Jacques Bergier

Jacques Bergier was a journalist, former French resistance spy, and author with strong ties to the intelligence community and an interest in the supernatural. He is known for bringing secret government ESP programs to public attention¹.

In December 1959, Bergier published an article in the French magazine Constellation titled "Thought Transfer, Weapon of War." The article reported that ESP tests had been conducted aboard the USS Nautilus, the world's first nuclear-powered submarine, in 1958. The purpose of the experiment was to determine if long-distance telepathic communication could be achieved through barriers like thousands of miles of seawater, thick polar ice, and the metal walls of a submarine¹.

According to Bergier, the ESP experiment involved simple sender-receiver trials using Zener Cards. He identified William H. Bowers, director of the Biological Department of the Air Force Research Institute, as the man overseeing the joint-service ESP experiment. Bergier's story claimed that the sender and receiver communicated telepathically over a sixteen-day period starting on July 25, 1958¹.

An expanded version of his story, "The Secret of the Nautilus," was published in France's top science journal, Science et Vie, in February 1960. While no authors were identified, editor Gérald Messadié stated that multiple sources had confirmed the story. J. B. Rhine of the Duke University Parapsychology Laboratory was identified as the civilian scientist assigned to the project, with reports of "about 75% of the telepathic tries are said to have been successful"¹.

Whether Bergier's story was true or fabricated remains a debate, but it had real-world consequences. The Soviets used the news story to their strategic advantage, with Leonid L. Vasilev, Russia's leading ESP researcher, claiming that Soviet parapsychology research was stimulated by the Nautilus reports¹.

Publications

• "Thought Transfer, Weapon of War" (Constellation, 1959)
• Morning of the Magicians (co-authored with Louis Pauwels)