My Library

Beneath the public were the psychics, none of whom interested the higher ASPR hierarchy, and were therefore deemed undesirable. This avoidance was not true of the ASPR's past, but was true in 1971. There was no open and published information regarding this, but it was subtly enforced within the system. This embargo against psychics was somewhat at silly odds with the title of the ASPR as a PSYCHICAL research organization. But the embargo was very strict and enforced, as we will see somewhat farther ahead regarding the scandalous treatment of Mrs. Laura F. Knipe, the long-term Executive Secretary of the ASPR. The only way I achieved an invitation to the ASPR was by claiming I was not a psychic, a claim I made from the start of July 1971 and have maintained until today. I was an ordinary person who volunteered to serve as an experimental subject regarding powers of mind. In any event, the ASPR was a smallish microcosm of larger and equally inbred social macrocosms -- one of which, as I was to discover, was the whole of the American intelligence community. The whole of the above can be easily synopsized. The venerable ASPR was almost exclusively run not on behalf of its research directions, but on behalf of its internal politicking -- otherwise known as power games.