In 1979, the Peoples’ Republic of China publicly reported that several thousand of its children aged 8-14 were capable of telepathy, clairvoyance, X-ray vision, or psychokinesis. Having already heard about this program, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), National Security Agency (NSA), Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), Lawrence Livermore Laboratories, and the US Army were simultaneously pouring billions of dollars into their own similar research.
The Army program was headquartered at Fort Meade, Maryland, and was part of the Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM). Leaders included Generals Edmund Thompson and Albert Stubblebine, and Colonel John Alexander.
Officers assigned to the US Army War College at Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania contributed research to the project, and "The First Earth Battalion" is essentially a textual copy of one group's unclassified briefing slides.
Although decidedly New Age, the War College project was not entirely theoretical. Colonel Alexander, for example, went on to become a leader in the Los Alamos National Lab's non-lethal weapons program. Likewise, during the early 1980s Special Forces hired Richard Strozzi Heckler and other outside contractors to provide two A-teams, a total of 25 men, with training in biofeedback, aikido, and "mind-body psychology." In the latter program, a typical training day included running, swimming, "industrial-strength" calisthenics, and 1-1/2 hours of aikido practice. After six months, the soldiers were not aikido masters but they were quantifiably 75% more physically fit than when they started.
During correspondence with the editor in January 2000, author Channon had this to say:
And if nothing else, the following paper does suggest why drug testing became common for all ranks during the mid-1980s.