"Do you believe the Pentagon is spending money in this area of research?"
"The Pentagon has denied that. The estimates have been that they're probably spending $6 million a year. I don't know. I think they're probably spending something. But if they really thought that there was a psychic potential, the amount that they are spending is about one penny in every thousand dollars that is being spent on the total defense budget."
"Do you object to their spending it?"
"I really object to the public being mislead in this. I think --"
"How is the public being mislead?"
From an interview with Paul Kurtz, taken from the CIA's transcript of The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, November 13, 1984, on the "psychic arms race" between the United States and the Soviet Union.
Twenty-five years later the debate rages on, again over the spending of money on "imaginary science," but this time the debate concerns controlling how the wealthy and eccentric chose to spend their money.
And according to a handful of citizen journalists operating as Internet investigators -- allegedly -- are tricked into spending it.
Joe Firmage and Robert Bigelow immediately come to mind.
The front-line attack comes largely from the "Reality Uncovered" debunking operation, lead by Ryan Dube and Stephen Broadbent. The behind the scenes impetus for this attack against "scammers" would appear to originate elsewhere, perhaps even in the bowels of the intelligence community.
What the RU boys aren't talking about is how the tale of an investigation into funding of possibly questionable "fringe" science may have originated in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. At the core of this story is the shifting landscape of emails, covert agendas, and interaction between government employees, contractors, and the fringe.
In the end, who remains accountable for the use of our tax dollars spent on the fringe, never mind the private venture capitalists willing to take the risk to further their own curiosity about the unknown?
As for the "saucer rumors" and "alien guests" of the United States, at the minimum I can verify having heard these tales from a young former US Air Force source nicknamed "Sarge" -- and that was in 1983.
"If you knew the truth you wouldn't be able to sleep at night."
Honestly, I'd rather know the truth.
How much time, tax payer money, and effort have been spent in funding lies, spies, and keeping the truth from the people who are paying for it all.
