The Men Who Stare At Goats

No figure looms larger over this story than Major General Albert Stubblebine III. In 1981, Stubblebine was a man at the peak of his career. As the commanding general of the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM), he presided over 17,000 soldiers, 16 military bases, and a budget in the hundreds of millions.

But Stubblebine had a problem. He was bored. He felt that conventional intelligence—satellites, informants, wiretaps—was missing the bigger picture. He had become obsessed with the potential of the human mind. He had read extensively about Eastern mysticism, about Taoism, about the martial art of Aikido. He became convinced that the laws of physics were merely suggestions.

Stubblebine famously attempted to use his mind to walk through a wall. Not metaphorically. He took a running start at the partition wall in his Pentagon office, trying to phase his molecules through the drywall. He did this repeatedly, ultimately giving himself a bloody nose and a bruised ego.

But Stubblebine was no fool. He was a decorated combat veteran. He simply believed that the Soviet Union was light years ahead of the US in "psychotronics." Rumors abounded that the KGB had trained thousands of psychic spies. If the Reds were reading the President's mind, Stubblebine reasoned, the US needed its own battalion of super-soldiers.

Thus, he gave his blessing to a lieutenant colonel named Jim Channon.

The story of The Men Who Stare at Goats has been the subject of much debate and controversy. Some have questioned the validity of the goat experiment, while others have raised concerns about the ethics of using psychic powers for military purposes.

The story was popularized in a 2004 book by Jon Ronson, "The Men Who Stare at Goats," which explored the history of the unit and the use of psychic powers in the military. The book was later adapted into a film in 2009, starring George Clooney, Ewan McGregor, and Jeff Bridges.

The story of The Men Who Stare at Goats revolves around a group of soldiers from the 1st SFOD-D who were trained in a unique approach to warfare. They were taught to use unorthodox tactics, including the use of psychic powers, such as telepathy and clairvoyance, to gather intelligence and conduct operations.

The unit was led by Colonel Charles Beckwith, who had a strong interest in the paranormal and had written a book on the subject. Beckwith believed that certain individuals possessed psychic abilities that could be harnessed for military purposes.

This is where the story stops being a comedy.

Ronson’s most chilling discovery was that the "New Age" unit never really died. It merely morphed. The metaphysical techniques of the First Earth Battalion—breaking egos, sensory deprivation, creating extreme disorientation, and "non-lethal" psychological manipulation—were rebranded for the War on Terror.

In a University of California briefing in 1995, a former military intelligence officer presented Channon’s goat-staring manual to a new generation. By 2002, at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, these "soft kill" techniques were being used on prisoners.

Ronson found that the man responsible for designing interrogation tactics at Guantanamo, a psychologist named Colonel Larry James, had openly studied Channon’s early work. The idea that you could "stare" a goat into submission became the idea that you could break a prisoner's will using "stress positions," sleep deprivation, and sensory overload.

The absurdity of the 1970s—meditation in the jungle—had curdled into the brutality of the 2000s: a Global War on Terror where prisoners were hooded, shackled, and forced to stare at walls for 72 hours.

As one former interrogator told Ronson: "We stopped trying to kill the goat. We started trying to convince the goat it was already dead."

In the annals of modern military history, there are secrets that are hidden because they are lethal, and then there are secrets that are hidden because they are embarrassing. The story of the U.S. Army’s First Earth Battalion falls firmly into the second category.

For the uninitiated, The Men Who Stare At Goats might sound like a quirky film starring George Clooney and Ewan McGregor, or a bizarre book by journalist Jon Ronson. But as the screenwriter William Goldman once said about fairy tales, the truest words are often the funniest. The reality behind the keyword is a strange, decade-spanning rabbit hole that leads to remote military bases, aging New Age hippies in uniform, psychic spies, and a secret war fought not with bullets, but with the power of the mind. The Men Who Stare At Goats

This is the true, weird story of how the U.S. military tried to teach soldiers to walk through walls, kill goats with their thoughts, and become "Jedi warriors."

