“No, my father never put me through anything like what I put you guys through. My father would have made the right choices. I hope that you won’t make the wrong choices with your families because of me.”
“Believe me,” Mariah said, “I won’t ever do to my children and husband what you did to us. I know how much it hurts to see your dad fall apart. I’ll never forget that. I never want my children to feel like the world has come to an end, like they want to die because their father wants to die.”
Debbie kissed Danielle on the cheek and turned her around to face me as she spoke. “This is the children’s time to speak, so I’ll make one point here and then I’ll bow out. You and your father have to talk about what has happened. All of you need to settle this and come to some closure.” She stopped to gather her thoughts. “I want to try and explain why I think your dad tried to take his life. You have to understand that the army was giving Dad drugs that changed the way he thought. They were supposed to make the angel go away so that your father wouldn’t talk about him anymore. The drugs were very powerful and poisonous; they distorted how he saw things and how he processed what he saw. The doctors tried to take his mind way, and the army tried to take his career away. Under the influence of the drugs, he thought that his life was over.”
“I felt that I had been condemned to death already,” I said. “In my mind, there was nothing left for me here. Everything I loved had been stripped away from me; my family, my life in the army, my pride, my reputation, my future, my ability to provide for all of you. I felt I had nothing left to give anyone. Everywhere I turned, more horrors awaited. Friends turned on me; people lied about me; people who should have defended me and my family turned their backs to protect their own careers. It was as if someone had opened the floodgates to a dam, and I was chained in the spillway. I was overwhelmed, and overcome, and I wanted to end it! Thank God for you and your mother; you all gave me strength and hope and courage.
“I remember your mother coming to me in the hospital and saying, ‘They can take everything away from you except your integrity and your family. If it is all gone tomorrow, everything you believed in, we’ll still be here, and we’ll still love you and you will still have your integrity and the principles you based your decision on.’ When she said that, it turned a light on in my cold and dark mind. I started to see through the fog of the drugs and the pain of the events, and I realized that it didn’t matter what the army did or what the doctors tried to do. All that mattered was us, our family.
“I did what I believe the angel wanted me to do. I acted on principle and in the name of all humanity to bring remote viewing out of hiding, because I believe it can do wonderful things for all of us if it’s used properly. I did so alone, and that’s where I made the mistake. I didn’t believe that you and your mother were capable of standing by me; I didn’t believe that you shared my dream and my hopes, and I sacrificed you to them. I was wrong, and I know it.” I began weeping openly, unable to control the anguish and remorse. “All I can do now is ask for your forgiveness, for a second chance at being a father, and for your blessing on what your mother and I are proposing to do, to renew our vows. I make no excuses anymore; you’re part of me and I will never forsake you again. I can’t bear the thought that we won’t be a family again. I can’t complete my contribution to this life without you by my side, testifying with me about what we endured. I am strong only when I am with all of you. I am weak without you. I am lost without you. I am nothing without you.”
Mariah stood slowly and walked to me. She held my head, caressing it as if I were a child. Michael and Danielle embraced me and each other, and Debbie joyfully joined in.
“We are a part of you,” Michael said, finding words an eighteen-year-old should never have to say. “We will all heal in time. We know that you did what you thought was right. And, just like Grandpa Bosch says, ‘When you believe in something enough, you just have to reach through the flames and get it.’ You reached through more than flames to do what you believed in, and I know we all respect that. In a way we’re proud of what you did. What happened to you was cheap and heartless, and we’ll all remember it. I’m not ashamed of your actions!”
“Me either,” Mariah said.
“I’m not ashamed of you, Dad,” Danielle said, kissing me on the cheek and wiping tears from her face and mine.
“Thank you,” I said, choking. “Thank you for believing in me and what I meant to do. So you’ll all be eating cake at the wedding?”
“Do I get to be the best man?” Michael asked, grinning tearfully.
A few months before Debbie accepted my marriage proposal, I had the unique opportunity to begin working on one of my new careers: I participated in the Mikhail Gorbachev Foundation’s first annual State of the World Forum. I sat in the presence of men like George Bush, Mr. Gorbachev, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Senator Alan Cranston, and the prime ministers of Japan and of Canada. An eclectic group of world leaders, spiritualists, scientists, authors, and peacemakers gathered for five days to produce some answers that would give hope and direction to the “new world order.” At one of the many round-table discussions on the future of humanity, I discussed nonlethal weapons—which as I mentioned earlier, had become one of my passions in the waning years of my military service. I was humbled to be in the presence of these great men and women, and I pray that I will one day have the benefit of their company again.
