strange and even terrible

3. things in the name of national interest.

4. Tonight, soldiers spiked with dangerous drugs.

5. - No one's going to volunteer to test brain-frying chemicals.

6. - And citizens with unusual gifts recruited to spy.

7. - Psychic spies would be able to unlock Soviet secrets.

8. - What about channeling an enemy's

9. deepest fears to defeat them?

10. - The Viet Cong began hearing these disembodied,

11. echoing voices.

12. - These soldiers are terrified that their very

13. worst nightmares might have come to life.

14. - Sometimes the best weapons governments use are mind games.

15. Now it's time to bring these strange secrets to light.

16. The 1950s is a boom time for pharmaceutical companies.

17. They're turning out radical new psychoactive

18. drugs that give some in the U.S. military an idea.

19. Could these drugs be turned into weapons?

20. To find out, they decide to test them on American soldiers.

21. Edgewood Arsenal, Maryland, headquarters

22. of the U.S. Chemical and Biological Defense Command.

23. - The military is attempting to create a non-lethal weapon,

24. something that can incapacitate the soldiers on the other side,

25. but not necessarily kill them.

26. - So at Edgewood Arsenal, they began developing

27. psychoactive compounds.

28. - They decide that their best candidate

29. is this substance known as 3-quinuclidinyl

30. benzilate, or BZ.

31. - BZ is developed as a stomach medicine.

32. Side effects like confusion and hallucinations

33. mean it never gets FDA approval.

34. But it's those side effects that interest the Army.

35. - Now the team faces a problem.

36. Where will they find people to test BZ on?

37. The Army gives them permission to recruit volunteer soldiers

38. from around the country.

39. Recruiters tell the troops they'll be testing equipment.

40. - The Edgewood team wants to record exactly what happens

41. to the volunteers on BZ.

42. So they construct a mock communications outpost

43. and fill it with cameras to record their experiments.

44. - The team doses four volunteers with varying

45. amounts of this horrific drug.

46. - They want to see how these young men are going to react

47. while they're high on BZ.

48. And they test them across a broad range of scenarios,

49. including simulating a poison gas attack.

50. - The peak of the compound's physical effects

51. was reached within four to six hours, the peak

52. of mental incapacitation several hours later,

53. when a simulated chemical alarm sounded.

54. - The initial results are promising.

55. The men are distracted.

56. They're disoriented.

57. It seems like BZ is the non-lethal weapon

58. the Army dreamed of.

59. - Soon BZ testing takes an ominous turn.

60. - Ronald Zadrozny is the soldier

61. given the highest dose of BZ.

62. - And this causes him to go into a drug-induced psychosis

63. for 36 hours, and he still has lingering effects afterwards,

64. which makes him nervous and panicky.

65. - Other volunteers are also badly affected,

66. but the Army decides the experiments should continue.

67. In November 1964, the Edgewood team

68. is ready to test BZ outside.

69. - They settle on Dugway Proving Ground as a safe space

70. to test this out of doors.

71. - When you're at Dugway, you are far away from prying eyes.

72. You're out in the middle of nowhere.

73. In that way, Dugway is the perfect place to go.

74. - The men suit up in the pre-dawn cold and are

75. then doused with the gas.

76. - These unfortunate troops are dosed with choking amounts

77. of BZ gas for 15 minutes.

78. Then these befuddled volunteers are taken for evaluation.

79. - The test proves that BZ can incapacitate soldiers,

80. making them unable to fight.

81. - The Army is convinced of the potential for BZ weapons

82. on the battlefield.

83. - Meanwhile, back at Edgewood, testing on BZ

84. variants continues.

85. - In 1975, after details of CIA LSD experiments leak out,

86. President Ford instructs VP Nelson Rockefeller

87. to investigate.

88. - The Rockefeller Commission starts to go through

89. the Army's dirty laundry.

