The Men Who Stare at Goats - Hardcover

Ronson, Jon

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0743241924 ISBN 13: 9780743241922

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2005

Synopsis

In 1979 a secret unit was established by the most gifted minds within the U.S. Army. Defying all known accepted military practice -- and indeed, the laws of physics -- they believed that a soldier could adopt a cloak of invisibility, pass cleanly through walls, and, perhaps most chillingly, kill goats just by staring at them.

Entrusted with defending America from all known adversaries, they were the First Earth Battalion. And they really weren't joking. What's more, they're back and fighting the War on Terror.

With firsthand access to the leading players in the story, Ronson traces the evolution of these bizarre activities over the past three decades and shows how they are alive today within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and in postwar Iraq. Why are they blasting Iraqi prisoners of war with the theme tune to Barney the Purple Dinosaur? Why have 100 debleated goats been secretly placed inside the Special Forces Command Center at Fort Bragg, North Carolina? How was the U.S. military associated with the mysterious mass suicide of a strange cult from San Diego? The Men Who Stare at Goats answers these and many more questions.

Ronson's Them: Adventures with Extremists, a highly acclaimed international bestseller, examined the paranoia at the fringes of hate-filled extremist movements around the globe. The Men Who Stare at Goats reveals extraordinary and very nutty military secrets at the core of George W. Bush's War on Terror.

About this title

About the Author

Jon Ronson is a documentary filmmaker and the author of Them: Adventures with Extremists. He lives in London.

Reviews

This exploration of the U.S. military's flirtation with the supernatural is at once funny and tragic. It reads like fiction, with plenty of dialogue and descriptive detail, but as Ronson's investigation into the government's peculiar past doings creeps into the present-and into Iraq-it will raise goose bumps. As Ronson reveals, a secret wing of the U.S. military called First Earth Battalion was created in 1979 with the purpose of creating "Warrior Monks," soldiers capable of walking through walls, becoming invisible, reading minds and even killing a goat simply by staring at it. Some of the characters involved seem well-meaning enough, such as the hapless General Stubblebine, who is "confounded by his continual failure to walk through his wall." But Ronson (Them: Adventures with Extremists) soon learns that the Battalion's bizarre ideas inspired some alarming torture techniques being used in the present-day War on Terror. One technique involves subjecting prisoners to 24 hours of Barney the Purple Dinosaur's song, "I Love You," and another makes use of the Predator, a small, toy-like object designed by military martial arts master Pete Brusso that can inflict a large amount of pain in many different ways ("You can take eyeballs right out... with this bit," Brusso tells Ronson). Ronson approaches the material with an open mind and a delightfully dry sense of humor, which makes this an entertaining, if unsettling, read. Indeed, as the events recounted here grow ever more curious-and the individuals Ronson meets more disturbing-it's necessary to remind oneself of Ronson's opening words: "This is a true story."
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Ronson follows up his offbeat Them: Adventures with Extremists (2002) with an even more offbeat look at a secret government program and the people behind it. In the 1970s, the American government became very interested in psychic research and the potential military applications of paranormal abilities. The subject has since been tackled from a number of angles, but Ronson's angle is certainly the most entertaining. He interviews—or, in some cases, tries to interview—the people behind the formerly top-secret program (which did, yes, involve men staring at goats); he explains their mind-bending (and occasionally cutlery-bending) ideas; and explores the weirdly shocking ways in which some newfangled 1970s notions about psychological interrogation techniques have manifested themselves in today's War on Terror. The strangest thing about the book? The fact that this stuff really happened and that these people and their out-of-left-field ideas aren't the product of the author's imagination. --David Pitt

Edition details

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0743241924
• ISBN 13: 9780743241922
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272