John B. Alexander
Lieutenant Colonel John B.
Lieutenant Colonel John B. Alexander is a former Green Beret and Special Forces commander in Vietnam and Thailand, earning the moniker Assassin Six. He holds a PhD in thanatology, the study of death. Alexander became a prominent figure in the U.S. Army's exploration of anomalous mental phenomena and human potential1.
In December 1980, Alexander authored an article titled "The New Mental Battlefield: Beam Me Up, Spock," published in Military Review, an official U.S. Army publication. This article was the first time ESP and PK were discussed in an official Army publication, asserting that "there are weapons systems that operate on the power of the mind whose lethal capacity has already been demonstrated"1. The article, based on personal experience and open-source information, gained national attention after Washington Post columnist Jack Anderson wrote about it under the heading "Voodoo Warriors of the Pentagon"1.
Alexander's esoteric interests caught the attention of Task Force Delta, a high-level Army organization. In 1981, Richard G. Stilwell, the deputy undersecretary of defense, arranged for Alexander's transfer to INSCOM under Major General Albert Stubblebine. Here, Alexander was put in charge of the Advanced Human Technology Office, interacting with Stubblebine's High Performance Task Force1.
Alexander's work at INSCOM focused on developing human technologies to enhance soldier performance and narrow the "human technology gap." He explored various new age and self-help programs, including sleep discipline, neurolinguistic programming, and Silva Mind Control1.
He also played a role in the Grill Flame program, particularly after the James Randi hoax. Alexander suggested using magicians as consultants, and worked with Doug Henning and Jack Houck on psychokinesis research, observing spoon-bending parties to understand the phenomena1.
After retiring from the military, Alexander joined Psi's corporate board in 1990, though he later stated it was a mistake1.
Publications
- "The New Mental Battlefield: Beam Me Up, Spock" (Military Review, 1980)
Sources
- Jacobsen, Annie. Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis. Little, Brown and Company, 2017. ↩
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