90. And in June 1975, they haul Army

91. bosses in to interrogate them about the Edgewood experiments.

92. - When the Congressional investigators ask them what's

93. going on, they just start fessing up like Boy Scouts

94. and they tell them, like, yeah, the BZ testing is ongoing

95. and it's been going on for years.

96. - The things that have been done,

97. which are in contradiction to the statutes.

98. But—

99. - The Army admits that somewhere between 2,100

100. and 2,900 volunteers were subjected

101. to BZ gas during the course of their experiments.

102. - BZ is not the only drug they test.

103. The US Army dosed some 7,000 unsuspecting

104. soldiers with more than 250 different chemical agents.

105. - The volunteers aren't told what they're testing,

106. so there's no way they could give informed consent.

107. So basically, the soldiers are being treated like lab rats.

108. So the lawmakers are naturally furious.

109. - In 1975, the BZ research program is shut down,

110. but that doesn't stop U.S. intelligence

111. agencies from developing other ways to play mind games.

112. In 1968, they decided to turn the Viet Cong's

113. own weapons against them.

114. It's the summer of 1968, and U.S. troops

115. are fighting the Communist Viet Cong

116. near the Cambodian border.

117. - A North Vietnamese fighter takes deadly aim

118. at a vulnerable GI on patrol.

119. But when the Communist soldier pulls the trigger,

120. he signs his own death warrant.

121. His Chinese-made AK-56 explodes on firing—

122. Killing him instantly.

123. - The GI got lucky, but this is not a one-off.

124. - The thing about these deadly misfires

125. is that they weren't accidents at all.

126. - The extraordinary truth is that the exploding guns

127. are the result of a secret U.S. military operation.

128. - Anybody who's ever fired a gun

129. has the same nightmare that one day they're

130. going to pull the trigger, and the round in the chamber

131. is going to blow up in their own face.

132. And this nightmare is exactly what

133. was playing through the mind of every VC combat member

134. during Vietnam.

135. - It's not until 30 years later that a book

136. by a Vietnam vet reveals the operation,

137. code named Eldest Son.

138. - The Vietnam Studies and Operations Group

139. was charged with a mission to undermine the will

140. to fight of the Viet Cong.

141. The SOG identified that along the Ho Chi Minh Trail,

142. there were several munitions cache areas where

143. the Viet Cong would resupply ammunition, actual bullets

144. and rounds for their guns.

145. - The recon teams were finding these caches of ammunition.

146. So they come up with this brilliant idea.

147. And that is, rather than trying to haul

148. this ammo off or destroy it on sight,

149. why don't we just sabotage it?

150. But importantly, not sabotage all of it.

151. Sabotage some of it.

152. - They'll make the communists afraid of their own guns

153. by booby trapping their bullets.

154. - But how would they pull this off?

155. - Sabotage is a very tricky business,

156. because it's part engineering and part espionage.

157. And that's exactly what the SOG had

158. to do to find a way to engineer a round that

159. would explode, but still look like other rounds.

160. - First, they refill the bullets with high explosive.

161. But there's a problem.

162. The most commonly available military-grade explosive

163. at the time actually had a white color to it

164. that did not match the gunpowder that was inside

165. the round itself.

166. - If the communists investigate,

167. they'll detect the fakes.

168. - So the SOG had to create a whole new different kind

169. of explosive that had the same power

170. but matched the color of black powder.

171. - The next challenge is how to get the sabotaged bullets back

172. in Viet Cong hands.

173. - SOG's Green Beret reconnaissance patrols come

174. up with an ingenious solution.

175. So the Viet Cong don't suspect sabotage,

176. they make sure to load up only one phony bullet

177. in each magazine or ammo can.

178. - We're not going to kill them one soldier at a time,

179. one bullet at a time.

180. What we're going to do is we're going

181. to create psychological chaos among the enemy's ranks.

