After watching the movie version of The Men Who Stare At Goats, I figured that there must be a kernel of truth to it coated with several layers of Hollywood bullshit so I read the book to get an idea of what the real story was. I thought I’d get a funny story about some stupid things the military did once upon a time. Instead, the book turns into a template for starting conspiracy theories that really pissed me off.

Oddly enough, the really weird stuff that happened in the film version is the stuff that probably actually happened, but I understand why Hollywood had to wrap that in a fictional storyline because the book wanders around and becomes just a series of odd anecdotes and wild speculation about weird things that the U.S. military and intelligence communities may or may not have done.

An army officer named Jim Channon went to Vietnam and realized that most soldiers really don’t want to kill anyone. On returning home after the war, he somehow talked the army into financing a research project where he experimented with several new age movements and techniques. He wrote a manual based on his experience calling for a new type of unit, the First Earth Battalion.

Channon’s manual called for incorporating several flower child ideas into the army. For example, when approaching natives in occupied territory the soldiers would have speakers hanging around their necks that played peaceful music, and hold flowers and small animals to show good intentions. Channon also theorized that the FEB could become a class of Warrior Monks, complete with psychic powers like remote viewing, walking through walls, and invisibility.

Amazingly, Channon was taken somewhat seriously and offered a small command to implement his ideas. Channon refused because he now claims that he didn’t actual believe any of the psychic power ideas were really possible, that he was just trying to get the army to open its collective mind to some new ways of doing business. (I think that Channon may have conned the army into funding an extended vacation and then turned in something he never dreamed would be taken seriously.)

However, the FEB manual eventually found it’s way into the hands of General Stubbelbine, the head of army intelligence in the early 80’s and a believer in the paranormal. Stubbelbine was a proponent of it and tried to interest the Special Forces in it, but they were already aware of it and trying to adapt some of the techniques without all the hippie crap. One of their big experiments was trying to stop the hearts of goats by staring at them. Stubbelbine had to settle for setting up a small office with several soldiers trying to develop remote viewing and other psychic powers.

The author interviewed Channon, Stubbelbine and several other folks who participated in several programs related to the FEB manual, and all of them freely admit that this happened and provided a lot of the material in the early chapters. That’s a pretty amusing story, but it comes across that these were just some loopy ideas that the military tried on a very small scale but were eventually phased out.

Where the book goes off the rails is when the author tries to say that Channon’s FEB ideas were possibly more widely adopted and in use today. That’s where it turns into a collection of oddball stories related by a variety of unreliable sources, with no other research done that is documented in the book.

The author gets obsessed with the notion that Channon’s idea of using music as part of the FEB was modified and used as torture techniques in Iraq on prisoners by playing songs from the Barney kids show over and over at high levels or that the military/intelligence community is experimenting with subliminal messaging. He also notes how the government has used loud music at other times to try and drive people out of siege situations and ties that back to the FEB. Then he theorizes that the FBI bombarded the Branch Davidians in Waco with subliminal messages based on pure speculation.

First, I don’t think that the idea of playing really loud music is an offshoot of the original FEB manual. I think the military and government, like most of us, realize that playing annoying music at really loud levels makes people crazy. You just have to live in an apartment with thin walls and have a heavy metal fan for a neighbor to figure that one out. And I’m more than willing to believe that the government has fooled around with subliminal messaging, but saying that it was used at Waco without a shred of proof is the kind of reckless speculation that starts a lot of the conspiracy theory nonsense that floats around today.

It isn’t the only things in the book that seem like blue-sky bullshitting. There’s a section where the author outlines how one of the former recruits in Stubbelbine psychic program started going on the Art Bell show after retirement, blabbed about the whole thing and then became a regular guest by making a series of wild predictions about the end of the world.

The author ties some of the comments that this guy made to comments that other guests made regarding the Hale-Bopp comet that were then linked to the Heaven’s Gate suicide cult. Uh….why? Just because one nutjob who used to be in a military program went on a radio show hosted by a nutjob who interviewed some other nutjobs that might have influenced some other nutjobs isn’t really a link to anything. It’s ironic that the author mocks Art Bell and then uses Art Bell methodology for the rest of the book.

There’s a lot of this kind of crap with various people making claims about how some of the old psychic spy programs are still being used, but again, there isn’t a shred of proof. The only thing close to a fact is that he notes how much Bush increased the intelligence budget. Duh. I’m not a Bush fan but a country that suffered a devastating terror attack and then got into two wars is going to increase its intelligence budget. It doesn’t mean the money is going to psychic spy programs.

