Yet another area of Puharich’s expertise, his electronic inventions, raises further disquieting possibilities. The Nine were insistent that, in his channelling work, Bobby Home should not have any metal about his person. This injunction even extended to the metal fillings in his teeth, which they told him to have removed. Before he could carry out this injunction he woke up one morning and discovered that something very strange had happened in the night. Somehow his metal fillings had disappeared, and had been replaced with compound ones.
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It seemed like a miracle - until one recalls Puharich’s expertise in fitting miniaturised radio transmitters in teeth, not to mention his abilities as a master hypnotist. Could Puharich have manipulated the Nine’s communications as part of some long-term experiment? Given his connections with intelligence agencies, was this part of a CIA programme? Many of the events that either mystify commentators or convince them that there is something genuinely unexplained about the Nine are in fact open to other interpretations if the intelligence agency connection is taken into account.
In 1973, when Puharich and Whitmore were courting Lyall Watson, trying to persuade him to become more actively involved in promoting the Nine, Watson was impressed by an odd series of events. He received a letter from his parents in South Africa, acknowledging that they had received a copy of his will. But this was impossible: not only had he not been in touch with his parents for some time, but he had not even made a will! Bewildered, he contacted his lawyers in Johannesburg, who told him that the will had been drawn up according to his telephoned instructions and then posted to him at his home in Bermuda. The will had then been returned to them with his signature. Throughout this period Watson had never moved out of London. The Nine claim to have been behind this surreal, Kafkaesque scenario, presumably to impress him with their godlike powers. Watson was duly impressed. Recounting this episode, Stuart Holroyd writes: ‘He [Watson] didn’t see how anyone could have contrived such an elaborate hoax, or who could have done so, and he admitted that it looked like a materialisation event contrived and executed by some intelligence.’
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This is a rather naive conclusion. How difficult would it be for an agency such as M15 or the CIA to contrive and execute such a plan, with the intention of impressing Watson so he would lend his support to the Nine? (And was there an implicit threat in that these mysterious events related to his last will and testament?) In fact, in our view, Watson’s assessment, given by Holroyd, would be accurate if the word ‘agency’ is added after ‘intelligence’ ...
Certainly, the Nine can be rather flamboyant. On the evening of 26 November 1977, television broadcasts in parts of southern England were interrupted by a voice claiming to be a representative of an extraterrestrial civilisation, saying that they would be landing on Earth soon in order to prevent mankind from destroying itself. Dismissed as a student prank, few have noticed that the short message included this sentence:
We conveyed to Sir John Whitmore and to Dr Puharich that we would interfere on your radio and television communication system to relay when the civilisations are coming close to landing on your planet.
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Clearly this was intended to be a fulfilment of the first part of Tom’s prophecy: the ‘hijacking’ of radio and TV broadcasts prior to the promised mass landing. If this really were a student prank, it is odd it should include a reference to Whitmore and Puharich, and such interference with television transmissions would, of course, require sophisticated equipment and technical expertise, leading some to conclude that the message really did come from extraterrestrials.
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However, as usual, there were only two — diametrically opposed — options considered at the time: either the whole thing was genuine and extraterrestrials had really spoken to the southern English through their television sets; or it was a hoax, just done for a laugh. The idea that such a message could be easily contrived by, for example, an intelligence agency that would have the necessary technical skills has never, to our knowledge, even been considered.
The evidence clearly suggests that the business of the Nine was not an isolated series of paranormal events but an orchestrated drama, involving outside agencies (who helped in arranging apparently inexplicable scenarios such as Lyall Watson’s will), with Puharich running it from the inside.
It is almost certain that the majority of the others involved in the story would not be part of this, at least consciously. Perhaps Puharich was the only person who really knew what was going on. We are sure that Phyllis Schlemmer was, and is, not aware of this side of the operation. Writer Bruce Rux says of the Puharich — Whitmore — Schlemmer set-up of the mid-1970s: “‘Lab 9” shows all the hallmarks of being an intelligence fraud, one of numerous disinformation sources employed by that particular community.’
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If Lab Nine was an intelligence operation, or at least a front for one, as the evidence suggests very strongly, what was the motive behind it?
For love of the space brothers
One possible explanation is that the events surrounding the Nine constituted a long-term experiment into the psychology of ‘contactee cults’ of the kind that have become so prevalent since the Second World War, aiming to answer certain intriguing questions. For example, how easy is it to convince a group of ordinary people that they really are ‘chosen’ by some superhuman entity to carry an important message to the world? How can such a belief persuasively be passed on beyond the initial circle to a wider public? And what kind of people will accept the message, and who will reject it?
It is known that the security services have long taken an interest in such cults, as Jacques Vallée has frequently testified, seeking explanations for how such beliefs originate and spread, for reasons that are entirely understandable. For example, quasireligious cults and small but subversive political groups have the potential for great social unrest and worse — the Nazis started small, after all — and they are often used for criminal and anti-social purposes, such as drug trafficking or gun-running. The sinister potential of cults occasionally surfaces: Swiss and French authorities have been alert to such dangers since the mass suicides of the Order of the Solar Temple, whose beliefs included the existence of extraterrestrials from Sirius, and the similar suicides of members of the
Star Trek
-influenced Heaven’s Gate cult in 1996. A number of the earliest UFO contactee cults that emerged soon after the flying saucer craze of the late 1940s were centred on individuals who were members of American fascist organisations. For example, William Dudley Pelley, prewar supporter of Hitler, founded a fascist group called the Silver Shirts of America in 1932 and was interned for the duration of the Second World War. Fascinated with mystical and esoteric ideas, in the late 1940s Pelley claimed to be in telepathic contact with extraterrestrials, writing a book about his experiences called
Star Guests
(1950).
