Jay Dyer joins us for this episode where we analyse the 2009 comedy The Men Who Stare at Goats, loosely based on Jon Ronson’s book of the same name. It tells the story of a journalist who is inducted into the world of psychic soldiers during the Iraq war. The movie goes on to explain some of the history behind the First Earth Battalion, an experimental Pentagon unit devoted to developing a new generation of super soldier informed by the hippy and New Age movements. We examine what the film leaves out, especially in the form of MKULTRA and similar CIA projects and experiments with similar aims, and ask whether the purpose was not to ask ‘How could love and peace help win wars?’ but to weaponise New Age philosophy and the New Age movement.
The Men Who Stare at Goats is the final movie in the George Clooney/Grant Heslov series before they took the full plunge and made Argo with the help of the CIA. We look at whether Goats – Heslov’s directorial debut – was the final step in their long-term overture to the CIA. The fact that Goats reduces the CIA’s involvement in such projects to a single scene, and was distributed by none other than Overture Films are strong hints towards this. We also map out the evidence and implications of state sponsorship of the entire Goats project, from Ronson’s original book and documentary series through to the Hollywood version. The use of technical advisors who were part of these Pentagon units back in the 70s/80s and who were ‘reactivated’ to help fight the War on Terror implies that at least the DOD, if not the CIA, were in favour of this film. We round off by pondering the plausibility of the remote viewing phenomenon.
Download The CIA and Hollywood ep 11
Show Notes:
The Men Who Stare at Goats (book)
Crazy Rulers of the World (documentary series)
The Men Who Stare at Goats (film)
First Earth Battalion Field Manual
Jim Channon’s website (archived)
Goats Declassified: The real men of the First Earth Battalion
Porkins Policy Review 
Comments
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Dear Pearse & Tom,
In the late 1960’s-1971, I lived in a house with other students from my university, including Curt A., who had been drafted when he did not successfully complete his Freshman year (1966). Not wanting to become a killer, he volunteered to be a Medic and served with 2 companies. The first, which was led by normal people, avoided “contact with the enemy”, so they sustained few casualties as the Viet Cong kept track of which groups of soldiers were led, or not, by gung-ho officers and rewarded them accordingly. He was transferred to the crazy/aggressive Americal Division, where he eventually suffered disabling injuries in a mortar attack.
According to Curt, there were many occasions when the reluctance of U.S. and Vietnamese soldiers to kill each other was demonstrated. On more than one occasion, both would come out of heavy forest into a field at the same time. They would even be quite close; but after they both fired their weapons at each other, no one would be hit and it appeared to unarmed Curt that they were deliberately avoiding shooting persons whom they could see. On the other hand, of course, setting booby traps, firing mortars or dropping bombs, etc., did not require the killers to look into the faces of their targets.
With regard to military’s goal of using tech to create “super soldiers”, the first Iraq War II veteran to publish a book wanted to publicize the fact that the military openly encouraged the use of steroids and amphetamines on the bases in Iraq. He himself had become addicted and in his struggle to overcome that back home, had turned his outrage with the military into a book. Publicized behavior suggests that these drugs are being promoted among the militarized domestic U.S. police forces.
Next, activity, making pledges to your Patreons.