CIA tangents that straddle the States from LA to Alaska

Despite the best intentions, sometimes no matter how I approach a topic I just can’t find the inspiration to do the research required to tackle it, then suddenly out of the blue an angle appears from nowhere – like a comet shooting through the cosmos – and the writer’s block evaporates.

Strangely the appearance of comet 3I/Atlas in the cosmos seems to be having that effect. After writing an article about its arrival in our solar system I found my struggles with the French language in secondary school opened a doorway into another story about genetic engineering and the Anunnaki.

Having to choose French meant I missed out on doing biology for O-level which weirdly has presented a path into another topic that’s been buzzing around my brain for years... remote viewing and the subject I hope to get onto in this article, a secret extraterrestrial base under Mt Hayes in Alaska.

Now quite how a song by soul legend Sam Cooke is taking me from Los Angeles to Alaska I really can’t imagine... but just as he sang about not knowing “much biology” (a route into my tale about genetic engineering) and not knowing much about a science book or the French he took it has presented a trajectory that is guiding me towards the United States’ 49th state and the “observations” of a former California police officer, who died under mysterious circumstances in Las Vegas in 1975. Strangely Cooke’s life also came to an untimely and perplexing end in LA... a decade before that of Pat Price.

I’ve not found anything to suggest Cooke had any connections with Scientology, the pseudoscientific “faith” that materialised in the 1950s through the “teachings” of American author L Ron Hubbard, but the same cannot be said of Price who is believed to have been extensively involved with the organisation, as were other prominent remote viewers such as Ingo Swann. Both he and Price being participants in Project Stargate initiated by the Central Intelligence Agency in the 1970s.

The CIA, Scientology and Project Stargate... what a triumvirate of topics to try and tackle together, it’s beginning to seem like there could be more than one part to this story.

But let’s start at the beginning and the formation of the CIA in September 1947, when US President Harry S Truman signed the National Security Act into law following the dissolution of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) two years earlier.

The CIA’s mandate is to “collect, evaluate and disseminate vital information on economic, military, political, scientific and other developments abroad to safeguard US national security” but it is widely believed to have adopted a very broad interpretation of this edict leading to some very shady operations over the past 78 years.

I couldn’t begin to imagine the extent of those exercises during that period but given the volume catalogued in the first 30 years after its inception there’s little doubt that Project Stargate was simply the tip of the iceberg and one of the more benign spheres of CIA tampering.

Perhaps a more dubious area of CIA involvement could be Scientology, which has burgeoned during the past 75 years since a shaky start in 1950... only three years after the CIA came into being. But since its christening as the Church of Scientology in 1953, its membership has grown rapidly. Estimated to have reached 30,000 by 2014, many of its most high-profile devotees come from the movie sets of Tinseltown or the recording studios of Nashville, New York and LA.

If you want to really get ahead in the entertainment game you could do worse than sign up to the Church of Scientology as Tom Cruise, John Travolta, Kirstie Alley, Juliette Lewis, Isaac Hayes, Peaches Geldof, Chick Corea, Michael Pena, Laura Prepon and Danny Masterson have discovered during their careers.

And it wasn’t just the movers and shakers in the performance industries who cottoned on to the power of Scientology, allegedly the spooks in Langley, Virginia, got their tentacles into it very early on... long before it found its way into the living rooms of a host of very influential stars of stage and screen, individuals who could prove very useful in the business of gathering intelligence and “protecting” US national interests.

During World War II Hubbard is believed to have worked as a clerk in the US Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), where the Church of Scientology is quick to brag about his efforts in “catching foreign spies and rendering aid to US forces surrounded by the enemy on the island of Bataan”.

The church also makes no secret of Hubbard’s postwar affiliation to the Pasadena lodge of the Satanic Ordo Templi Orientis and his participation in sex magic rituals conducted by lodge head Jack Parsons, claiming he’d been sent in as a mole by a certain US intelligence agency. But what’s also quite revealing is the symmetry between Hubbard’s “passion” for occultism and that of senior CIA operatives.

Former intelligence officer Miles Copeland reveals in his memoirs – The Game Player, released in 1989 – details of a scheme dating back to the early 1950s devised by his CIA colleague Bob Mandelstam attempting to use astrologers and clairvoyants as conduits to manipulate influential world leaders and heads of governments who sought their advice.

Copeland – whose youngest child, Stewart, played the drums for Curved Air and later The Police – gives one example of the scheme’s success coming when a clairvoyant sent by the organisation convinced Ghana’s president Kwame Nkrumah to make a visit to China in 1966 during which a coup, inspired by the CIA, overthrew him.

In the book Copeland also relates how Mandelstam used the religious “renewal movement” Moral Rearmament to influence politicians from Africa, Asia and Europe through covert channels, with a special agreement with the Church of Scientology developing out of it... although he didn’t expand on this relationship.