The infamous "Goat Lab" at Fort Bragg is the Holy Grail of this story. According to multiple first-hand accounts, including those of Guy Savelli and other veterans, the lab was a small concrete blockhouse. Inside, a goat was strapped to a table. Sensors monitored its heart rate.

The soldiers, who had been trained in bio-feedback and meditation, would sit a few feet away. They would focus on their own heart rate, slow it down, and then project that stillness onto the goat. The goal was to create a "resonant frequency" that would cause the goat’s heart to fibrillate and stop.

Savelli claimed he did it. He said the goat stiffened, its eyes glazed over, and the monitors flatlined. Then, a medic rushed in to revive the animal.

Other soldiers who were there claim nothing happened. They say it was a psychological exercise to build confidence—a placebo designed to make soldiers feel invincible. They would be told the goat died, but in reality, it was a trick.

Regardless of the truth, the legend of the "goat killers" spread through the ranks. It became a symbol of a military that had lost its grip on reality, chasing magic while ignoring the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The Men Who Stare at Goats is both a 2004 non-fiction investigative book by journalist Jon Ronson

and a 2009 satirical film starring George Clooney and Ewan McGregor. Both explore the bizarre true story of the U.S. Army's attempts to harness New Age and paranormal powers for military use. The Real-Life "New Earth Army" The story is centered on a classified program known as the First Earth Battalion , founded in the late 1970s by Lt. Col. Jim Channon. The Men Who Stare at Goats - PopMatters

The following is a short story based on the premise of Jon Ronson’s non-fiction book (and the subsequent film), The Men Who Stare at Goats. It blends the absurdity of the real-life "New Earth Army" with a narrative perspective.

The Jedi of Fort Bragg

The goat didn't look particularly evil. It looked bored. It was chewing on the remnants of a cigarette butt, its yellow eyes scanning the high desert of Fort Bragg with the detached malaise of a creature that had seen too much military hardware and not enough grass.

Specialist Ray Wilcox, however, was terrified of it.

"Stop projecting, Ray," whispered Sergeant First Class Bill Django. "You’re flooding the area with anxiety. The goat is a mirror. If you feel fear, he will reflect fear. You need to be a still pond."

"I’m trying, Sergeant," Ray said, sweat beading on his forehead despite the morning chill. "But he’s looking at me. He knows."

"That is precisely the problem," Django said, adjusting his rimless glasses. He was wearing standard-issue camo, but he had accessorized with a paisley bandana and a small, polished crystal hanging around his neck. "You are engaging in a duel of egos. You must dissolve the ego. Become invisible. Become... nothing."

This was the New Earth Army. Or at least, the rotting skeleton of it. No figure looms larger over this story than

Ray had arrived at the base three months ago, a fresh-faced intelligence analyst expecting to learn how to interrogate enemy combatants. Instead, he found himself in a unit that practiced "Remote Viewing," "Cloud Bursting," and the art of walking through walls.

His instructor, Bill Django, was a legend. He claimed to have spent the 1980s dancing with Sufi mystics, hanging out with Scientologists, and developing a combat doctrine based on the "Jedi" philosophy. The goal was to create a warrior who could kill with a glance, or better yet, not kill at all, but simply subdue the enemy with the sheer vibrational power of love.

Today’s lesson was the ultimate test: The Goat Lab.

The objective was simple. Ray had to stare at the goat. He had to harness his psi-energy, focus it into a lethal beam of intent, and stop the goat’s heart. It was the ultimate non-violent weapon. No bullets, no mess. Just a silent, psychic cessation of life.

"Clear your mind," Django intoned, circling Ray slowly. "Imagine a beam of light shooting from your third eye. It is a laser of purest intention. You are not angry at the goat. You love the goat. You love him so much you are setting him free."

Ray stared. He stared until his eyes watered. He thought about death. He thought about the concept of stopping. He visualized a stop sign. He visualized a brick wall.

The goat stopped chewing. It burped.

