Gondola Wish

Gondola Wish was the unclassified title of a plan by the 902d Military Intelligence Group at Fort Meade to train military intelligence personnel in out-of-the-body experience at the Monroe Institute of Applied Sciences in Afton, Virginia. The Army staff cancelled it on September 25, 1978, and the Army's parapsychology work continued as Grill Flame.

The 902d's threat assessment, 1977

The 902d's assessment report of August 25, 1978 states that its office "has been investigating the intelligence threat posed by Soviet state-of-the-art parapsychology since September 1977," through liaison with the Medical Information and Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Foreign Technology Division of the Air Force.¹ The INSCOM chronology lists "GONDOLA WISH established" under September 1977.² A staff paper of the group's CI Studies Section states the problem as the integration of the Soviet and East European parapsychology intelligence collection threat into the all-source operations security support scenario, and states that the 902d "is the only intelligence organization with the ability and the mission capable of providing meaningful security support to counter the Soviet parapsychology threat."³ The assessment describes the plan as training military intelligence personnel so that they can "mimic Soviet collectors in an operations security (OPSEC) support effort."¹

Selection of the Monroe Institute, 1978

The assessment records that the name of Robert Monroe surfaced in March 1978 in an open-source document on the psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, who had said she completed a training in out-of-the-body experiences conducted by Monroe. Officials at DIA told the 902d that CIA had shown interest in Monroe in 1973 and 1974 and had no present interest, and that CIA called Monroe "OK" from a security standpoint. Scientists at the Foreign Technology Division said they were interested in Monroe's work but had not yet evaluated it. Russell Targ and Hal Puthoff of Stanford Research Institute told DIA that they knew Monroe personally and believed him credible. The assessment adds that Thelma Moss of the University of California at Los Angeles was aware of Monroe's work, that researchers at the Menninger Foundation had validated the concepts behind his technique, and that Charles Tart, who had investigated Monroe under laboratory conditions, recommended the institute to anyone wishing to learn about out-of-the-body experience.¹

Monroe was interviewed at the institute on April 6, 1978. On May 3, 1978 he received a security indoctrination and agreed to train three military intelligence personnel in October and November 1978 for a fee of $2,000, on a confidential basis and without discussing the Army's involvement with other institute members, the press or other agencies.¹

The training plan

A May 1978 memorandum signed by Second Lieutenant Frederick H. Atwater schedules the first training phase to begin on October 24, 1978, for four consecutive weeks on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. It describes the training as advanced biofeedback techniques coupled with brain hemisphere synchronization, states that the first phase would be directed at recovering word information from nonwitting subjects, in this case computer access passwords, and provides that the project officer would observe, so that a trainee in an altered state would not discuss classified information.⁴ On May 17, 1978 the institute interviewed the volunteer trainees in the presence of the project officer and recommended them, pending psychological testing; the institute's fee covered four three-day training sessions at one-week intervals, with brain hemisphere synchronization tapes, a tape recorder, earphones and a workbook supplied to the trainees.⁵

On July 19, 1978 the 902d's commander requested a one-time payment of $2,000 from the Intelligence Contingency Fund, writing that funds for the training were "not otherwise available due to the classified nature of the training and the embarrassment which would be suffered by both the US Army and the training organization, should US Army Intelligence involvement with this type of training be disclosed." John A. Smith Jr., Brigadier General and Deputy Commander for Security of INSCOM, approved the request the same day.⁶ Atwater attended a seminar by Tart on July 29, 1978 and reported on it as project officer.⁷ A management-by-objectives chart names "LT ATWATER, CI Studies Sec., OPSEC Support DIV." as action officer for the objective of training military intelligence personnel to collect sensitive information by parapsychological techniques by January 1, 1979.⁸

Cancellation

A 902d memorandum of September 25, 1978, signed by Lieutenant Colonel Robert E. Keenan, records a meeting with Colonel Capps of the Army staff office DAMI-ISH and states that "the 902d's concept, unclassified title GONDOLA WISH, is cancelled," that "Monroe Institute not cleared," and that a contract regarding training involving "experiements [sic] with the mind" must be cleared through an office at the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. It records that the Army Materiel Development and Readiness Command held an ongoing contract with Stanford Research Institute on which the training could be placed, with $15,000 from the Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence and $50,000 from INSCOM.⁹ A status report of September 26, 1978 to General Smith records that the 902d had been told the week before to stop planning, that Major General E. R. Thompson "did not want to go that route until the legal ramifications were thoroughly examined," and that $65,000 had been provided to the command for training under the SRI contract.¹⁰

An information paper of October 27, 1978 over Thompson's name states that the institute "was briefly considered earlier this year to train three or four INSCOM Subjects," that the only Army individual known to the staff to have spoken with Monroe was the Gondola Wish project officer, and that the institute "was rejected as a training possibility" because its technique involved sensory deprivation and rhythmic sounds, the subject underwent interrogation in the altered state, CIA would not permit its people to train there, a federal statute covered experimentation on human beings, and neither Monroe nor the institute held a clearance.¹¹

Schnabel's account of the Fort Meade team

Jim Schnabel wrote that Atwater's proposal for a small team of Army intelligence personnel screened for psychic ability, approved by Thompson, was "initially given the code name Gondola Wish," with Major Murray Watt as commanding officer, and that Atwater and Watt called in a few hundred candidates, among them photo-interpreters from the National Photographic Interpretation Center, telling them the interviews were a general survey on psi ordered by the INSCOM commander.¹⁵ In his account the photo-interpreter Mel Riley recognized from the questions that he was being considered for Gondola Wish, the list was cut to about twenty for a second interview, and in early 1978 ten or eleven candidates were briefed in a secure room in building 4554.¹⁶ Schnabel wrote that six of them, including Riley, were later sent to SRI for outbound remote viewing experiments, and that late in 1978 the code name Gondola Wish disappeared when the unit became the Special Action Branch under the name Grill Flame.¹⁶¹⁷ His notes credit Riley for the name Gondola Wish and state that Atwater "vaguely remembers it."¹⁵

The INSCOM chronology lists "GONDOLA WISH established" under September 1977 with the comment "Designed as an OPSEC support mission to mimic HOIS remote viewers to determine US vulnerability." It lists "Selection of remote viewers and interviewers" under December 1978 to January 1979 with the comment "Of the 251 personnel considered for GRILL FLAME, 117 were interviewed and six individuals were actually selected for training," and "Beginning of orientation training at SRI-International" under April 1979.²

Later contacts with the Monroe Institute

INSCOM's October 1983 briefing to the Secretary of the Army states that by the end of 1980 the unit "BEGAN AN ADVANCED TRAINING PROGRAM USING THE HEMISPHERIC SYNCHRONIZATION PROCESS DEVELOPED BY ROBERT A. MONROE AND USED AT THE MONROE INSTITUTE OF APPLIED SCIENCE IN VIRGINIA."¹² An INSCOM request of 1981 asked the Army's human-use committee to review adding the institute's relaxation tapes to the INSCOM Grill Flame protocol.¹³ The chronology lists Grill Flame operatives attending Gateway training at the institute in June 1982 and November 1982, a contract signed on July 19, 1983 with Monroe for "One-on-One" training of a Center Lane operative, and further Gateway training in August 1983.² The Center Lane funding paper of March 7, 1985 lists $24.4K in fiscal 1983 for consultant services under an agreement with Monroe.¹⁴