The Truth About Dave Morehouse and Psychic Warrior

By Jim Schnabel
November 7, 1996
(Jim Schnabel is the author of the book Remote Viewers: the Secret History of Am
erica's Psychic Spies, and was the originator and narrator of the British Channe
l Four documentary The Real X-Files, recently broadcast in the U.S. on the Disco
very Channel. Schnabel was commissioned to write a piece on Dave Morehouse for E
squire in 1994, when Morehouse began to claim that remote viewing and Army haras
sment had landed him in Walter Reed. Schnabel discovered a different story. Howe
ver, the piece was not what Esquire's editor wanted, and it was killed. Schnabel
decided to write this, as a once-for-all statement, after receiving queries fro
m other journalists about Morehouse.)
It is a gray, uncomfortable day in May 1994 and I am through the doors and into
Ward 54, one of the psychiatric units at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in nort
h Washington D.C. A sergeant in fatigues is behind the desk, shuffling papers.
"I'm here to see Major David Morehouse," I say.
"Major Morehouse, Major Morehouse," says the sergeant in a tone of genial reflec
tion. "A visitor for Major Morehouse . . ."
The sergeant, who apparently is also a trained nurse, opens a visitor's log for
me to sign, and sends a lower- ranking soldier, a thin young man also in fatigue
s, around a corner to fetch the major. As I sign the logbook a woman quietly ent
ers the room and stands beside me. She is watching me write. I look up at her. S
he is pretty, in her late thirties, with a certain intensity etched around her e
yes.
"I'm Debbie Morehouse," she says, shaking my hand. "I'm here to see Dave, too."
It is not the happiest of coincidences. I've come to Walter Reed in hope of gett
ing an interview with Morehouse - - there is no other way to reach him, I've bee
n told -- but now his loving wife will occupy his attentions. He'll want to spen
d time with her alone.
I remain several cautious paces behind when she rounds the corner in search of h
er husband. And there he is, trailing behind the orderly in fatigues. He's dress
ed in civilian clothes, walking slowly, frowning. Short, muscular, but getting h
eavy, he has a nose that looks like it was broken once or twice. He greets his w
ife not with a smile but with a contemptuous deepening of his frown and a slight
lifting of his head, as if to say, "Not you again."
She does not seem to mind the coldness of it. It is obvious that she's used to t
his. In any case, Dave Morehouse has much to be unhappy about. He is about to be
court-martialed by the Army for a range of offenses involving the wife of an en
listed man who was under his command. Other investigations are underway by the A
rmy's Criminal Investigation Division and counter-intelligence units, involving
his apparent disclosures of classified information. Morehouse's Army career is o
ver, and he faces a possible jail sentence. He is here in Walter Reed because he
apparently had had some kind of breakdown a few months ago. He is stable now, b
ut tells friends that he still speaks to angels now and then.
Morehouse listens to a few quiet words from his wife, words that I do not hear,
and then for the first time he turns his head slightly and looks in my direction
.
I explain that I am writing a book about the secret military project he was once
part of. The project trained military personnel as "remote viewers," psychics w
ho tried to spy on intelligence targets around the globe. Morehouse, from 1988 t
o 1990, was one of those remote viewers. And now he is blaming the program, in p
art, for his mental breakdown. He also is claiming that the government has mount
ed a secret campaign to harass him: There have been strange packages sent to his
wife, with tape-recordings of his phone conversations. Strange people have been
following him -- disappearing into crowds as soon as they're spotted.
Explaining to Morehouse that it is a coincidence that his wife and I arrived at
the same time, I ask whether it is possible for me to interview him on a later d
ay.
He looks at me sideways. His eyes seem to be locked on something well to the lef
t of mine. Some ghost, or some calculation. Finally he says, "Have you talked to
Sandra?"
Sandra -- Sandra Martin -- is not his lawyer, or his doctor. She is his agent.
For the past five years, in fact almost from the start of my career as a journal
ist, I have occasionally written about people with ild tales to tell. There have
been spirit- mediums, UFO abductees, inventors of perpetual motion machines, an
d would-be shamans touched by God. Some of these people, despite being outrageou
s, half-demented liars, have managed to make a decent living from their stories.