After the conference ended I began writing. Reliving my experiences was traumatic but cleansing. For every ten horrible and negative things, I always came upon some small sliver of hope—for instance, a note someone had passed to me when things were most painful. It was good to reread the encouraging words of my colleagues. One colonel apologized for the way in which I was treated by the military and by certain individuals. To know that he was professionally and personally embarrassed offered me new strength and encouraged me to keep writing when depression began to take root once again. And one colonel, who is now a brigadier general, wrote, “This too shall pass!” Only now do I realize how those words helped me get through my troubles.
As I was in the midst of writing, in October 1995, the Central Intelligence Agency, in cooperation with the Defense Intelligence Agency, began a carefully planned and well-executed media blitz regarding the government’s psychic research and former psychic-warfare program, Stargate, formerly Sun Streak. In newspapers, radio, and television shows across the country, research experts and people supposedly affiliated with the program came out of the woodwork to tell the American people about the program.
I laughed with Mel and others on the phone about it. None of us had ever heard of the people who appeared on television claiming to have been affiliated with the program and citing a mere 15 percent accuracy rate based upon their “long-term” research and analysis. They certainly didn’t check my or Mel.’s statistics.
It is not my intent to second-guess the CIA’s motives or data. I can only offer my experience. When I was a young captain I learned an invaluable lesson during a conversation with the army’s deputy Chief of Staff for intelligence, the highest-ranking intelligence officer in the army. He told me and the two others present: “The CIA does nothing, says nothing, allows nothing unless its own interests are served. They are the biggest assembly of liars and thieves this country ever put under one roof and they are an abomination.” Now those are his words, not mine, but they stuck with me. If what he said is true, then in serving its interests the CIA presents only what it thinks the average American citizen needs to hear, or what it believes will steer the public to the CIA’s desired conclusions.
The CIA is in the business of manipulating the belief systems of entire nations. I doubt that they’re above working in their own backyard if it suits them. The most important thing about secret programs is that they prevent not only the bad guys but also the good guys from finding out what’s going on. This system gives the holder of the secrets enormous power. I don’t believe that the director of the CIA or any
of the top leaders at DIA or the National Security Agency or the Pentagon is behind this disinformation campaign. They have much bigger fish to fry. However, their lieutenants tell their bosses what they want those bosses to hear, and then get permission to execute whatever program they think necessary to achieve their objectives. You might ask why the boss doesn’t know when he’s being led into a decision. Well, most bosses in the intelligence community don’t know what their subordinates are doing. If you were the director of the CIA, would you want to know the specifics of every single program under your command? No: there are just too many programs for one person to oversee. The same applies to DIA and NSA. Again, that’s the result of compartmentalization in intelligence circles. Only a select few know the real story, and even they don’t know when they know it.
Not only did the fall of 1995 see a classic disinformation campaign, but most of the information circulating on the Internet was also misleading. In fact, Lyn Buchanan set up a Web page to respond to all the untruths. What made this page unique was the fact that most if not all of the former Stargate/Sun Streak crowd and a host of actual remote viewers who had worked in the ether for years regularly logged on and shared their experiences. The page was gaining in popularity, with people from around the world assessing it routinely. But one day someone hacked into the mainframe where the Web page was kept. This wasn’t Lyn’s computer, but that belonging to a company that posted and managed many Web pages, including Lyn’s. Oddly, the hacker erased only Lyn Buchanan’s files. In my opinion, someone or some group of people didn’t like the fact that actual government remote viewers were on the Net countering point by point the claims of the CIA and others.
Lyn and the company providing the service worked feverishly for three days to reinstall the files and get the page back online. They succeeded—and within seventy-two hours someone hacked into the system again, only this time they destroyed the entire system and everything on it. I don’t know what Lyn will do from here. I hope he rebuilds the page and gets it online again. We need some truth out there.
There are hundreds of people who claim that they’re remote viewers and can train you to become one. They hold the keys to the kingdom—they say. When you see or hear one of these “experts,” ask yourself: “Where does this expert (and his or her foundation) get their research funds—privately, or from the government? Are they in line for another grant or contract?” If you want to know the truth, you can dig it out with a little work. I believe the government is continuing to fund psychic and paranormal research, whatever the CIA would have you believe. And those looking for a meal ticket will say anything the purse-string holder tells them to say in order to secure that next contract. As in any field, there are legitimate researchers and there are fly-by-nights. Some people are trying to make money, others to make a name for themselves or rescue their reputations. Some are really trying to help. Those interested in learning more about remote viewing should look very carefully at those offering training and judge carefully anything they see or hear. Until the absolute truth comes out—until the people force it to come out so that it can be used to society’s benefit—the miraculous potential of the science will remain obscured somewhere in the archives of the intelligence community.