Adding to the conspiracy theory vibe, there’s a long story at the end of the book that tries to tie the documented MK-ULTRA program the CIA ran where it doped unsuspecting people with LSD in 1950-60s to even darker claims about murder and potential torture techniques used by the military/intelligence community today. It’s certainly within the realm of possibility, but again, there’s no real proof presented, just interviews and theories of a couple of people who claim to have researched it.

This whole book left me baffled. I wouldn’t be surprised if the U.S. does look into using new age or psychic spy ideas in military or intelligence programs today, but trying to tie it all back to the FEB is a stretch. Especially since he doesn't prove that anything like it does actually exist today. Here you’ve got a story about the military doing something kind of crazy, but then the author went off on these even crazier and unsubstantiated tangents that make trying to kill goats by staring at them seem rational by comparison.

This book goes back and forth from hilarious to horrifying more often than Rosemary's Baby. Except that it's all true. This really touches on so many of my main interests, I don't even know where to begin. Basically, all the weird shit that just seems like fiction in a Pynchon novel turns out to be based in reality and this book does a better job of digging it all up, while being more well-researched, well-written and less sensational than any book about the US military's psychic engagements ever could be. Suffice it to say, I definitely want to re-watch the film.

3.5 / 5 stars.

I enjoyed this. It was chaotic, confusing and an interesting read! I learnt a lot from this book so I'm glad it was a book club choice or else I would never have picked it up.

Written with Ronson's trademark dry wit and exhibiting his wonderfully wry sense of humor, "The Men Who Stare at Goats" starts off rather light and humorous. Yet as each page turns, the rabbit hole gets deeper and steeper and the story becomes crazier and crazier, until it reaches a truly frightening crescendo.

This is seriously insane.

4⭐

This was a really fast and good read. I found out about Jon Ronson from his BBC radio series, which is a bit like This American Life, only British. In fact, I think I heard an excerpt of his show on This American Life. He's really funny, and he researches fascinating stories, a bit like Nick Broomfield.

So I expected this book to be good and fun. It was, though a little less so than I thought it would be. I think maybe part of Ronson's strength is his voice and his sort of ironic affect when he talks, which he tries to convey in his writing too, but he doesn't completely succeed.

At any rate, it's a fascinating read in which he chases down many of the bizarre conspiracy theories and new age myths, which the U.S. military apparently believed in and worked on, or still does, at various times and places. The book veers from "oh weren't they so silly back in the 70s" territory to the "ohmigod scary stuff in Abu Graib" kind of area, and it covers everything from MK-ULTRA to army brass trying to walk through walls and turn the military into a spreader of peace and love.

Over all, we never get definitive proof of anything supernatural or paranormal, just lots of former and current spies and soldiers and consultants who *believe* in this stuff and are dedicated to convincing Ronson of its reality. He is hilariously skeptical, but also profoundly disturbed at the more real-world, spooky spinoff tactics that are actually being used, such as audio torture technology in Guantanamo. He manages to convey the disturbed feeling to the reader, while also being entertaining. I'm sure the movie is even more entertaining.

Skvela praca. Ak niekto fakt chce vediet, co z filmu je pravda, tak nech si precita toto. Odpoved na otazku je: skurvene vela!

Um livro-reportagem sobre como o movimento new age entrou no exército e como boas intenções (ou não) aliadas à ignorância e ingenuidade (novamente, ou não) podem ser perversas.

Um oficial volta da guerra do Vietnã perturbado e buscando uma maneira pacífica de vencer batalhas -- nascia aí o Primeiro Batalhão da Terra, onde supersoldados tinham o poder de encarar uma cabra até matá-la, tornarem-se invisíveis, prever acontecimentos, manipular mentes, atravessar paredes e por aí vai. Alguns deles se autointitulavam guerreiros Jedi.

É hilário ver como o pessoal supostamente sério e misterioso do exército, CIA e até FBI, acreditava que essa maluquice toda realmente podia ser possível. Mas também é assustador e trágico ver como muito dessas ideias foram levadas não só ao pé da letra, como também evoluíram para torturas, assassinatos e sabe-se lá mais o quê.

Vale destacar que muitas das teorias expostas não possuem provas concretas e são especulações do autor ou baseadas em evidências encontradas somente neste livro.

Gosto muito do trabalho do Jon Ronson-- ele escreve de maneira simples e fácil de entender, juntando uma penca de informações em uma cronologia interessante e divertida.