182. And that's a pretty big win for a pretty low investment.

183. - Eldest Son is so successful in Vietnam

184. that the U.S. makes it part of its psychological

185. warfare arsenal.

186. It will use the tactic again years

187. later in Iraq and Afghanistan.

188. - In World War II, the U.S. Army creates a top secret unit

189. whose sole job is fooling the enemy.

190. It calls itself the Ghost Army for a very good reason.

191. Nothing about this Army is real.

192. It's 1944, and the United States

193. is preparing to take the fight to Hitler by invading

194. Nazi-occupied Europe.

195. - America needs to leverage any advantage they can find.

196. So Army chiefs turn to an industry

197. where the nation leads the world, show business.

198. - The Pentagon creates the Ghost Army.

199. They're not using rifles and machine guns.

200. This unit will ultimately use Hollywood

201. stagecraft to fight the enemy.

202. - The purpose of the Ghost Army is to create diversions

203. and feints and deception.

204. - Officially known as the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops,

205. the Ghost Army is made up of just 1,100 men.

206. - The concept is that you're engaging in force

207. multiplication by having a small group of soldiers

208. pretend, and give the enemy the impression that they're

209. actually a very large group of soldiers, up to two divisions.

210. So you have a unit with about 1,000 people

211. in it that is able to make the enemy think it's 30,000 strong.

212. - In June 1944, the Ghost Army vanguard

213. Task Force Mason gets an airlift onto the battleground

214. in France.

215. Here, their mission is to support

216. the U.S. 928th Artillery Division

217. by providing an attractive target for German gunners.

218. - The Ghost Army inflate a series of rubber

219. howitzers matching the real guns.

220. The idea is to draw in the Nazi fire

221. to get them to focus on that area

222. where these inflatable weapons are,

223. as opposed to where American soldiers actually are.

224. - The Ghost Army has to keep their inflatable guns ahead

225. of the real artillery for almost a month,

226. taking as many hits as possible themselves.

227. So these guys are either just really, really brave or really

228. crazy, possibly both.

229. - Over the next 12 months, the Ghost Army supports the Allies

230. in some 20 operations before this wartime Hollywood team

231. gives their finest performance on the banks of the Rhine

232. in March 1945.

233. - The biggest obstacle that we had to confront

234. after the Normandy landings

235. was crossing the Rhine.

236. - General Patton and his Ninth Army

237. are trapped behind the river, which blocks them

238. off from the path to Berlin.

239. - Rivers are a natural obstacle,

240. especially to heavy-treaded vehicles like tanks.

241. You have to bring in Army engineers,

242. start erecting bridges.

243. It turns into a big mess.

244. - Meanwhile, German forces are waiting on the other side,

245. and they're just poised to rain hell

246. on any allied troops that try to make

247. that difficult river crossing.

248. - The Ghost Army is ordered to divert German defenders'

249. attention from Patton's crossing point to draw

250. the fiercest German fire.

251. - The first phase is to generate

252. sneaky signals traffic.

253. Ghost Army communications teams fill the airwaves

254. with bogus radio chatter, creating the illusion

255. of a huge Army on the move.

256. - But that's just the beginning for the Ghost Army.

257. - During the day, sonic teams play

258. the sound of heavy construction through

259. 500-pound speaker systems.

260. - To the Germans on the other side,

261. it sounds as if pontoon bridges are being constructed.

262. - The enemy would then be led to believe that I'm about

263. to be attacked by this very powerful force,

264. when in actuality, all that was

265. over there were a couple of Jeeps

266. with loudspeakers on them.

267. - The supporting cast plays its part behind the lines,

268. but the key part of the operation is yet to come.

269. - The Germans are conducting daily photo reconnaissance

270. sorties over allied lines, measuring what our strength

271. looks like across the river.

272. So that if there's any noticeable build up,

273. those photo reconnaissance aircraft, they will detect it.

274. - To fool these pilots, the Ghost Army creates

275. an entirely fake front line.