I have one last comment on this issue: I believe that remote viewing for intelligence purposes remains now very fully funded, very hidden, and very protected—and is now very deadly. I don’t think the government intends to make the same mistake it did with Stargate/Sun Streak. I know three remote viewers who are still affiliated with a government-backed remote-viewing program. Mel, Lyn, and I believe that they are now working for the CIA as part of another program that paralleled the old Sun Streak. We’d always suspected that there was another program, more secret and even more powerful than ours; I learned of it from a very reliable source who spoke of training a stoic and secretive group many years ago. He wouldn’t elaborate, and I understand why he shouldn’t. The word on the street is that remote influencing is all the rage in intelligence. I believe that the CIA is heavily involved in this insidious technique. If they could influence someone to kill from a distance of thousands of miles—and remote influencing has this potential—they would hold an extremely valuable weapon.
Remote viewing is not a dead issue; it hasn’t gone away.
Just after the CIA broke its version of the remote-viewing story, I received a call from Dr. Damioli, the psychiatrist who’d first treated me at Walter Reed.
“Have you seen the papers?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“Isn’t it exciting? I can talk about everything now. I’d like to see you as soon as possible, if I may.”
“I can see you tomorrow, but I’d like to bring Debbie along.”
“Certainly!”
At five the next day Debbie and I knocked on the door to the doctor’s office.
“Please sit down, I’d like to talk to you about all of this.” Dr. Damioli held up a copy of The Washington Post with the article about the CIA’s involvement in psychic warfare.
Debbie and I nodded. “It exists just as we said it did, doesn’t it?”
“I never doubted you for a minute. When your Stargate psychologist admitted to me that the program existed and that I should proceed carefully, I knew there was something to it all. I just couldn’t do anything for you while you were with me; my hands were tied.”
“Who tied your hands? What do you mean?”
“The government, my supervisors … They ordered me to give you the drugs and they ordered me to change my diagnosis of you. They wanted me to describe you as psychotic and delusional, but I refused.” The doctor reflected for a moment. “It cost me my position with the hospital.”
“But you were the ward attending physician; you were a senior psychiatrist. How could they do anything to you? And you’re a civilian, at that; you should have been Teflon-coated!” Debbie said.
“That’s what makes this so unbelievable. When I refused to alter the diagnosis, they took away the position I’d worked so many years to earn. I was isolated from my colleagues and professionally destroyed. I had to hire an attorney to protect my professional record, but I was forced to resign after twelve years of government service. I lost everything—my pension, everything. I wanted you to know that I didn’t abandon you. They took you away from me and sent you to Fort Bragg, where they could have absolute control over you.”
We were stunned. “I’m sorry, Doctor,” I said. “I lost only sixteen years, but you lost a lifetime. Thank you for telling us. Do you mind if we have an attorney take your deposition—for the record, I mean?”
“Not at all! I just want you to know that if you want to fight for an honorable discharge, I will be there for you every step of the way. You should have been given the medical discharge I asked for, and I would support that even more strongly today! I was even ordered to alter your records. And remember that I gave you the smallest possible dose of antipsychotics?”
“It didn’t matter,” Debbie said angrily. “Once they got him to Fort Bragg they kicked the dosage up as much as they could. David was practically a zombie.”
“It’s all over, and thank God we have our lives to live,” I said. “I’m sorry you wound up as one of the casualties of my quest. But from the bottom of our hearts, we thank you for being there.”
The doctor paused. “What I want you to know, David, is this. You beat them by doing two things. You didn’t kill yourself, which I think is what they really wanted you to do. And you never gave up the fight. You never stopped telling the story. You forced them to come out with this.”
I can’t answer for how Debbie felt, but to hear this was a relief to me. Dr. Damioli’s story confirmed that my trial had been about much more than anyone knew. But I didn’t die and my family is safe. They didn’t win; I did.
Lyn Buchanan, Mel Riley, and I arrived in Baltimore for an extraordinary reunion in the ether. Lyn drove from Mechanicsville in southern Maryland to my home in Bowie.
He and I greeted each other like schoolboys, gorging ourselves on Debbie’s sweet rolls and my coffee before heading to the rendezvous with Mel, who’d flown in from Wisconsin. It was the first time I’d seen them together in years. We’d gathered together to journey back in time on behalf of the Baltimore County Police Department.
Our first meeting was with Detective Lieutenant Sam Bowerman, head of the department’s criminal profiling unit. Mel and I spoke of Sun Streak; because the program remained classified, Lyn would only discuss remote viewing in general terms. However, we described our capabilities as remote viewers. And we were careful to state our limits, too; we knew of several people offering “guaranteed 100 percent accurate results”—for a price—and we didn’t want to align ourselves with such claims, raising false hopes to make a buck. That’s not what the gift is for. On the other hand, we knew what we could do to help the department; and we were willing to prove it.
“We want you to know what we can do, and what we can’t,” I said. “This isn’t magic!”
Lyn chimed in. “No, it’s not. It’s a discipline devoid of guesswork or speculation.”
Psychic Warrior Page 31