In a somewhat interrelated aside, Doors lead singer Jim Morrison’s father was a pivotal figure in the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which allowed US President Lyndon B Johnson to escalate America’s military intervention in Vietnam.

Captain George Morrison took charge of the Navy’s carrier division in 1963 and was at the helm of the USS Bon Homme Richard in August the following year as commander of the US Naval contingent in the Gulf of Tonkin.

On 2 August North Vietnamese patrol boats were alleged to have attacked the destroyer USS Maddox, although there were no US casualties and the vessel escaped having only been hit by a single bullet. Then on 4 August the Maddox and the USS Turner Joy reported unidentified vessels were approaching their positions and they began firing at what they believed were North Vietnamese torpedo boats.

Three days later the US Congress passed the resolution that took the US to war with Vietnam but the legitimacy of the incident on 4 August has been a hot topic ever since, with allegations Captain Morrison distorted the facts reported to the White House and Pentagon... perhaps to justify the escalation of US involvement.

It’s probably just coincidence that two famous musicians had fathers with links to covert CIA operations but when you also factor in the extent of the Church of Scientology’s infiltration of the entertainment industry you could argue there’s a pattern to it all... the espionage services manipulating cinema companies and music studios to influence public perception, gather intelligence and create the narrative to take extreme measures to protect what’s determined to be national interests.

You only have to think of John Lennon to realise the extent of the symbiotic relationship that exists between the world of entertainment and the protection of national interests. The moral of the lesson being: play ball and the world’s your oyster, rock the boat and your days could be numbered.

The incestuous relationship that exists between the CIA and Scientology is far too weighty a topic to pursue further here but it conveniently provides an introduction to Project Stargate, one of many questionable secret intelligence initiatives the US has sanctioned since becoming the custodian of the country’s “national interests”.

Briefly Project Stargate could be described as an offshoot of the US’ cold war with the Soviet Union, when it attempted to harness psychic energy and other “fringe” sciences to gather intelligence that could give it an edge over its counterparts at the Kremlin.

Stanford physicists Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff had begun a series of investigations of psychic phenomena, labelled remote viewing, sponsored by the CIA which were formalised at Fort Meade, Maryland, with the participation of California-based contractor the Stanford Research Institute in 1977.

The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) initiative was to examine the potential for psychic phenomena in military and domestic intelligence applications, closely coordinated through the CIA, and went by various code names depending on the relevant “defence” agencies operating them – such as the Intelligence and Security Command’s Gondola Wish, Stargate and Grill Flame investigations, Center Lane conducted by the DIA and Project CF, Sun Streak and Scanate run by the CIA. The projects were consolidated and renamed as the Stargate Project in 1991... the common factor in all the incarnations being SRI, which was based at Menlo Park, California.

As well as other activities, the projects included consultation with "consciousness researchers" such as artist-writer Swann, military intelligence officer Joseph McMoneagle and Israeli psychic-illusionist Uri Geller, with Targ and Puthoff leaving SRI in the mid-1980s. However, well before their departure, they enlisted the services of Price... a former Burbank, California, police officer and, like Swann and Puthoff, allegedly a fellow Scientologist.

Price participated in a number of Cold War era remote viewing projects, including Scanate and Stargate, entering the programme after a chance encounter with Puthoff and Swann. Working with maps and photographs provided by the CIA, Price was able to retrieve information from facilities behind Soviet lines. He was one of the SRI’s first and most successful operatives, contributing extensively to the years of funding remote viewing received from the secret services and the US Army.

One of his best documented sessions was his description of the Soviet arms factory in Semipalatinsk in 1974, when he sketched and described a huge eight-wheel gantry crane and a camouflaged steel ball 20 metres in diameter under construction. All true to scale and in considerable detail, the sketches were later confirmed by satellite photos.

The results of Price’s involvement in these operations were remarkable. He provided the CIA with detailed descriptions of Soviet sites of interest, including military installations, research facilities and secret projects many of which were later corroborated by more traditional intelligence means. But perhaps the most startling of his revelations materialised when he identified a gigantic extraterrestrial base operating from deep inside Mt Hayes, Alaska.

The revelations are believed to have come to light through Price working alone outside the Stargate project and less than two years later he mysteriously died in July 1975, his skills lost to the espionage community forever after he allegedly suffered a heart attack in his Las Vegas hotel room. But the circumstances surrounding his death raised eyebrows and became the source of constant speculation... its abruptness, coupled with the secretive nature of his work, raising immediate red flags.

And in the years since his death the mystery surrounding it has only deepened. It left behind a legacy of theories that challenge the official narrative which will be covered in more depth in PART TWO of this investigation into psychic espionage, the implications for those involved in it and the inherent dangers of delving too deeply into realms never intended for public scrutiny.