Have the secret services ever tried to involve psychics, mediums and clairvoyants in cooperation? Are there any doubts about this? Attracted, attracted and will attract. But it is clear that each such case becomes a state secret, kept behind seven locks. And rarely, very rarely, the facts of attracting mediums by special services become public. So more recently, the details of Operation Winter Harvest, carried out by the Pentagon's Army Intelligence Directorate in 1981, were declassified.
Kidnapped NATO General
On December 17, 1981, in Verona, Italy, at about 5:30 pm, the apartment of US Brigadier General James Dozier received a call. "Who's there?" - "Plumber". The locks clicked. However, there were four people outside the door who least resembled workers. The general tried to resist, but was hit on the head and fell silent.
The general's wife, screaming with horror, was tied up and gagged in the bathroom. Dozier was also tied up, his mouth was sealed with duct tape. A few minutes later, four men carried a large trunk out of the house, loaded it into a blue Fiat and drove off in an unknown direction.
The abduction of the general caused a stir in Washington. It is not just a high-ranking military man who is missing, but the deputy chief of staff of NATO ground forces in southern Europe! The first version was "the tricks of the KGB," but by evening it became known that the abduction was carried out by the "Red Brigades" - an underground left-wing radical organization.
This news could not be called good in any way - the "brigadiers" had the fame of resolute and tough guys: in 1978 they kidnapped a prominent Italian politician Aldo Moro and after 54 days returned him in the trunk of a car with 11 holes in his chest.
At a joint meeting, representatives of the Pentagon, CIA and special services decided who would be involved in the search for the abducted general. All were discarded, since the chances of a successful completion of the operation were minimal. Most likely, they will find a corpse - and this is a guaranteed retirement and the end of a career. So when Major General Albert Stubblebine, the chief of US Army Intelligence, proposed his candidacy, no one objected.
General Sorcerer
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The general received unlimited powers and a guarantee of support for the Italian secret services. A technical group was placed at his disposal, led by the "magician of electronic intelligence" Edward Malpas. However, Stubblebine himself did his main bet in future searches not on intelligence agents and not on technical experts, but on clairvoyants, the so-called. sensitive.
Stubblebine had the reputation of an eccentric among his colleagues. In addition to scientific and technical innovations, he was interested in all sorts of devilry: clairvoyants, telekinesis and seriously dreamed of creating super-soldiers capable of passing through walls.
Subordinates secretly laughed at him and called the chief a Sorcerer behind his back. And so Stubblebine decided to prove that his interest in the paranormal could have quite practical significance, the operation to save Dozier was to be his triumph.
Special-purpose psychics
On New Year's Eve 1968, the New York Times asked its readers to send in predictions of the most important events that would take place in the coming year. The editors received several bags of letters. The authors fantasized in full.
But what readers took as fun was actually a massive project from the Central Forecasting Bureau. A year later, the bureau staff reread all the letters and took note of the authors of the most accurate predictions. After several such cycles, they had a list of people with the gift of clairvoyance. It was to the pulp and paper industry that Stubblebine turned for help.
The Sorcerer gave all the psychics delivered to him a “aptitude test”. From several dozen clairvoyants, he selected five. These five were supposed to become his "eyes" in the operation called "Winter Harvest".
Finding Dozier
Each clairvoyant received maps of Italy, photographs of Dozier and began to plunge into trance regularly. At the end of December, one of the psychics "saw" a barn with a prisoner, the second - a house, the third - a crossroads near the house, the fifth clarified that the house is surrounded by a stone fence, mountains are visible not far. A mosaic was formed from small pieces.
The artist drew a picture from these descriptions, which was transferred to the Italian special services. The Italians chuckled: “Yes, we have tens of thousands of such estates,” but began to search.
By mid-January, a similar house was found. Several hundred carabinieri were pulled in the vicinity, the estate was surrounded and "taken by storm." However, in the stable, on a bed of straw, a sheep lay instead of the general. Italian newspapers came out with mocking headlines.
Stubblebine was summoned to the carpet by his superiors. It is not known what arguments Stubblebine gave in his defense, but he left the office with epaulets on his shoulders and is still the head of the operation. And again, the Sorcerer's psychics stared at the map of Italy for hours, trying to "see" the abducted general.
Padua
In the twenties, a ray of hope flashed. One of the clairvoyants not only saw a house with red tiles, but also named the place - the outskirts of Padua. The Italian special services combed the city, and a day later the Sorcerer knew the exact address. In order not to make a second mistake (he will not be forgiven for another failure!) Stubblebine ordered each sensitive person to be driven past the house in a car and each psychic confirmed: "Yes, the general is here and he is still alive." But then the clairvoyants seemed to skip: they could not determine either the apartment number or the floor.
Stubblebine found himself in a difficult situation: to search all the apartments in a row? Until the turn comes to the one where the general is hiding, the kidnapped will be killed, and the corpse will have time to cool down. For three days the agents watched the house, but they could not determine in which apartment Dozier was being kept. It was dangerous to delay further: the terrorists could at any time detect surveillance and take the general to another place, or even simply kill him.
The Good Operative Edward Malpas
A way out of the difficult situation was found by the commander of the technical group, Edward Malpas, who had previously been out of work and suffered from this. The solution he proposed was simple and elegant.
A man appeared in the house in the form of an electric company. He slowly walked through the floors and rewrote the readings of all the meters. It was a very common procedure, the house was equipped with electric stoves and the company often checked whether all residents were honestly paying for the electricity they consumed.
An hour later, Melpas identified an apartment in which the electricity consumption did not correspond to the number of people officially living in it. The simplest calculation showed that there were two more people in it. Satisfied, Edward reported the results to Stubblebine: "Clairvoyants are great, but a good operative can also come in handy sometimes."
Harvesting "Winter Harvest"
On January 28, just before dawn, 10 employees of the Italian special forces NOCS carefully entered the house, went up to the landing on the second floor and stopped at the right door. One of them, using a portable flaw detector, checked the door: "Alarm, no additional constipation." Then he took out a spray can, generously filled the door hinges and the lock with oil, squatted down and carefully inserted the master key into the keyhole.
The lock clicked softly and the door opened. "Forward!" - special forces fighters scattered around the apartment. In one of the rooms, barefoot in a tracksuit with a gag in his mouth and handcuffed to the bed, General Dozier. The whole operation took a few seconds.
Four terrorists, machine guns, plastic explosives, grenades and personal files of prominent Italian politicians - the targets of future actions - were seized in the apartment. President Ronald Reagan congratulated the Pentagon military on a brilliantly completed operation. Not a word was said about the participation of people with paranormal abilities in the operation.
Subsequently, under pressure from journalists who managed to unearth the details of Operation Winter Harvest, Pentagon representatives admitted to involving sensitives, but at the same time clarified that "this did not have a positive effect." According to the military, civilians did not need to know the details of the operation.
Author Klim Podkova