In that case, where did Dorothy Martin’s original automatic scripts originate? If she and the Laugheads were part of the plot, all she had to do was sit down and make them up. Interestingly, the story almost exactly parallels that of the Nine - although of course on a much smaller scale - and the two series of events are linked by the meeting of Laughead with Puharich two years later. Was the Guardians scenario a dry run for the Nine?
There was a sequel to the story of the Guardian group. Dorothy Martin continued to receive messages from the Guardians, who told her to change her name to ‘Sister Thedra’ and to travel to Lake Titicaca in Peru. Once there, she established - along with the Laugheads and the seminal mystic and contactee George Hunt Williamson — the Abbey of the Seven Rays. From this base Dorothy Martin began to prophesy the coming of the ‘Time of Awakening’ when Atlantis would rise from the deep and a new Saviour would rescue the righteous. In 1961 she returned to the United States, where she continued to preach her message until her death in 1988.
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The hypothesis that the events surrounding the Nine were deliberately orchestrated makes sense of some otherwise puzzling aspects of the story, such as the failure of the promised mass landings of 1978. Why would the Nine risk the disillusionment of their followers when not even one alien craft, let alone fleets of spaceships, landed? On the ‘experimental’ hypothesis, this would be the perfect benchmark by which to test the degree of belief in the circle. If, unlike Dorothy Martin’s group twenty-five years before, they could accept and rationalise such a failure - and potential humiliation - then surely the experiment would be judged a success?
The intimate involvement of Puharich in this scenario causes alarm bells to ring. Given his background, and the way in which he clearly manipulated the development of Nine communications in the 1970s, such a scenario — despite its
X-Files
overtones - makes much sense. It is not difficult to discern the presence of some shadowy military or intelligence agency behind the events surrounding the Nine.
Consider, for example, Puharich’s Geller Kids or Space Kids, whom he tested and trained during the 1970s. There were twenty of them, the youngest nine and the oldest in their late teens, culled from seven different countries and taken to what became jokingly known as Puharich’s ‘Turkey Farm’ at Ossining in order to develop their psychic potential. As we have seen, Puharich trained them in remote viewing, but the target locations he set them were significant: they were of military or intelligence interest and included the Pentagon, the Kremlin and even the White House.
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It seems clear that there was an official element to these experiments, as they were being carried out at exactly the same time (1975 — 8) that defence and intelligence agencies were studying remote viewing in adults. We can speculate that the Ossining establishment was chosen for the children’s project because it was a conveniently ‘civilian’ location: questions would certainly have been asked if youngsters had been experimented on inside military facilities.
The Ossining programme had even more disturbing elements: Puharich experimented on the children in order to contact extra-terrestrial intelligences. As with Geller and Bobby Home, he regularly hypnotised his young subjects, apparently in the belief that their powers did indeed come from ‘aliens’. As Steven Levy wrote: ‘The Kids describe strange cities with science-fiction trappings and claim to be messengers from these distant civilisations.’
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Given Puharich’s obsession with extraterrestrial influence, not to mention his indiscriminate use of the most powerful sort of hypnosis, it would be strange if the Space Kids had not come up with such descriptions. But was Puharich simply releasing memories of real events, or was he in fact implanting them? In either case, his use of hypnosis, in what were clearly uncontrolled conditions, on children as young as nine, is extremely disquieting. (Ira Einhorn, a close associate of Puharich at this time, admitted to us that he found these experiments very disturbing.
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)
In August 1978, after the Turkey Farm was burned down in the arson attack, Puharich disappeared to Mexico, blaming the fire on the CIA, claiming that they were trying to stop his experiments with the Geller Kids.
