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The CIA itself experienced the problem--and not just during the five years it dabbled in parapsychology. Even after the agency abandoned its psychic program in 1977, CIA officers visited psychics on occasion. According to CIA documents that TIME has obtained, two agency officers went to Alexandria, Virginia, in May 1981 and asked a psychic to locate a group of POWs on a map of Laos. She closed her eyes, meditated, then placed her hand on the map near a village called Nhommarath and announced that the men were scattered there in small groups. "They've been brainwashed to forget they are Americans," she said. The CIA men smiled and paid her $80. A reconnaissance team was already headed to Nhommarath, where satellite photos had shown there might be a prison camp. The agents were just looking for reassurance. No POWs were ever found.
Subtle tricks may have increased the psychics' batting average. The CIA investigators suspected that the psychics may have been subconsciously coaxed to the correct targets by their handlers. Many were former military intelligence officers whose mental pictures of far-off sites may have been informed by experience. The CIA study also found evidence that the handlers sometimes embellished what the psychics saw. "Folks want to believe that the paranormal is for real," says Martin Gardner, one of the founders of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal. And at least one Senator--Claiborne Pell, 77, of Rhode Island--will say it for the record: "If the CIA is not interested, that's their business. I am convinced that we should continue the research." Thanks to his kind of faith in the extrasensory, psychics can probably count on making a living even now that the Pentagon contract will soon disappear.