LTG Tighe Feared Golden Fleece Award for Psychic Spying
By June Hargrove ·
High-ranking military brass and doctors fought to hide "primitive and naive" psychic research behind a label that would keep Senator William Proxmire off their backs.
Room 3E 988, 1400 hours, October 30, 1979. The attendees are a mix of high-ranking military brass and academic specialists: LTG Tighe, MG Thompson, MG Brown, RADM Shapiro, Dr. LaBerge, and Dr. Ruth Davis. They are there to discuss "GRILL FLAME."
According to OCR-extracted text from the CIA FOIA Electronic Reading Room, the meeting was not a debate over whether the program's goals were possible, but rather how to label the work to ensure its survival. The primary tension in the room was the distinction between an "intelligence program" and an "R&D program."
Dr. LaBerge opened the discussion by arguing that the project should be treated as research and development. In his view, framing it as an intelligence activity was a liability. He noted that the issue of application would "more probably drive us into difficulties." The goal was to move the project out of the intelligence arena and treat it as a "collection problem," or a question of whether certain capabilities even existed to the degree they suspected.
Primitive and Naive
Dr. Ruth Davis provided a grounding perspective on the actual state of the work. She described the R&D aspects of the project at that time as "primitive and naive." She cautioned that if the project were shifted strictly into a formal R&D framework, it would require significant changes, and "many years before results could be seen."
Despite the primitive nature of the research, Davis noted that the work performed thus far had not been "dishonest." She pointed to the activities occurring in the Fort Meade area, where military personnel were carrying out tasks on a daily basis. These individuals, she observed, were "doing exactly what they are told" without being privy to the "great enthusiasm and the gee whiz part" of the operation.
Public records identify Grill Flame as a precursor to the Stargate Project, a secret Army unit established in 1977 to investigate psychic phenomena for military and domestic intelligence applications. The meeting notes suggest that the "gee whiz" factor—the inherent strangeness of remote viewing and psychic espionage—was exactly what made the program's administrative classification so precarious.
Proxmire's Golden Fleece
For LTG Tighe, the risk was not just internal but political. He expressed a specific fear regarding the "Golden Fleece Award." This was a real-world political tool used by Senator William Proxmire to shame the government for wasteful spending on perceived "boondoggles."
Tighe’s concern was that the program would not remain secret. He remarked, "I have a feeling that we are going to have a difficult time keeping anything quiet long enough to do anything." To Tighe, the R&D label was "attractive" only if it served as a bridge to an actual operational capability. He viewed the ability to "spy without spying" as the ultimate objective, but one that remained vulnerable to the scrutiny of people who were "less than quiet in their profession."
Dr. LaBerge echoed this anxiety, explicitly mentioning the need to "keep Proxmire off our backs" and the desire to maintain the interest of a "Rose."
A Course at Belvoir
As the meeting progressed, the conversation shifted toward the necessity of a committee report. Dr. Davis urged the group to avoid making the project an "intelligence 'policy' activity," insisting that placing it under "policy" rather than "R&D" would be the worst possible move.
Toward the end of the session, LTG Tighe brought up a high-level endorsement. He asked if Congressman Rose had mentioned his visit to the White House, noting that the President remained interested in the project. This presidential interest provided a layer of protection, but it did not resolve the pragmatic question of how to manage the program's visibility.
To resolve the current uncertainty, Dr. LaBerge proposed bringing in a man named Dan, who was stationed at Belvoir, to give the group a "very short course" on the committee's current standing. The goal was to ensure everyone had seen the report and thought about it before deciding on a final path forward.
The document concludes with LTG Tighe reflecting on the utility of the R&D designation. He noted that as long as the work was classified as research, it could be argued that it was not an issue of policy. This distinction, Tighe noted, "lets Dan off the hook to a degree."
The record does not specify who Dan was, nor does it explain exactly what "the hook" entailed.