Penetrating the Impenetrable
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Chapter 4 Penetrating the Impenetrable One of the greatest ironies of the Psi Spies story is that the entire affair began as a response to a perceived “psychic gap” between the United States and the Soviet Union—and this gap was generated by an apparent hoax. The saga began in February 1960, when the French magazine Science et Vie published an article reporting that an American nuclear submarine, the USS Nautilus, had conducted successful telepathy experiments. The magazine’s headlines read: “US Navy Uses ESP on Atomic Sub!” “Is telepathy a new secret weapon? Will ESP be a deciding factor in future warfare?” and “Has the American military learned the secret of mind power?”1 The article described how a Navy lieutenant had received messages from a “sender” thousands of miles away while the Nautilus was submerged far below the Arctic ice
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