A few have even become celebrities. But none of these storytellers, with their
campaigns for fifteen minutes of fame, has ever seemed as . . . breathtaking is
the best word I can think of -- as David Morehouse. To me, his story is not just
about the depths to which one human can sink. (Morehouse is, in the end, perhap
s only a sleazier, crazier version of the old Sgt. Bilko character.) Somehow his
story also reflects the current state of things in America -- a country that se
ems to be going insane.
Insane is the right word: What else to call a people who feed hungrily, via The
X-Files and other forms of that hugely popular genre, on paranoid conspiracy-fan
tasies otherwise found only on psychiatric wards? What else to call a people who
, according to polls, increasingly believe that the X-Files picture of the world
is an accurate one? Let us not be too harsh on Morehouse, when his book mounts
the bestseller list and is followed in a year or two by a summer-blockbuster fil
m. He is merely telling America what it wants to hear.
Morehouse, despite several promises to do so, never let me interview him in pers
on. I had only a half-hour conversation with him by phone in August 1995, in whi
ch he talked fast at me about remote viewing and psychiatric issues, and then sw
itched to a discussion of his book project and all the publicity it had attracte
d.
So I know relatively little about Morehouse from Morehouse himself. But then, Mo
rehouse is perhaps not the best source on such matters.
About Morehouse's background I have been told only a few things: He grew up in C
arlsbad, California. In high school he was a wrestler, and a member of the cheer
leading squad. Between high school and university he joined a company that train
ed cheerleaders. Ed Dames, who was his closest friend in the remote-viewing unit
(and was still Morehouse's friend when I interviewed him in early 1994) remembe
rs talking with Morehouse about those days: "He travelled with this company and
its president. They had a big bus, with about 16 females and 7 males, and they t
ravelled from campus to campus, training cheerleaders. Dave has pictures of this
; they would bring tears to any healthy man's eyes: extremely nubile females, in
great numbers, both within the troupe, and at each campus where they had fresh
meat."
Morehouse attended Brigham Young University on an Army ROTC scholarship, convert
ed to Mormonism to marry Debbie, and graduated in 1979 with a commission as a se
cond lieutenant. His Army career was promising. Morehouse's superior officers re
gularly praised his intelligence and energy. In the early 1980s, as a first lieu
tenant, he served briefly in Panama as the aide de camp for Brigadier General Ke
nneth Leuer, commander of the 193d Infantry Brigade. Leuer wrote in Morehouse's
officer efficiency report:
The most outstanding lieutenant I know. Dave Morehouse is far ahead of his conte
mporaries in demonstrated performance, maturity, and total professionalism. . .
. His ability to work with and influence senior officers throughout
this wide ranging command reflects his self-confidence, organizational ability,
and unique sensing of what is desired
[my italics]. . . . A charming wife and family join him in being a total part of
the team and community. . . . Would do an outstanding job as a major today. Des
tined to wear stars [i.e., to become a general].
By 1986 Morehouse was a captain in command of a Ranger company. In late 1987, ap
parently thirsting for a sexier assignment, he joined the Army's Intelligence Su
pport Activity (ISA), a hush-hush unit that specialized in quick- reaction intel
ligence-gathering, covert-action, and counter- terrorist missions. ISA, accordin
g to military affairs specialist Steven Emerson in his 1988 book Secret Warriors
, had been at its inception "the most secret unit in the Army."
It was apparently at ISA that Morehouse's career began to run into trouble. Acco
rding to a source familiar with the case, Morehouse was stressed by a situation
involving the wife of a colleague. Morehouse's version was that he was merely co
unselling the woman. The colleague's version, apparently, was different. In any
case, things were getting hot. Morehouse himself sought counselling, and also so
ught a new assignment. He heard about the remote-viewing program, which was then
under the management of the DIA, and asked Col. Dennis Kowal, an Army psycholog
ist who had knowledge of the program, about it. The project, labelled DT-S withi
n the DIA's bureaucracy, was code-named Sun Streak. Morehouse wasted no time app
lying for a job there.
