TITANIC Discovery Part of Spy Operation

Titanic discovery was byproduct of military quest

By Curtis Krueger, Times Staff Writer

Robert Ballard became famous as the explorer who found the wreckage of the Titanic. But what most people don’t know about that expedition is that Ballard also secretly worked with the U.S. Navy to learn more about two lost nuclear submarines.

Ballard shared that nugget when he came to the Tampa Bay area last week for the Coastal Cities Summit, organized by the University of South Florida and other institutions. He spoke with the St. Petersburg Times about the Titanic and his underwater exploration career.

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Cold War Psychics

U.S. and Soviet Spooks Studied Paranormal Powers to Find a Cold War Advantage

Larry Greenemeier

Oct 29, 2008 01:55 PM

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is well known for pushing the boundaries of science and technology in search of ways to give the U.S. military an edge— robotic pack animals, self-navigating vehicles and plant-based jet fuel, to name a few. Less well known is the agency’s Cold War-era investigation into how paranormal phenomena like extrasensory perception might be used by the U.S. to get a leg up on the former Soviet Union and, perhaps more importantly, by the USSR against the United States.

Working with Washington, D.C., think tank Rand Coporation, DARPA determined that paranormal research by the Soviets focused on physical science, engineering and quantifiable results, whereas their U.S. counterparts tended to be psychologists looking instead to explore the human mind. The bottom line, according to a 1973 DARPA-commissioned study entitled “Paranormal Phenomena”:”the U.S. has failed to significantly advance our understanding of paranormal phenomena.”

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