276. - 600 inflatable Sherman tanks and field artillery pieces are

277. moved into position purposely so that an aircraft can

278. photograph them, and the enemy can then be left to wonder,

279. all right, it looks like there's a build-up here.

280. - The Nazis react as intended, pounding the Ghost Army's

281. position with artillery fire.

282. Three of the unit lose their lives, but the ruse works.

283. - Patton's Army crosses the Rhine miles up the river,

284. facing only scattered Nazi resistance.

285. They take only minimal casualties.

286. This is a critical victory for the Allies.

287. - In 2024, the Ghost Army is presented

288. with the Congressional Gold Medal for Heroism.

289. - It can be quite difficult to quantify

290. psychological operations, but it has been estimated

291. that the Ghost Army saved tens of thousands of American lives

292. during the war.

293. - 1953, the CIA starts an experiment

294. with a top secret goal—

295. find drugs to control the human mind.

296. It will become one of the government's

297. most notorious projects.

298. Its name is MKUltra.

299. CIA Director Allen Dulles has a big problem.

300. - There was a great fear at the time

301. that American prisoners held by the North Koreans

302. were being subjected to brainwashing.

303. - The CIA suspects that the communists might be utilizing

304. mind altering drugs, not only to extract information,

305. but to reprogram the brains

306. of American soldiers in captivity.

307. - The CIA suspects that one of them

308. is a new wonder drug called lysergic acid diethylamide,

309. popularly known as LSD.

310. - LSD was discovered in 1943

311. by Albert Hofmann at Sandoz Labs.

312. It's still pretty untested, but it has the potential

313. of being the greatest mind-altering drug that

314. the agency has come across so far.

315. - The CIA director initiates a program

316. to explore the brainwashing potential of LSD

317. and other psychoactive drugs.

318. - You have to understand the sense

319. of emergency that was gripping the United States

320. in the early 1950s.

321. What Dulles wanted and why MKUltra was created

322. was a search for a silver bullet, a magic potion that

323. would break down the person who ingested it

324. or break down his facade of lies.

325. - The CIA hopes to use brainwashing on spies,

326. foreign prisoners, and ultimately even foreign leaders

327. like Fidel Castro.

328. - Dulles charges chemist and poison expert

329. Sidney Gottlieb to run the program.

330. Gottlieb spends $240,000 to buy as much LSD

331. as he can get his hands on.

332. - Gottlieb went to Sandoz and said, I'll buy it all.

333. I want to corner the market on this stuff.

334. And Sidney Gottlieb became America's

335. first government-authorized drug dealer.

336. He is the man who brought LSD to the CIA.

337. - Gottlieb decides the best way to evaluate

338. this incredibly powerful new psychedelic drug is to test it

339. on humans across the country.

340. MKUltra funds 149 research projects

341. across 80 institutions.

342. - The CIA has never wanted for money.

343. Cash is its most powerful secret weapon.

344. - Among the institutions taking part

345. in Gottlieb's experiments

346. are 44 colleges and universities,

347. as well as hospitals, pharmaceutical companies

348. and even prisons.

349. - All manner of drugs became the focus of these experiments,

350. and all manner of unwitting human Guinea pigs.

351. For example, there was a federal prison in Kentucky

352. that housed people who had been heroin

353. junkies before their arrest.

354. A number of these prisoners were inducted into the MKUltra

355. program, and without their knowledge,

356. they were fed LSD for 77 days in a row.

357. What this essentially meant is that you

358. were in a drug-induced schizophrenic state.

359. I can't imagine that these were good trips.

360. - In 1957, Gottlieb enlists Canadian psychiatrist

361. Ewen Cameron.

362. - Between 1957 and 1964, Cameron

363. conducts a series of hideous experiments for the CIA,

364. attempting to use LSD and other extreme treatments

365. to break down the human mind and rebuild it from scratch.