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He later accused the CIA of making three attempts on his life, which is particularly strange because Puharich himself was, of course, known to have worked for them. Had he somehow doublecrossed them, or in some way made enemies within the agency? And if the CIA had really tried, and failed, to kill Puharich three times, it is hardly a good advertisement for their efficiency. Perhaps they were only trying to frighten him. Whatever the truth of the matter, Puharich was not the only one who suffered at the demise of the Turkey Farm. Several of the Space Kids were severely traumatised at being so brusquely abandoned, especially after living pretty much as a family in a close, ‘hothouse’ atmosphere for three years.
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The destruction of the Turkey Farm was only part of a series of setbacks that afflicted the Puharich group in the late 1970s - which even included murder - throwing an even more sinister web of intrigue around the already tainted central figures.
The Unicorn
Another key player linking the Nine to the emerging counterculture of the 1970s was Ira Einhorn, known to his circle as ‘the Unicorn’, the meaning of his surname in English. He was a leading light in the world that emerged from the hippie scene to embrace a multitude of interleaved ‘alternative’ movements, such as ecology, new energy sources, exploration of the nature and limits of consciousness and mysticism.
Ira Einhorn became a highly sought-after industrial guru, a professional networker who put key people in touch with others, acting as a catalyst for change and improvement. He had close connections with — and was financed by - many leading industrialists, including the Canadian Bronfman family and the Rockefellers, and companies such as AT&T and McDonnell Douglas, the military aircraft manufacturer. He was also known to be in contact with leading NASA officials.
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A significant point in Einhorn’s career was his meeting with Puharich in 1968, at a time when the latter was working for the Atomic Energy Commission. Puharich has been described as Einhorn’s ‘mentor’ (a term often used of him), and the two men became close colleagues during the 1970s, when he was also busy with Lab Nine: Einhorn was a frequent visitor to the Turkey Farm when the Space Kids experiments were being carried out. He was Puharich’s stepping stone to other ground-breaking events taking place in the fields of psychology and physics at the time. Einhorn referred to the group of scientists of which he and Puharich were part as his ‘psychic mafia’.
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Einhorn arranged for Puharich’s 1962 book
Beyond Telepathy
to be reissued by Anchor Books in 1973 (contributing his own poem as a foreword), and he also edited Puharich’s account of his time with Uri Geller,
Uri
(1974), which was, in fact, less a biography of the superstar metalbender than a paean of praise for the Nine.
Einhorn’s most significant contribution was, in the 1970s, the establishment of a worldwide network of scientists, industrialists, writers and philosophers at the cutting edge of new developments in physics, parapsychology, psychology and other fields. This new network consisted of 350 experts from twenty countries, with Einhorn himself acting as what he called ‘planetary catalyst’, circulating information to all the members. This network was funded by the Bell Telephone Company (of which Arthur M. Young was a major shareholder at that time), Einhorn always living entirely on the patronage of wealthy backers and business sponsors.
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Einhorn’s network was the subject of a study by the Diebold Corporation in 1978, with the grandiose and somewhat impenetrable title of ‘The Emergence of Personal Communication Networks Among People Sharing the New Values and Their Possible Use in Sensitizing Operating Management’, which compared it to the ‘Invisible College’ of seventeenth-century Britain, an informal group of scientists - and, perhaps significantly, esotericists - that became the Royal Society.
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Einhorn’s reputation took a dramatic nosedive, though. He and former cheerleader Holly Maddux had been involved in a stormy relationship since they met in October 1972, moving in together two months later. In the summer of 1977 the couple went to London, where — with Puharich — they stayed at the home of a wealthy backer, Joyce Petschek. After one of their frequent fights, Holly returned to Philadelphia alone at the end of July, apparently determined, this time, to make a final break with Einhorn. In August she stayed at one of Joyce Petschek’s houses, on Fire Island in New York State, where she met a wealthy businessman called Saul Lapidus (a former executive of Puharich’s Intelectron Corporation). Meanwhile, Einhorn left London to visit other contacts in Europe, returning to the United States on 21 August, where he stayed for a few days at Puharich’s Turkey Farm before going back to Philadelphia. At the time Holly Maddux was staying with Lapidus, but she returned to Philadelphia on 9 September after an angry phone call from Einhorn. She was never seen alive again.