Morehouse's application was reviewed by remote viewer Paul Smith, an Army captai
n of similar age, who was also a Mormon. To Smith, Morehouse seemed like a high
flier, a good choice for the program. In Morehouse's application there was no me
ntion of any prior paranormal ability, but none was expected. As Dennis Kowal pu
t it later, in testimony for the court martial at Fort Bragg:
His personality was different from the individuals who were traditionally in the
program, but he demonstrated three factors: A great deal of intelligence, a goo
d ability to imagine, and a very creative mind. Those three components account f
or 75 percent of the variance in selecting people who are successful in being ab
le to perform the duties. [N.B. This and other quotes below are taken from the 7
00-page record of U.S. v. Morehouse, available by FOIA request from the XVIII Ai
rborne Corps at Ft. Bragg, NC.]
The remote-viewing unit was then based in two small buildings at Fort Meade, Mar
yland, as it had been almost since its beginning in 1978. Morehouse began turnin
g up for work there, and trained in the standard remote viewing techniques, and
began to take part in occasional "operational" taskings by the DIA and other age
ncies.
Unfortunately DT-S, which had always been controversial, had by this time been p
ushed to the outer margins of the intelligence community. Only a few intelligenc
e consumers took it seriously, and those few had to conceal their interest by sa
ying their use of DT-S was merely "experimental." For most of the time in those
little buildings at Fort Meade, a somnolent atmosphere prevailed. DT-S's remote-
viewers read books, did crosswords and logic puzzles, and otherwise tried to occ
upy their time. "It was that or sit around and stare at the walls," remembers fo
rmer remote viewer Lyn Buchanan.
Morehouse managed to keep himself busier than most. He had a small home-improvem
ent business, House Tech, that he ran on the side. As time went by, he began to
spend more and more of his days away from the office, doing House Tech work. Form
er remote viewer Paul Smith told me: "I remember many times when Dave would have
been useful and he wasn't there." Lyn Buchanan has a similar recollection. "He w
as taking a lot of time off to do his own work -- his homebuilding business. He'
d call in a lot, and would get in late, and leave early." When Morehouse did bot
her to turn up, remembers Buchanan, he still spent much of his time on private b
usiness. "He'd do all his House Tech paperwork there in the office."
At some point, Morehouse helped build a wood deck in Ed Dames' backyard. Dames a
nd Morehouse were by this time best friends. One day, when Dames was away at the
office, Morehouse arrived to work on the deck. Dames's wife was there. She reme
mbers: "Dave said, `I really miss your cooking.' Then he said, `I really miss yo
u, too.'" She just laughed nervously, and was grateful when Morehouse didn't pre
ss the matter. She never told her husband that his best friend had made a pass a
t her.
Thanks to exaggerated officer efficiency reports, Morehouse continued to look go
od on paper at Fort Meade. But by the end of his stay there, his colleagues were
disgusted by his long absences from work, as was DT-S's branch chief. When More
house finally left in mid-1990, hardly anyone noticed. And no one ever asked him
to come back.
Following Ed Dames, who had left DT-S in June 1988, Morehouse jumped to another
hush-hush, sexy unit known as Team Six, based in Baltimore. Dames told me it was
a "strategic deception" unit, and said it had originally been set up to deceive
the Soviets on major strategic issues, for example involving ICBMs and Star War
s technology. (In conversation, Tim Wiener of the New York Times called it a "mi
nd-fuck" operation.) Morehouse's officer efficiency reports from the period make
clear that it now had an anti- narcotics role, and closely coordinated with the
U.S. Southern Command in Panama as well as the special operations community. Ap
parently it was one of the Army's many recent attempts to play James Bond games.
The woman at the center of Morehouse's court-martial case -- let's call her Ang
ela Connor -- remembers Morehouse describing his life at Team Six:
. . .they could pretty much do whatever they wanted to. He and the other guys th
at were doing these spooks -- the operation missions and things that they were d
oing -- he said that a lot of times that they wouldn't even work. He had told me
that this would be like cover for them that they were supposed to be like big b
usinessmen and that they would
go into these different places and have elaborate dinners . . .