366. - Ewen Cameron softens his patients up by getting them

367. into an insulin-induced coma.

368. He then exposes them to LSD and other forms

369. of psychological torture.

370. - The subjects of these experiments

371. had no idea they were in the middle

372. of a giant CIA experiment.

373. They were just normal people looking for psychiatric help,

374. and they came out destroyed.

375. - Gottlieb takes some of his most extreme

376. experiments overseas.

377. - The CIA set up secret detention centers

378. across Asia and even in Europe, far away enough

379. from home and congressional oversight

380. so they won't attract any unwanted attention.

381. - Here, Gottlieb's team will experiment

382. on suspects like foreign agents captured

383. by the CIA for other reasons.

384. They call these subjects expendable.

385. - MKUltra runs for 20 years.

386. We don't know how many people were affected

387. or how badly they were harmed.

388. But nothing works, and brainwashing remains elusive.

389. The CIA cancels MKUltra and Gottlieb retires in 1973.

390. - They know it's not a good look for the agency.

391. So to bury the evidence, Gottlieb

392. and outgoing CIA Director Helms decide

393. to destroy all of the records.

394. - Gottlieb literally takes box upon box of hard copy MKUltra

395. documentation back to the CIA archive to have is shredded

396. and destroyed.

397. - But he doesn't quite manage to destroy all of it.

398. - Those remaining MKUltra documents will

399. come back to haunt the CIA.

400. In 1975, Congress launches an investigation

401. into the agency exposing projects like MKUltra.

402. Sidney Gottlieb testifies before Congress,

403. but claims he doesn't remember much about the experiments,

404. and he gets off scot-free.

405. - The CIA officers who took part in this doubtless

406. felt that the United States was at war,

407. and that there were no rules in such a game.

408. The mission was more important than the rules,

409. even though those rules might be the laws of God and man.

410. - In the 1950s, Communist militias are battling U.S.

411. influence across the Pacific.

412. To gain an edge.

413. American PsyOps teams turned to mind games.

414. The Philippines, early 1950s.

415. - The U.S. backed Filipino government

416. is fighting an insurrection by guerrillas known as the Huk.

417. - The Huk rebellion was a Communist rebellion,

418. and like others in Southeast Asia,

419. it was seen as something that the United States

420. had to conquer.

421. - The U.S. is on the defensive as Huk rebels

422. hidden in the dense forests threaten

423. to overrun nearby towns.

424. But as the guerrillas prepare their next assault,

425. these fierce fighters stumble across something unsettling.

426. - Early one morning, a group of devoted Huk rebels

427. is moving through the jungle.

428. What they find chills them to the bone.

429. - They find one of their missing soldiers lying dead.

430. His body is completely drained of blood.

431. - There's no bullet wounds.

432. There's no blade marks.

433. Instead, there's just two small punctures in his neck.

434. - The reason why is revealed in a 1972 memoir written

435. by a man involved

436. in the conflict,

437. Local CIA Station Chief Edward Lansdale.

438. - Edward Lansdale was a firm proponent of the use

439. of psychological warfare.

440. He really believes that if you can terrify your enemies,

441. you make them a lot less effective on the battlefield.

442. - Lansdale knows of a local legend

443. he can use to beat the Huk, using

444. fear instead of firepower.

445. - Every culture has its scary monsters.

446. And in the case of the Philippines,

447. one of the key monsters is the aswang.

448. An aswang is a shapeshifting, vampiric, blood sucking demon.

449. - Edward Lansdale wants to harness

450. the local cultural beliefs of fear

451. around this sort of vampire and use

452. that to terrorize the people in the countryside.

453. - Lansdale gets a native Filipino psychological warfare

454. team under his command to spread rumors

455. among the locals in town.

456. They claim a terrifying vampiric aswang demon has

457. been seen stalking the area.

458. - The word starts to reverberate

459. throughout the community, and it scares people.

460. - Next, Lansdale ups the ante.

