Controlled Offensive Behavior - USSR

Controlled Offensive Behavior - USSR was a 1972 DIA report that assessed Soviet research into psi phenomena and its potential military applications. The report noted that "the major impetus behind the Soviet drive to harness the possible capabilities of telepathic communication, telekinetics, and bionics are said to come from the Soviet military and the KGB."¹

The report, with what was described as "almost comical blandness," outlined the potential horrors that could be inflicted on the U.S. if Soviet psi research advanced, including: knowing the contents of top-secret U.S. documents, troop movements, and military installations; molding the thoughts of key U.S. leaders at a distance; causing instant death of U.S. officials at a distance; and disabling U.S. military equipment, including spacecraft, remotely. It concluded that "Soviet knowledge in this field is superior to that of the West," suggesting a devastating "psi gap" in addition to the perceived missile gap.¹

This report, along with other intelligence, contributed to the U.S. intelligence community's increased interest in and funding of its own psi research, including the Stargate Project.¹

The Report

The report, ST-CS-01-169-72, was prepared by the Medical Intelligence Office of the Army Surgeon General under DIA task T72-01-14, with an information cutoff of January 31, 1972, and published in July 1972. Its summary stated: "Today, it is reported that the USSR has twenty or more centers for the study of parapsychological phenomena, with an annual budget estimated at 21 million dollars," and elsewhere "over 12 million rubles (13 million dollars) and reported to be as high as 21 million dollars" for 1967. It traced the Soviet work to L. L. Vasilev of Leningrad University, whose book of 1959 was followed in 1960 by state funds for telepathy laboratories, and quoted his address of April 1960 on the reported American experiments aboard the submarine Nautilus: "Today the American Navy is testing telepathy on their atomic submarines. Soviet scientists conducted a great many successful telepathy tests over a quarter of a century ago. It's urgent that we throw off our prejudices." After Vasilev's death in 1965 or 1966 the work passed to I. Kogan of the Popov institute in Moscow, "still trying to wed telepathy to the electromagnetic spectrum," and to E. K. Naumov. Genady Sergeyev of the Uktomskii military institute in Leningrad studied Nina Kulagina, registering "heightened biological luminescence radiating from Kulagina's eyes"; a confidential paragraph added: "Scientists report that Kulagina has been able to stop the beating of a frog's heart in solution and to re-activate it! This is perhaps the most significant PK test done and its military implications in controlled offensive behavior, if true, are extremely important." A roster listed researchers by institute, among them Terletsky of Moscow University, Gulyaev of the Bekhterev Brain Institute, and V. Adamenko, inventor of a device measuring "the acupuncture points of traditional Chinese medicine." The report's conclusion: "Based on their 'head start' and financial support, it could be concluded that Soviet knowledge in this field is superior to that of the US." An Army history later stated that "the US Army's interest in psychoenergetics goes back to 1972," to these studies.²

LaMothe's second report with Louis F. Maire III, Soviet and Czechoslovakian Parapsychology Research of September 1975, described Vasilev's experiments of 1920 to 1943 in "telepathic mental suggestion," Serov and Troskin of Sverdlovsk raising and lowering white blood cell counts by suggestion, the Polish theorist Manczarski's prediction "that the field of telepathy will open new avenues for spreading propaganda," and Western concern "with the detrimental effects of subliminal perception techniques being targeted against US or allied personnel in nuclear missile silos." It concluded: "Control and manipulation of the human consciousness must be considered a primary goal." SRI's report to DIA of January 1983 added that in 1975 "a high-level commission was officially established in the USSR to review psychoenergetics research," under a vice president of the Academy of Sciences, whose recommendations after three years produced a coordinating group with Ministry of Defense representatives, "a member of SKB VYMPEL (the antiballistic missile design bureau), and at least one laboratory leader who is believed to be KGB affiliated," attached to a new Bioelectronics Laboratory that "serves a screening function for identifying people from the general population, throughout the USSR, who can perform well on psi tasks."³