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JON RONSON AND THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS

A review by GARY S BEKKUM

The Men Who Stare at Goats: View the Best Evidence

September 1, 2009

MINNEAPOLIS (STARpod.org) -- "The man who reactivated me is... " Uri paused, then he said, "called Ron."

I was reading Jon Ronson's book, THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS.

 Ronson wrote, "Was Ron FBI? CIA? Military intelligence? Homeland security? Could Ron be MI5? MI6?"

"Ah ha!" I thought. "Now it makes sense!"

I knew that Ron worked for CIA.

And why Uri Geller may have found himself "reactivated" for the war on terror.

"This is about what happened when a small group of men -- highly placed within the United States military, the government, and the intelligence services -- began believing in very strange things."

Thus begins Jon's Ronson's disturbing and entertaining exploration of high strangeness infecting the US government in his follow-up to his first book THEM: Adventures with Extremists.

THEM clearly set the tone for Ronson's unique approach to the sources and methods found in THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS -- understated shock and awe tempered by a dry sense of humor in all the right places.

When faced with video evidence of alleged mind-control over a small animal, Ronson notes:

"It does seem odd ... although I have to say that emotions such as circumspection and wariness are not that easy to discern in hamsters." 

Ronson (who followed in the footsteps of another UK citizen and journalist, Nick Cook of Janes Defence Weekly) was astonished by the fascination high-ranking persons in the United States exhibited over the paranormal. And like Cook and Ronson, who had observed the inexplicable weirdness (which had largely emerged for all to see on the Internet in the 1990s) --  I was also curious about what had inspired strange beliefs in the unreal.

Since the mid-1990s I had been exploring far-out science with an eye on future developments.

It did appear that an entire industry had developed around improbable imaginary weapons, but what of the impossible?

Ronson began by looking into Uri Geller's claims of involvement with American intelligence services.

Ronson writes, "The way I saw it, the truth lay in one of four possible scenarios:

(1) It just never happened

(2) A couple of crazy renegades in the higher levels of the U.S. Intelligence Community had brought in Uri Geller.

(3) U.S. intelligence is the repository of incredible secrets, which are kept from us for our own good; one of those is that Uri Geller has psychic powers, which were harnessed during the Cold War. They just hoped he wouldn't go around telling everybody.

(4) The U.S. Intelligence Community was, back then, essentially nuts through and through."

Ronson landed in the midst of the controversy beginning with an interview with former head of military intelligence (INSCOM) Bert Stubblebine and the above mentioned lunch meeting with Uri Geller. 

In his book Ronson claims "It was Uri Geller who set me on the trail that led to the goats" as he searched for the mysterious "Ron." 

Ronson never did find "Ron," or at least never admitted as much.

I was aware of the connection between Uri and "Ron" ever since "Ron" had responded to an email we had both received less than a year prior to 9/11. That particular email implied a recruitment drive allegedly sanctioned by "Ron."   

As it turns out, it was not Uri Geller but another associate of "Ron" who sent Ronson on quest to track down "the men who stare at goats."

Ronson's big break in the story came from Colonel John B. Alexander, a non-lethal weapons consultant to the government and former associate of Stubblebine at INSCOM. 

According to Ronson, it was Alexander who named the man that redirected his attention away from current Intelligence Community involvement ("Ron") towards Special Forces, and the allegations of psychic goat-killers.

Hold onto the thought that Ronson may have been deliberately sent off on a new vector when he kept asking about "Ron."

What fascinated me from the beginning of Ronson's book was his ability to personalize his story and uncover new details.

It was also clear that Ronson was not always in-the-know concerning the import of his discoveries.

Of Ronson's four possibilities, we can easily rule out number one, as recently declassified files (available to review at STARpod.org) evidence CIA's attempt to recruit Uri Geller for his psychic powers in the early 1970s.  Number two can also be ruled out, since the same set of documents, known as the STAR GATE collection, prove that the highest levels of military and intelligence right up to the Vice President's office were well aware of the situation. Number four may also be discarded: evidence exists that interest in the paranormal continues today.

Ronson soon learned that not only had the government tasked psychic spies to obtain enemy secrets during the cold war, and even into the Gulf War in the 1990's, but they had pursued the dark side of the force: the willful killing of goats and hamsters with a thought.

And, more chillingly, they were interested in "reactivating" the research for the war on terror -- and so, apparently, was al Qaeda.

With the stage set under the light of high strangeness and clandestine evil, Ronson goes off the track to explore other equally confusing and disturbing aspects of government involvement with the paranormal and their errant children in the private sector.

Throughout the book Ronson invokes the new-age warrior philosophy of the 1st Earth Battalion for guidance, but it is soon apparent  that a disturbing darkness lurks beneath the surface.

Psychic remote viewers for hire, weird predictions that never come true, and strange UFO death cults are explored as Ronson desperately seeks the unifying narrative to his book. This is new and uncharted territory for Ronson (and for most of his readers) -- thus Ronson weaves back and forth across space, time, and subject matter -- turning over stones big and small to uncover the meaning behind the madness.

Psychological operations in Iraq, crazy non-lethal weapons, abusive torture, mind-control projects from the 1950s, subversive subliminal messages, and psychic delusions grow from every crack in the pavement of reason. 

By the end of THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS Ronson begins to see the extent of landscape ahead as if for the first time.

Ronson writes:

"It seemed remarkable to me that the organizational gap in the intelligence world between the light side (psychic supermen) and the dark side (covert assassination) has been so narrow. "

Meanwhile, as Ronson was busy tracking down the goats, "Ron" went on his merry way investigating weird science on behalf of the newly formed Office of the Director of National Intelligence, as told in my series KNOWING THE FUTURE: CIA, 9/11, UFOs, and the Extraterrestrial Presence (available at STARpod.org).

Was Ronson sent on a wild goat chase? 

Was he set up by cleverly planted intelligence operatives? 

In the end, does it really matter?

It's not a question of whether or not the government has a team of psychic assassins staged to take down any adversary deemed a threat.

In the end it comes down to tales of spies and lies, manipulation of the truth, and public oversight.

The recent CIA torture scandal is only one small tip of an iceberg of private contractor black-operations protected from the heat of disclosure by national security laws.

Is it really worth putting the public mental health at risk by promoting insanity in the interest of national security? How much collateral damage from counterintelligence operations is deemed acceptable?

Jon Ronson (and the writer of the fictionalized film version of Ronson's book) wisely understood that humor is the best vaccination to protect one's sanity against the strange and unnatural. 

By not taking himself too seriously, Ronson has been able to get closer to the strangeness than almost anyone else in recent memory, without being caught up in the paranoia and delusion.

(For those who doubt the truth behind Ronson's book, I am assembling an archive of government documents at the STARpod.org website. Additional background is available in my  series KNOWING THE FUTURE about spy games used to collect intelligence on the Internet.)

Copyright (c) 2009 by Gary S Bekkum / STARstream Research / STARpod.org -- All rights reserved.