In any case Morehouse, now a major, wasn't happy at Team Six. "At times he didn'
t get along with other key people in the organization, which regrettably caused
him problems," remembers a senior officer who knew him there. "I would say that,
often
times, his aggressiveness got him into trouble because sometimes people are more
conservative and are a bit leery of someone
who . . . comes up with ideas that don't always agree with the normal." Among ot
her things, Morehouse proposed that Team Six should make use of remote viewers i
n its counter-narcotics operations against drug lords in South America. "You can
pretty well tolerate aggressiveness on the part of people, as long as it doesn'
t exceed the boundaries of common sense," adds the Team Six officer. "At times I
'd say Dave was on the edge of that boundary."
According to Angela Connor's testimony at the court- martial, Morehouse in those
days was stressed for another reason: Through his Team Six "undercover" work, h
e had met a Maryland woman named Mary R---, and was having an intense affair wit
h her. For a while (according to Angela Connor) he had planned to divorce his wi
fe Debbie and marry Mary instead.
While all this was going on, Morehouse managed to keep House Tech going. He and
Dames also started a company called PSI TECH, which offered the moonlighting ser
vices of Morehouse and DT-S remote viewers to private and commercial clients. Th
ere were only a few takers, and the targets they provided tended to be a bit fla
ky. One client asked PSI TECH to uncover the truth about the mysterious "crop ci
rcles" in English fields. Dames's analysis of the remote viewers' data suggested
that the circles were being made by small, fast-moving extraterrestrial vehicle
s. How far Morehouse went along with this extraterrestrial enthusiasm is unclear
, but during one official visit to Los Alamos on behalf of Team Six, Morehouse a
nd Dames took a few days out to venture into the high deserts of northwestern Ne
w Mexico, apparently convinced that an alien base was somewhere out there under
the mesas.
Morehouse lasted only briefly at Team Six, then worked at the Army's Personnel C
ommand before heading in 1992 to Fort Leavenworth, to the Army's Command and Gen
eral Staff College. He graduated in early 1993 and was assigned to the 82d Airbo
rne Division at Fort Bragg.
On the surface, Morehouse's life and career seemed to be back on solid ground ag
ain. He had a traditional assignment, as executive officer of an airborne battal
ion, and with Command and General Staff College behind him, seemed destined for
early promotion to lieutenant colonel. But beneath the surface, things were stil
l slipping.
Some time in 1992 or 1993, Ed Dames -- now retired from the Army -- had decided
to write a book about remote viewing. He had been put in touch with New York lit
erary agent and infomercial producer Sandra Martin, who specialized in popular,
often New Ageish projects. Morehouse was invited to join the effort, although ul
timately the writing was handed over to Jim Marrs (author of the bestselling con
spiracy thriller Crossfire, which had helped give rise to Oliver Stone's film JF
K). Some time in late 1993, Martin sold Marrs' proposal for $100,000 to Harmony
Books, a division of Crown Publishing. According to Dames, the money (after Mart
in's commission) was split equally among Marrs, Dames, and Morehouse. Morehouse'
s share came either in lump sums or in less direct disbursements (one document f
rom the time shows that Morehouse claimed $1,500 per month income from "Night Vi
sion Films, Inc.," which perhaps was Martin's production company). In any case,
the book would be the Dames and Morehouse story, and they would jointly have edi
torial control over its content. Morehouse heard about the Harmony deal over his
field phone while on exercises with his battalion in the wilds of North Carolin
a. Later, he went out and leased a Mercedes. "It's for you, babe," he told one o
f his girlfriends of the time.
That girlfriend was Angela Connor. Angela Connor was the wife of Alan Connor, an
enlisted man who until recently had been Morehouse's driver, but was now at ano
ther posting. He had told Morehouse about his marital problems, and Morehouse ha
d briefly served as an unofficial counselor in this regard. Not long after Alan
Connor left Fort Bragg for a post in Texas, in the spring of 1993, Morehouse inv
ited Angela to dinner, drove her home, and seduced her. The method he employed w
as one which might make even hardened womanizers wince. According to Angela Conn
or, Morehouse invited himself into her house, saying he needed to use the bathro
om. Then:
He started telling me about something. He said, "I don't know how to say this to
you or how to bring this up," but he said, "I need to tell you some things abou
t Alan" -- speaking of my husband. . . . My husband used to be here at battalion
[headquarters] and [Morehouse] said that my husband had been going around telli
ng people that when we first got married that I was sleeping with him and his fr
iend at the same time, that when my husband had to go out to the field, he would
be telling his commanders and other people that he didn't want to go out to the
field because his wife was back home sleeping with all the other "Joes" or some
thing like that. And I started crying. I really got upset and I went to the bath
room. I was in there for probably 15 to 20 minutes. I mean, I was devastated. I
couldn't believe that my husband had said these things [at this point the Army s
tenographer notes that Ms. Connor began to cry] and I didn't believe it. I said,
"My husband would never say anything like that," and so I went back out and I c
ouldn't believe it. I was upset and [Dave] knew that I was upset. It was almost
like he enjoyed me being upset about this or something. And then he told me, he
said, "Well I know those things aren't true anyway, so obviously Alan has been g
oing around telling all these lies." . . . I was sitting there and I still had -
- I was wiping tears from my eyes and I was rubbing my neck . . . and Dave reach
ed over and he started massaging my neck and then he kissed me on the neck.