461. - Lansdale's psychological warfare team

462. creeps into the jungle and sets up an ambush.

463. It's very dark in the forest at night,

464. so they have no problem hiding.

465. When a Huk patrol comes along,

466. they wait for the very last man

467. and then grab him without making a sound.

468. - They kill him without leaving any marks on the body.

469. Then they puncture his neck with two small puncture wounds.

470. They hang it by its feet so that all of the blood

471. will drain out through the wounds.

472. - The body is then taken and left

473. in a rebel-held area where they know

474. it's going to be discovered.

475. - When the Huks come back through the area,

476. they find their comrade drained of blood.

477. These Huk soldiers are terrified

478. that their very worst nightmares

479. might have come to life.

480. They abandon their stronghold,

481. and they stop launching attacks in that region.

482. - In 1954, the Huk surrendered to Philippine troops

483. and the rebellion is over, in no small part

484. thanks to Lansdale's tactics.

485. One reason governments use PsyOps is because they work.

486. In 1969, the U.S. tries a new kind of terrifying mind

487. game against the Viet Cong.

488. By the beginning of 1969, American forces are getting

489. bogged down in Vietnam.

490. - The U.S. is going all out with saturation

491. bombing and even chemical warfare,

492. but it's just not working.

493. - If anything, the Viet Cong are winning the upper hand.

494. There are some people that suggest

495. that maybe the United States should try a different tactic.

496. - Then something stirs in the forest.

497. - VC troops operating at night begin

498. to hear anguished, disembodied voices

499. echoing through the darkness.

500. - When you're patrolling in the jungle at night,

501. your senses are limited.

502. So you can only imagine how creepy

503. it must have been to hear these sort of disembodied voices.

504. - The ghosts are all part of a campaign

505. of psychological warfare against

506. North Vietnamese troops.

507. It's called Operation Wandering Soul.

508. - We are playing on North Vietnamese superstitions

509. by claiming that the wandering souls

510. of their unburied dead in the South are guiding our bombs.

511. - The average Viet Cong soldier is a teenager who's not

512. particularly well educated.

513. They're very superstitious, if you will.

514. They believe that spirits can haunt the Earth.

515. If your body is left unburied, the presumption

516. is that the soul can't move on, that it

517. becomes a wandering soul.

518. - But where are these ghostly voices really coming from?

519. - No surprise, but the haunting voices, they're not ghosts.

520. Instead, they're American tape recordings being blared out

521. from massive speaker systems.

522. - PsyOps teams put Vietnamese voices

523. through an echo chamber.

524. They process it and add horror show

525. sound effects to up the ante.

526. - We don't know how effective Wandering Soul

527. was against the enemy, but we do know it spooked our allies.

528. - There are specific orders issued to the Army

529. that they are not to play this in earshot

530. of their South Vietnamese allies,

531. because it wasn't just affecting the target audience,

532. the Viet Cong, but it was also affecting our allies

533. and scaring the hell out of them, too.

534. - During the 1970s, U.S. spy agencies report

535. that the Soviet Union is experimenting

536. with a new espionage tool, telepathy.

537. They respond with a mission that sounds out of this world,

538. Project Stargate.

539. At the Stanford Research Institute,

540. scientists funded by the CIA are running a series

541. of experiments to test a psychic technique known

542. as remote viewing, the ability to telepathically

543. see faraway things using only the power of the mind.

544. The agency hopes it will help them spy on the Soviet Union.

545. - These guys are so desperate for information

546. from behind the Iron Curtain that they will try anything.

547. So maybe, just maybe, this remote viewing

548. could be the way to get it and with no risk of getting caught.

549. - If it works, the U.S. government

550. would gain a way to systematically create

551. psychic spies, and that would give an incredible advantage

552. to the national security infrastructure

553. of the United States.

554. It would change the nature of warfare forever.

555. - American doctor and paranormal

556. enthusiast Andrija Puharich hears

557. of a promising potential candidate.