"He’s wavering!" Ray shouted, triumphant. "He’s destabilizing!"

"He’s just digesting, Ray," Django said, checking his watch. "You’ve been at this for twenty minutes. Your aura is jagged. You’re stressing the animal out. If PETA saw this, they’d have a field day."

"I felt something, Sergeant. A ripple."

"That was your blood pressure," Django sighed, walking over to the pen. He pulled out an apple slice. The goat trotted over and ate it from his hand. "You see? He’s receptive to kindness. The death stare is a myth, Ray. It's a parlor trick the higher-ups like to show the Senators to get funding. The real power isn’t killing. It’s... softening."

Ray slumped against the fence, defeated. "So I can’t kill a goat with my mind?"

"If you could, I’d be worried about your moral character," Django said, smiling. "We’re not assassins, Ray. We’re the illuminators. We’re here to inject chaos with order, and order with chaos."

Suddenly, the heavy hum of a Humvee engine broke the desert silence. A vehicle skidded to a halt near the pen. A Colonel stepped out—a man with a jaw like a cinderblock and eyes that held zero trace of "softening."

"General Miller wants the unit ready for deployment in forty-eight hours," the Colonel barked, ignoring Ray and staring daggers at Django. "We’re going to need the cloud-busters and the intuitive interrogators on the ground in the sandbox. And none of that 'First Earth' hippie stuff, Django. We need actionable intel. We need you to find the WMDs."

Django straightened his bandana. "We don't find things, Colonel. We resonate with them." The Jedi of Fort Bragg The goat didn't

"I don't care if you hum a tune with them," the Colonel snapped. "Pack your crystals. We leave at 0600."

As the Humvee roared away, Ray felt a cold pit in his stomach. "We're going to Iraq?"

Django watched the dust settle. The light seemed to go out of his eyes, replaced by a weary resignation Ray hadn't seen before. The irony was thick enough to choke a horse

The Men Who Stare at Goats is a satirical look into the U.S. military's real-life attempts to harness psychic powers for warfare, popularized by Jon Ronson's 2004 non-fiction book and its 2009 film adaptation starring George Clooney. The Book (2004)

Written by British journalist Jon Ronson, the book is an investigative piece that explores the bizarre, "so-insane-it-could-be-true" history of the First Earth Battalion. Ronson tracks down former military officers who claim they were trained to be "Warrior Monks"—super-soldiers capable of:

Remote Viewing: Seeing distant locations using only the mind.

Invisibility: Adopting a "cloak of invisibility" to bypass enemies. Phasing: Attempting to pass through solid walls.

Lethal Staring: The core anecdote involves a psychic spy who supposedly stopped a goat's heart just by staring at it. The Film (2009)

Directed by Grant Heslov, the movie is a satirical black comedy that fictionalizes Ronson's investigation. It follows Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor), a reporter who stumbles upon Lyn Cassady (George Clooney), a former member of the secret "New Earth Army".

Cast: George Clooney, Ewan McGregor, Jeff Bridges, and Kevin Spacey.

Style: Reviewers often compare its deadpan, absurd humor to the Coen Brothers or classics like Dr. Strangelove and Catch-22.

Key Themes: It balances goofy sight gags (like McGregor's character, a former Jedi actor, being told about "Jedi" powers) with a darker critique of military culture and the "lunacy of war". The True Story Behind It

While highly dramatized, much of the material is based on real programs from the late 1970s and early 80s.

Jim Channon: Jeff Bridges' character, Bill Django, is based on Lt. Col. Jim Channon, who actually wrote the First Earth Battalion Field Manual.

Psychic Research: The U.S. military and intelligence agencies (including the CIA via Project MK-Ultra) spent years investigating paranormal phenomena like telepathy and remote viewing as legitimate strategic tools.

The Men Who Stare at Goats is a fascinating topic that has garnered significant attention in recent years. The phrase itself is somewhat enigmatic, but it refers to a group of individuals who were part of a U.S. Army Special Forces unit, also known as the Green Berets, during the Vietnam War.