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Another reason for official interest in such belief systems is their possible use in psychological warfare. One can imagine, for example, the wealth of possibilities in introducing cult beliefs into an enemy country in order to seriously destabilise it or to ensnare and covertly influence susceptible politicians. One of the main purposes of the intelligence community is specifically to investigate the origins, structure and spread of belief systems.
Another episode illustrates the idea that US government agencies have indulged in ‘cult creation’ experiments. After his first contact with the Nine through Dr Vinod, Puharich’s next reported contact was through his letter from Charles Laughead, after their meeting in Mexico in 1956. Two years before, Laughead had been involved in another contactee group — with some very significant results. Their alleged extraterrestrial communications were the subject of a classic academic study into cult belief by three sociologists at the University of Minnesota, later published as
When Prophecy Fails
by Leon Festiger, Henry W. Riecken and Stanley Schachter (1956).
The contact centred on a Chicago housewife called Dorothy Martin, pseudonymously identified as ‘Marion Keech’ in the book. It follows an only too familiar pattern. In 1953 she had begun to develop mediumistic abilities, receiving messages via automatic writing. At first, these were ‘traditional’ spiritualistic communications — from her dead father and other deceased people — but a year later messages began to come through from what claimed to be extraterrestrial sources, originating from several planets, but mainly from one called Clarion. She called these beings the ‘Guardians’.
A group — largely consisting of other housewives, but including a few from other walks of life, including a research scientist — gathered around her to study the content of the communications. Enthusiastic members of this curious circle were Dr Charles and Lillian Laughead (who appear as Thomas and Daisy Armstrong in
When Prophecy Fails).
The Laugheads had been Protestant missionaries in Egypt before and just after the Second World War. On a postwar visit, Lillian suffered a mental breakdown and, when prayer failed to resolve her problems, the couple came to doubt their faith, beginning a quest through other religious and esoteric systems, finally becoming particularly interested in William Dudley Pelley’s writings. After a meeting with seminal UFO contactee George Adamski, they became convinced of the reality and spiritual significance of UFOs. They joined the Dorothy Martin circle and Charles became its organiser and spokesman.
On 27 August 1954, Dorothy received a warning from the Guardians of a wave of imminent catastrophes, which would include the disappearance of the east coast of the United States — as well as Britain and France — under the sea on 21 December. The Laugheads took the lead in publicising these warnings, taking the story to the press.
At this stage the group of sociologists from the University of Minnesota decided to infiltrate the group in order to make a hands-on study of the behaviour of such cults and, in particular, to see at first-hand the reactions of true believers when the prophecies failed to materialise. As we know, the east coast of the United States did not find itself in a watery grave on 21 December 1954, and neither did Britain or France. The Minnesota study charted the gradual break-up of the group and its members’ struggle to come to terms with the failure, and the resulting sense of loss and bereavement that such cruel disillusionment brings in its wake. Only one or two members admitted losing their faith in the Guardians, the majority coming up with a variety of more or less plausible rationalisations — or perhaps ‘irrationalisations’ — to explain the failure. Some said it had been a test of faith, or that the strength of their belief had actually averted the catastrophe. Quaintly, under the circumstances, the real tension in the group was caused by arguments about which of these excuses was the right one! The circle finally collapsed under the intense weight of public humiliation and ridicule. Dorothy Martin left to join a Dianetics centre in Arizona, having been a follower of Dianetics for some time, and the rest carried on with their lives. Only the Laugheads seemed to take something lasting away from the experience. According to
When Prophecy Fails:
In the next two weeks the Armstrongs [Laugheads] sold their home and wound up their affairs ... and Thomas [Charles] prepared for the role he was assuming - that of itinerant proselyter, spreading the teachings of the Guardians across the land.
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The Laugheads began working with other channellers, one result of which was their meeting with Puharich two years later, which was to have a profound effect on his own acceptance of the reality of the Nine.
The story of the Guardians cult may seem an all too familiar tale of a group of people obsessed with a false, quasireligious belief built up around a deluded channeller. That is certainly how the team from Minnesota University treated it. Another aspect of the story suggests something else was going on - that the events were indeed being manipulated by outside forces, but by very
terrestrial
agencies.
Dorothy Martin sometimes returned to her locked home to find letters from ‘Clarion’ left inside, and she would receive telephone calls direct from the Guardians when the sociologists were present, which at least indicates that they were not figments of her imagination. As a climax, when the group gathered at Dorothy’s house on 18 December to await the coming cataclysm three days later, she received a long call from the leader of the Guardians, a being called Sananda, after which five young men arrived at the house, the leader of whom claimed to be Sananda himself. The group went into another room with Laughead for half an hour, followed by an hour with Dorothy Martin (from which she emerged very emotional and moved). Then the five mystery callers left. Again, all this was witnessed by the researchers.
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These were real events, so it is difficult to reconcile them with the Minnesota team’s conclusion that it was all a collective delusion, although clearly there was scope for other interpretations, such as mistaken identity, or, more probably, a hoax. Yet if the latter, it was very carefully and painstakingly organised: the letters, telephone calls and the visit all served to reinforce the group’s belief in the prophecies received by automatic writing. Obviously, another group of people existed beyond the immediate circle of true believers and were orchestrating both the events and the phenomenon of escalating belief. Why?
The most likely answer is that this shadowy but all important group were conducting their own experiment, and it is likely that they were an official but secret agency investigating the behaviour of circles based around channelled extraterrestrial communications. We know that the group was being used as an unwitting experimental subject by the Minnesota University researchers, and it may be significant that there was a local newspaper called
The Minnesota Clarion.