558. He's a former Israeli paratrooper

559. who claims to possess paranormal powers, Uri Geller.

560. Puharich introduces Geller

561. to the remote viewing researchers.

562. - At Stanford, Geller's psychic ability

563. will be put to the test.

564. Researchers film the trials.

565. - 15 drawings were placed in double sealed envelopes

566. in a safe.

567. Geller's task was to draw what he perceived in the envelope.

568. - What they hope he'll be able to do

569. is reproduce images only through utilizing

570. the power of his mind.

571. - If he could do what he said he could do,

572. it could transform the world of intelligence collection.

573. - This is Geller's representation

574. of what he believed was sealed in the envelope.

575. At no time during these experiments

576. did he have any advance knowledge

577. of the target material.

578. - A secret report from 1973 reveals that Geller

579. seems to be getting results.

580. - So to get ahead of the Soviets,

581. they doubled down on paranormal research.

582. - The CIA transfers the remote viewing research

583. to the Defense Intelligence Agency, or DIA,

584. who embark on a series of projects later consolidated

585. under the code name Stargate.

586. - Stargate is the DIA's ultimate mind game.

587. If it works, it could maybe even win the whole Cold War.

588. - The government decides it's time

589. to test remote viewing during major international events.

590. First, they try it when a Soviet bomber

591. crashes into dense jungle in the Central African Republic.

592. - If America can find the plane first,

593. they'll be able to study the secret Soviet

594. technology inside.

595. This is an opportunity too good to miss.

596. - Time is running out.

597. They need to act quickly.

598. However, conventional intelligence

599. is drawing a blank.

600. They have to think outside the box.

601. - Intelligence teams call in a Stargate

602. test subject, Rosemary Smith.

603. - They show Smith the part of Africa

604. where they believe the plane has gone down.

605. - Rosemary Smith actually used a technique

606. she called map dowsing.

607. - She took a pendulum, and it was a weight on the end of it,

608. and she uses that to divine the location

609. of the downed jet.

610. She eventually settles on a location.

611. The team converts those to coordinates.

612. - The ground team went out, and lo and behold,

613. the bomber was there, very close to the exact location

614. where she said it was going to be.

615. - It's a win for the remote viewing team.

616. So now they apply it in a high-stakes situation

617. where U.S. citizens are in danger.

618. - Islamic fundamentalists have just taken

619. over the country, when radicals invade the U.S. embassy

620. and seize more than 60 American hostages.

621. - I'm from Utah.

622. I was a political secretary, and I'm 33.

623. - Hunkered down in Fort Meade, the Stargate team focus

624. on Iran and the American hostages.

625. - One of the remote viewers claims

626. he has a vision of a sick hostage on a stretcher.

627. But which one?

628. He suggests the hostage is associated

629. with a royal playing card.

630. You know, like the king, the queen, or the jack.

631. - Just four days later, a hostage

632. suffering from multiple sclerosis

633. is released and flown home.

634. His name is Richard Queen.

635. - The vision of the stricken man and a royal card

636. matching his last name, which is Queen,

637. suggest that this is a hit.

638. Maybe they're actually on to something.

639. - Stargate research continues for years until the mid-'90s,

640. when the government questions how much it really

641. is bringing to the table.

642. - Lawmakers want to know what is

643. the upshot of decades of big dollar

644. DIA spending on this strange secret program?

645. They tasked the CIA to evaluate Stargate.

646. - In September 1995, the CIA releases its report.

647. - It is kind of eerie, but incredibly enough,

648. this report suggests that remote viewing

649. generates more so-called hits than you'd get

650. by simple chance alone.

651. In other words, there might be something more than random

652. guessing going on here.

653. - But even when there are so-called hits,

654. the research does not show that they are

655. caused by paranormal means.

656. - The report does not explain the better-than-chance

657. hit rate.

