In this interview with the author of the book that became the film “Men Who Stare at Goats”, the author discusses some strange military programs to use psychic warfare techniques.<\/p>\n
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http:\/\/www.clooneyunlimited.com\/interview-goats-author-jon-ronson\/<\/p>\n
Picture a military made up of psychically gifted soldiers who can walk through walls, stare animals to death and whose primary weapons are subliminal music, disarming hugs and symbols of peace (like baby lambs). In 1979, a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army named Jim Channon imagined just that, and wrote his ideas down in a 125-page confidential report called \u201cThe First Earth Battalion.\u201d Thirty years later, British journalist Jon Ronson explored the legacy of Channon\u2019s New Age manual and the U.S. military\u2019s surprising \u2014 and often sinister \u2014 enthusiasm for supernatural warfare in his 2004 book, The Men Who Stare at Goats. TIME spoke with Ronson about turning his book into a Hollywood film, and why he thinks Channon\u2019s vision of the future is still in the works.<\/p>\n
I noticed that Jim Channon has been writing for the Guardian in the run-up to the film\u2019s release. How\u2019d that come about?<\/strong><\/p>\n Well, I suggested it, but it was sort of a gamble because Jim\u2019s his own man. He could have written, \u201cI hate Jon Ronson\u2019s book.\u201d He loved the movie, and he loves Jeff Bridges, who plays him in the movie. Obviously George Clooney didn\u2019t hurt either. George Clooney is like an antiseptic bandage, he kind of heals all wounds. (See the top 10 fiction books of 2008.)<\/p>\n So have you seen the film yet?<\/strong><\/p>\n I\u2019ve seen it four times. I really love it. The second half of my book is quite dark \u2014 there\u2019s a lot of jokes in the first half and not many in the second half \u2014 and what George Clooney and director Grant Heslov decided to do was make it a much more sweet-natured, slightly batty, feel-good film. It\u2019s sort of like Little Miss Sunshine goes to war.<\/p>\n That\u2019s one of the more disturbing descriptions you could have given me.<\/strong><\/p>\n [Laughs] But there\u2019s something really engaging and sweet and warm about it, and that\u2019s something I didn\u2019t expect.<\/p>\n That\u2019s interesting to me, because in your book you indict the mainstream media for spinning gruesome stories \u2014 like using music to psychologically manipulate prisoners \u2014 and turn them into a fluff pieces on Barney\u2019s \u201cI Love You\u201d song being played at prisons in Iraq.<\/strong><\/p>\n I\u2019m definitely, definitely not accusing the movie of the thing I accused the media of doing in the book. And in fact, that stuff about Barney being turned into a funny story is the kind of sharp, dark end of the movie. I\u2019m not a conspiracy theorist, but I\u2019m a bit of a conspiracy theorist when it comes to the whole Barney thing because I think [the U.S. military] deliberately disseminated it to make torture seem funny. I think they saw an opportunity and went with it. That\u2019s exactly the kind of thing that psyops [Psychological Operations] does and I think everybody fell for it. And not just the American media, but the British media. The newspaper I work for, which is the Guardian \u2014 it\u2019s a very left-wing paper \u2014 was running funny stories about Barney torture. Everybody was. Until Abu Ghraib came along, it was just treated that way.<\/p>\n This book actually began as an assignment for a TV show, right?<\/strong><\/p>\n It was first going to be a series about the Bush dynasty, and then I had this amazingly good trip to Hawaii where I met [one-time psychic spy] Glenn Wheaton, who told me about Project Jedi and training U.S. soldiers to reach level 2 \u2014 \u201cIntuition\u201d \u2014 then level 3 \u2014 \u201cInvisibility,\u201d which I thought was such a great leap. Level 1 is like eat only nuts and grains for a month and level 3 is invisibility? It was the greatest interview of my life. All I had to do was say, \u201cWhat\u2019s level 4?\u201d And he goes, \u201cLevel 4 is we can kill a goat just by staring at it.\u201d By the time we got to level 4 I was thinking, there\u2019s a book in there.<\/p>\n How do you think the military\u2019s strategy has changed in the five years since this book came out?<\/strong><\/p>\n I have no doubt that research in this field is still going on. Someone sent me this quote from General Stanley McChrystal about how we have to show the enemy our good side, and it seems very similar to passages in Jim Channon\u2019s manual about sparkly eyes and baby lambs. I think it\u2019s rather nice the military would try out all this crazy stuff, because if the U.S. Army doesn\u2019t try this stuff, nobody\u2019s going to \u2014 and maybe something wonderful could come from of it. I don\u2019t want to sound all massively promilitary, but Jim always said that some of the most loving, kind people in the world are military people because they\u2019ve seen how bad things can get.<\/p>\n By M.J. Stephey<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In this interview with the author of the book that became the film “Men Who Stare at Goats”, the author discusses some strange military programs to use psychic warfare techniques. >><< http:\/\/www.clooneyunlimited.com\/interview-goats-author-jon-ronson\/ Interview: \u201cGoats\u201d Author Jon Ronson Picture a military made up of psychically gifted soldiers who can walk through walls, stare animals to death … <\/p>\n