And that night, the deed was done. Morehouse assured Angela that he loved her. I
n fact, he said, he had loved her for a while. He was already legally separated
from Debbie, he claimed, and when everything was ready, he would divorce her and
marry Angela. He urged Angela to legally separate from her own husband Alan (wh
o later vehemently denied what Morehouse had claimed about him).
When Morehouse had merely been her husband's boss, Angela Connor had admired and
respected him. Now she fell in love with him. She listened with fascination to
his tales of remote viewing and other secret "spook" projects, and the sensation
al book he was working on with Ed Dames. She believed him when he told her that
he loved her and would marry her. She even agreed, eventually, to his requests t
o have unprotected anal sex with her: "He called me, quote, `my little virgin as
s.'"
In the throes of love, Angela tried not to think about some of Morehouse's stran
ger behavior. At dinner, he liked to cut her food for her, and "sometimes asked
if he could feed me." On a few occasions, he bragged that he could kill her. Onc
e during sex:
He was squeezing my neck with my jugular vein or something and I asked him, "Wha
t are you doing?" He said, "Oh, I was just trying to find your jugular vein. How
does that feel? Do you know how easy it would be for me to kill you right now?"
. . . I thought it was a little odd.
Another night, he drove her in the Mercedes on interstate 95. She didn't know wh
ere they were going:
He was acting very strange that night and was kind of quiet, too. He kept lookin
g around. I asked him, I said, "What are you looking for? Why do you keep lookin
g around?" He said, "I'm looking for a good area, a good set of woods, so I can
take you out and tie you up to a tree and murder you." . . . A few minutes later
, he just started laughing.
According to Angela, Morehouse often claimed that the psychic techniques he had
learned at DT-S enabled him to spy on her at will. Once when Alan returned from
Texas briefly, Angela remembers: "[Dave] said, `You better not dare let him put
his hands on you, because if you do, I will know about it.' He said, `If you do,
that's the end of our relationship.' See, this man was constantly telling me th
at he was psychic."
Toward the end of 1993, Angela Connor learned that Morehouse was about to leave
for a new post in the Washington DC area. It was clear now that he was not in lo
ve with her. He was not going to marry her. She also came to the conclusion that
Morehouse had all along been sleeping with other women, including two waitresse
s at local franchise restaurants (one later admitted to Fort Bragg investigators
that she had spent the night in a hotel room with Morehouse, but she said that
they had merely "watched movies").
Connor was so angry -- "he had manipulated me and [was] using me and my husband,
and everything was a game to him" -- that she took the unusual step of complain
ing, first to a Fort Bragg chaplain and then to Fort Bragg military prosecutors.
In civilian life, what Morehouse had allegedly done was not even legally punisha
ble. Angela Connor would have had to declare Morehouse a rake and a liar, and le
ave it at that. But under the military code, Angela's accusations had to be take
n seriously. "Fraternization" between the ranks was discouraged anyway, but an o
fficer definitely could not play around with the wife of an enlisted man, especi
ally not one under his command. To do so would not just be ungentlemanly; it wou
ld be an abuse of the trust placed in him as an officer and a leader.
