PSI TECH's Iraq U.N. Arms Inspection Team Support Project
U.N. Enlists Psychic Firm to Find Iraqi's Weapon Sites
By Ruth Sinai
The Associated Press (1991)
A United Nations team is turning to extrasensory powers to help it find Saddam Hussein's weapon sites.
In the satchel she took to Baghdad, U.S. Army Maj. Karen Jansen carried sketches of two sites where the Iraqi leader has supposedly stashed biological weapons, said Edward Dames, president of a company called PSI Tech.
Mr. Dames, a retired military intelligence major, and an associate drew the sketches through "remote Viewing" -- the ability to locate and accurately describe unknown things and events from afar.
Various techniques of psychic or extrasensory viewing, which has supporters in academic circles, have been researched in secret by military intelligence since the 1950s. But efforts to develop and implement them have generally been met with ridicule or skepticism.
On occasion, they have been used in concert with other intelligence-gathering tools such as satellite photos and electronic-signals monitoring, current and former officials say.
For example, trained and so-called natural psychics were called in during the hunt for U.S. Army Brig. Gen. James Dozier, kidnapped by Red Brigade guerrillas in Italy in December 1981. He was finally found, however, through electronic intercepts and an informant's tip.
Maj. Jansen is on her third mission to Iraq for a special U.N. commission assigned to find and destroy the country's hidden stocks of missiles and chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.
She and Mr. Dames got in touch after Seattle television station KIRO reported on the Maryland-based firm and on the use of psychics in gathering intelligence. Mr. Dames said she called him and told him which suspected biological weapons site she was going to, what she was looking for, and whether he could help. "I told her, sure," he said, and proceeded to "find" two locations.
The U.N. commission has found research facilities for germ warfare but no evidence of actual weapons thus far, said Derek Boothby, commission official in New York. He said he hadn't heard about the Dames sketches. "We welcome all information, if it is practical and can be substantiated," he said.
Mr. Dames said in a recent interview that he provided the information to the U.N. team for free but bills his corporate clients $6,000 to $8,000 a week. In fliers promoting the firm, PSI Tech promises to provide "insight into winning at competitive strategies." And it asks:
"Do you know what the competition is doing and where they are heading? What factors have the greatest influence on their thinking? Can you afford not to know?"
Mr. Dames, whose five associates are mostly retired military officers, said "remote viewing" doesn't require psychic powers. It's more a matter of suppressing one's imagination and concentrating on a target with rigorous discipline, he said.