Sobre a violência do governo, o depoimento de um entrevistado -- cujo pai, cientista da CIA, aparentemente foi assassinado pela Agência por estar perturbado demais com o trabalho e querer revelar informações ao público -- me chamou a atenção:

— As pessoas têm sofrido tanta lavagem cerebral por meio da ficção [...], por meio daquela coisa de Tom Clancy, que pensam: "Nós conhecemos isso. Sabemos que a CIA faz isso." De fato, não sabemos nada sobre isso. Não há nenhum caso disso, e toda essa coisa fictícia é como uma imunização contra a realidade. Faz as pessoas pensarem que sabem de coisas que não sabem e permite que elas tenham [...] um cinismo que é apenas uma fina camada além da qual não são nem um pouco cínicas.

Every year a friend of my roommate comes here from Canada to attend a bookseller's convention downtown and every year he brings the two of us books from his store in Manitoba. One of them this year was Ronson's The Men Who Stare at Goats.

Even though I'd seen the movie, I hadn't known there was a book behind it nor that its author, Jon Ronson, had also authored the book on political extremism that Mike Miley had had me read a couple of years ago while visiting him in California. Like Them: Adventure with Extremists, The Men Who Star at Goats skirts serious issues with humor and irony. Like the former, this recent book is an historical account, not of its ostensible subject, bur of the author's own investigation.

The subject of this book is PsychOps, the substantially black-budget governmental experiments with mind control and psychological warfare which extend back as far as the early CIA in the fifties and which continue today, most notably in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Ronson's particular foci are the persons and events featured in the much truncated movie based on this book, events going back to the seventies, and on U.S. Army PsychOps in Iraq at the time of composition. The book begins with silliness, with attempts to walk through solid objects and to become invisible, but ends with the very serious business of contemporary torture and mass-manipulation practices. In between there is considerable discussion of actual remote viewing studies, of subliminal attitude adjustment techniques, of crowd control methods, of the governmentally sanctioned murder of an Army/CIA agent in the mid-fifties, of the mass murder of the families in Waco in the nineties and of the dubiously sophisticated torture techniques employed by the United States in Iraq and Cuba. While often funny, Ronson does occasionally reflect upon the material he uncovers with earnest intention, particularly as regards how the enormity of many governmental practices is concealed even when it is revealed.

Having read many books about the subjects Ronson covers, I found little that I didn't already know. Yet in some cases Ronson, who conducted many interviews of principals, comes up with details I'd not seen previously published.

This book is strongly recommended as an easy-to-read introduction to the topics discussed. I finished the thing in two sittings and could have finished it in one, finding it actually much more "entertaining" than the motion picture and, while equally funny, much more provocative.

I lost patience with this and gave up at 20 per cent.

Yes I gave up! It was coming across as more like an unsubstantiated fantasy. I usually finish books - but this time no.

Another Jon Ronson offering that opens your mind to the darker depths of what those with power will do.

Whilst he makes a similar comment himself in this book; learning about the depraved events the government have been involved in over the years, has become increasingly desensitised by its frequency.

What a fucking crazy book! I've never seen the movie, I can't even see how it could be made into one unless it was a fake documentary.

It's basically about a lot of really weird supernatural shit the American military has at least tested out the possibilities of, and a lot of other really funny stuff like esoteric martial arts. Considering the super useful things that have come from the military that would have looked like pure magic 100 years ago (GPS is the first thing that springs to mind), it's hard to categorically say they are insane, but every fiber of me thinks they are insane. Staring at people to blow up their hearts, remote viewing, walking through walls, becoming invisible, subliminal frequencies, etc etc etc. The book kind of looks at two times, the cold war and the war on terror, there really wasn't a lot going on in the world in the ten years that separated those two things.

I don't know anything about the author, but he has an absolutely hilarious, dry way of describing some of his encounters with these people. The scene where some aggro soldier is trying to explain to him how to use his deadly new plastic tool he calls "The Predator" is slapstick.

An odd little thing, it seems like the chapters were written kind of far apart in time. There's group of guys who are so Black Ops that they aren't official and don't have their own coffee, and this is described twice in the book about 40 pages apart in almost the same sentences. Anyway, that has nothing to do with how awesome and fun this book was.

If these are the kind of guys responsible for maintaining the American bubble and world stability, haha, we are doomed!

this is the third book of jon ronson’s that i’ve read and it didn’t disappoint! i love how accessible his writing is because non-fiction is often pretty dense and daunting. i flew through this, and its focus on the military - a topic i’m not naturally drawn to - was the only thing which prevented me from giving this a five star