Eighteen months later, after investigations by private detectives employed by Maddux’s parents, the Philadelphia police searched Einhorn’s apartment and found a very badly decomposed Maddux in a trunk inside a locked cupboard on the back porch. Einhorn was arrested. The autopsy revealed she had been killed by violent blows to the head.
During the investigation into Maddux’s disappearance — initially by private detectives, then by the police - there is no doubt that those involved in the Puharich set-up closed ranks around Einhorn. Saul Lapidus had been concerned when Maddux failed to return from her last meeting with Einhorn, and had asked Puharich to call him and find out what had happened. Puharich was satisfied with Einhorn’s reassurance that everything was fine, which was understandable at the time, but Puharich seemed to continue to believe in Einhorn’s innocence, even when he was arrested. Puharich seemed to have been more concerned about recovering papers about the Geller Kids experiments he had lent Maddux shortly before she disappeared.
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(These were later found at Lapidus’s house and returned to Puharich.)
According to Steven Levy, an American investigative journalist, associates such as Joyce Petschek actually refused to co-operate with the private investigators, so it took them over a year to piece together Maddux’s last movements. Not until November 1978 did they even hear about the vital witness Saul Lapidus, with whom she was staying at the time of her disappearance.
Einhorn was released on bail on 3 April 1979, paid for by Barbara Bronfman, sponsor of the Nine’s work (she is listed in the acknowledgements of
The Only Planet of Choice).
He then travelled to California to visit various contacts, including the Nine’s channeller Jenny O’Connor at the Esalen Institute - where he stayed for several weeks — before spending time with the Bronfmans at their palatial Montreal home.
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As the date of the trial loomed, 13 January 1981, Einhorn fled to London with his new girlfriend Jeanne Morrison, despite his passport having been removed by the Philadelphia Police Department, and has been a fugitive ever since. He was found guilty of murder in his absence in 1983. In 1997 he was found to be living in France under the name Eugene Mallon, but the French courts refused to extradite him (as the US authorities would not give him a new trial). During these proceedings it emerged that Einhorn had been supported financially since becoming a fugitive by Barbara Bronfman (she had divorced billionaire Charles Bronfman in 1982).
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Einhorn lived on in France, continuing to protest his innocence, claiming that he was framed as part of an intelligence plot, either by the KGB or the CIA. In September 1998 Einhorn was rearrested as the Philadelphia legislature changed the laws specifically to enable the French authorities to extradite him. At the time of writing he is still out on bail awaiting trial.
Einhorn, however, had his own connections with the intelligence community. He worked closely with Congressman Charlie Rose, a member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence. Rose was one of the most prominent supporters of the Pentagon’s remote-viewing programme, and of the use of psychic skills in defence and intelligence work in general. He is quoted as saying: ‘Some people think this is the work of the Devil, other people think it’s the work of the Holy Spirit.’
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According to Jack Sarfatti, Rose told him that Einhorn was involved in national security operations,
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although Einhorn himself recently told us that if this was true, he must have been their unwitting pawn, adding that the intelligence agencies were extremely interested in his network and the various individuals and organisations it brought together.
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Einhorn’s contribution to the spread of belief in the Nine should not be underestimated. His role as networker supreme put him in touch with a considerable number of key people worldwide who no doubt found his personal conviction impressive and inspiring.
Significantly, just three weeks before his arrest, Ira Einhorn gave a lecture in Philadelphia in which, according to Steven Levy:
He said that for years he had been primarily interested in the relation of nonphysical entities to the physical world. This led him to revelations, he explained, that had startling consequences for our civilization.
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Levy also said of Einhorn’s strange quest:
As he delved deeper into the world of the paranormal, he became increasingly convinced that recent psychic revelations [presumably a reference to the Nine’s communications] could have significant global impact. In some scenarios, these could have alarming consequences.
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