658. To this day, no one has.

659. But that can't save the remote viewing program.

660. In June 1995, the Stargate program is finally shut down.

661. - During the 1950s, the U.S. and Soviet Union

662. install ballistic missiles on submarines.

663. But it's hard to communicate with these subs underwater.

664. Reports suggest scientists from both nations

665. try something unusual, mind games.

666. An article in a French scientific magazine

667. sends shockwaves through the Soviet Navy.

668. - This former French resistance fighter turned sci-fi author,

669. Jacques Bergier, claims he has inside information about mind

670. games on board the world's first nuclear powered

671. submarine, the USS "Nautilus."

672. - The "Nautilus" has just made an incredible record

673. breaking journey.

674. It has stayed submerged for six whole days

675. and it has traveled underneath the North Pole.

676. - Bergier's article claims that on the "Nautilus" voyage,

677. the Navy tests a new form of sub to shore

678. communication, telepathy.

679. - Communication with the submarine

680. is a huge challenge, because when they're

681. underwater, for the most part, they can't

682. receive radio broadcasts.

683. - So the thought was, well, what if we could use telepathy?

684. What if we could use ESP to accomplish

685. this super important task?

686. - It sounds incredible, but worryingly to the Soviets,

687. this article claims that paranormal mental communication

688. is working.

689. - Bergier's article is making some fantastical claims

690. that they have a person on the sub underwater

691. who is sending telepathic communications to a person

692. on land who receives them.

693. That's kind of bonkers.

694. - The experiments themselves,

695. according to Bergier's article,

696. were using something called Zener cards, which were

697. commonly used in ESP research.

698. The sender would look at cards, and the receiver

699. would attempt to identify the shapes

700. that he saw on these cards.

701. And according to Bergier, it worked fantastically well.

702. - This story is impossible to verify.

703. But if it's true, it's a game changer.

704. - "Nautilus" could receive its firing orders while still

705. hidden deep beneath the waves.

706. - A form of communication that is silent

707. and can't be intercepted by the enemy

708. is just what they need.

709. - The Soviets are playing catch-up.

710. They come up with their own psychic test, which is

711. revealed in a declassified CIA report.

712. - Buried in the documents are details of a sinister

713. Soviet sub-to-shore telepathy experiment,

714. this one using animals.

715. - Soviet scientist Pavel Naumov is pursuing research that

716. suggests there's a strong psychic link

717. between mother and child that could make telepathy easier.

718. - His theory is that no matter how far apart the mother

719. and child are, the mother can sense the death of that child,

720. that they are connected.

721. - To test the idea, Soviet scientists separate a mother

722. rabbit from her babies.

723. They send her young out on a submarine far out to sea.

724. - On land, the scientists insert electrodes

725. into the mother rabbit's skull so they

726. can measure the electrical activity in her brain.

727. - Then the telepathic communication test begins.

728. - On the submarine deep underwater,

729. these scientists are taking the baby rabbits and one by one

730. mercilessly executing them.

731. - Back on shore, Naumov, the Soviet scientist,

732. was monitoring the brain activity of the mother rabbit.

733. - Surprisingly, the test seems to work.

734. - Naumov claims that the mother rabbit's brain

735. has a signal spike every time one of her little baby bunnies

736. is murdered.

737. - This spurs a fever of activity

738. inside the Soviet Union, so that by 1967,

739. there are 30 labs spending millions

740. of rubles on this sort of weird paranormal research.

741. - The record kind of goes dark after that.

742. I'm sure the Soviets continue to try telepathy,

743. but in the end, there's no evidence that this was ever put

744. into practice successfully.

745. - From dangerous psychedelic drugs to projects designed

746. to trick the enemy, nations have always

747. used mind games as weapons.

748. Sometimes these tactics are disturbing,

749. but sometimes they lead to surprising victories.

750. I'm David Duchovny.

751. Thanks for watching "Secrets Declassified."