John B. Alexander

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)

The Documents

John B. Alexander, a lieutenant colonel of the Army who had served with the Special Forces in Thailand and Vietnam, published "The New Mental Battlefield: 'Beam Me Up, Spock'" in Military Review in December 1980. Its author note placed him on the staff of the Army's inspector general in Washington after heading the human resources division of the organizational effectiveness office at Fort McPherson.²

The New Mental Battlefield

The article's note gave him as "with the Inspector General Agency, Department of the Army, Washington, DC," with a B.A. from the University of Nebraska, an M.A. from Pepperdine University, a Ph.D. from Walden University, and a 1980 diploma from the Command and General Staff College. It opened: "Psychotronics may be described as the interaction of mind and matter. While the concepts may stretch the imagination of many readers, research in this area has been underway for years, and the possibility for employment as weaponry has been explored. To be more specific, there are weapons systems that operate on the power of the mind and whose lethal capacity has already been demonstrated." Citing the DIA reports of 1972 and 1975 by John LaMothe and Louis Maire, Thomas Bearden's "Soviet Psychotronic Weapons" in Specula (1976), Henry Gris and William Dick's The New Soviet Psychic Discoveries, and Ostrander and Schroeder, it stated that "it is generally believed that the Soviets and their allies are well in the lead"; that "the ability to heal or cause disease can be transmitted over distance, thus inducing illness or death for no apparent cause. While this has been demonstrated on lower organisms, flies and frogs, the present capacity for human death is still debated"; that "telepathic behavior modification, which includes the ability to induce hypnotic states up to distances in excess of 1,000 kilometers, has been reported"; that the SRI work of Targ and Puthoff "tends to support claims that relatively accurate information can be obtained"; that "the intelligence-gathering capability available through remote viewing or OOBE travel is obvious"; that the Soviets "have applied those techniques against the US Embassy in Moscow" with "extremely-low-frequency (ELF) emissions" of "psychoactive characteristics"; and that "the use of telepathic hypnosis also holds great potential. This capability could allow agents to be deeply planted with no conscious knowledge of their programming. In movie terms, the Manchurian candidate lives and does not even require a phone call." It concluded: "It has been suggested that whoever makes the first major breakthrough in this field will have a quantum lead over his opponent, an advantage similar to sole possession of nuclear weapons." "Clearly, psychotronic weapons already exist; only their capabilities are in doubt."³

INSCOM

He served under Major General Albert Stubblebine at INSCOM during the Center Lane years. The project manager's record of a meeting with Stubblebine on November 30, 1983, notes "an update on the RAPT training" and that the general "confirmed his decision to hold a 'bonding' ceremony and that it would be lead by LTC Alexander." At a meeting on January 6, 1984, the "recent LTC Alexander problem concerning the debriefing of Russell Targ" was raised: "The CG stated that he was unaware that there was a problem as he had not instructed LTC Alexander to debrief Targ because Alexander was not a trained intelligence officer. The CG stated that he would get with Alexander and resolve the issue."⁴

Afterward

He retired as a colonel in 1988, his last post the advanced systems concepts office of the Army Laboratory Command, and went to Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he worked on non-lethal weapons with Janet Morris of the U.S. Global Strategy Council, the body chaired by Ray Cline. His books include The Warrior's Edge (1990, with Richard Groller and Janet Morris), Future War (1999), and UFOs: Myths, Conspiracies, and Realities (2011).⁵