The Fort Bragg prosecutors made the charges sound fearsome: adultery, sodomy, co
mmunicating a threat, conduct unbecoming an officer, and larceny (regarding a co
mputer that Morehouse had "borrowed" from Fort Leavenworth and then loaned to An
gela). All in all, however, it wasn't such a high stakes case. It boiled down to
a jilted girlfriend, and an officer who did a good job at work but had a habit
of overmanipulating people and couldn't keep his pants zipped. ("He's got too ma
ny -- what is it? X genes or something?" Ed Dames told me at the time.)
But there was more. In one of her first statements to prosecutors, Angela Connor
mentioned the expos on remote viewing that Morehouse was working on with Dames.
One of the prosecutors wrote in the margin of the transcript: "What book? Find
out." The apparent possibility that Morehouse was about to disclose -- or had alr
eady disclosed -- information about a classified program led to further investig
ations of Morehouse by the Army's Criminal Investigation Division, Army counteri
ntelligence, and the Defense Investigative Service. Morehouse was now in deep tr
ouble.
He responded, one could say, with the creativity and energy he had always shown.
In April 1994, a few days after the Army decided to send his case to a full cou
rt martial, Morehouse checked in to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washingto
n, DC. He told doctors he was talking to angels. His lawyers soon suggested he w
as no longer competent to stand trial. They said the Pentagon's remote viewing p
rogram had unhinged their client. They asked the judge for special clearances, t
o look through the files of DT-S and its predecessors.
The impending court martial of Dave Morehouse, it was now clear, would not be ab
out Morehouse's sordid and rather petty misconduct; it would instead be a three
ring circus of allegations and bizarre revelations about the politically embarra
ssing remote viewing program. And Morehouse would be transformed from a sleazy v
illain into a victim and celebrity.
While the Army tried to decide what to do next, Morehouse began to claim to frie
nds that he was the target of some kind of secret harassment campaign by shadowy
government operatives. Letters and packages were sent to his wife, he said. Som
e of the packages contained tape-recordings of conversations he had held with Ji
m Marrs, or Sandra Martin. Morehouse saw people following him. Later, in Psychic
Warrior, he would even claim that his car tires were slashed and that the gover
nment tried to kill his family by carbon monoxide poisoning.
Astonishingly, even Sandra Martin joined in with these claims. She told me that
a strange man had taken her picture while she sat at a cafe outside her office i
n midtown Manhattan. She told me that another strange man had growled at her on
the subway to "stop representing Dave."
Now, I can believe that a legitimate counterintelligence investigation would inc
lude wiretapping, and possibly even physical surveillance. The remote viewing pr
ogram was not exactly one of the Pentagon's crown jewels, but information about
ISA and Team Six was relatively sensitive. The Pentagon would quite reasonably h
ave wanted to know how much, if anything, Morehouse was giving away about these
programs.
On the other hand, surveillance in such cases would probably be undetectable, an
d the idea that counterintelligence officials would actually advertise their pre
sence or engage in harassment of the sort Morehouse and Martin described is just
laughable. The only effect of that harassment would be to make Morehouse's stor
y seem sexier, giving it the paranoid twist of the X-Files genre, and boosting s
ales accordingly. To me, the most obvious explanation is that Morehouse made it
all up.
Could Sandra Martin also have been a party to this tale-telling? Well, from what
I know of her, having briefly been one of her client authors, I wouldn't be sur
prised to discover that she had. Besides, Martin, as the reader may have guessed
, was by this time a little more than just Morehouse's agent. Like her more nubi
le predecessor down south, she was in love with the wily major.
What Debbie Morehouse's role was, I don't know. Perhaps she was a completely inn
ocent victim. Perhaps she did receive harassing packages in the mail, and did be
lieve that they had been sent by government operatives. When I telephoned her in
late September 1994, to ask for an interview, she seemed to think that her phon
e was tapped and that dark forces were at work all around her:
My attorney approached me about you, okay? Now, where he got the information, I
don't know. He's well connected, he knows a lot of people. How I got information
about you-- And we were told not to speak to you. So, that's all I can say. But
I can tell you from personal experience, you've only scraped the surface. You h
ave no idea what's going on. (I've only scraped the surface regarding the histor
y of remote viewing, or just your husband's case?) The history of remote viewing
, and the connections. (Okay . . .) So just watch your back as you dig deeper. (
Should I expect physical violence, or what?) I'm not going to say over the phone
. And it won't be from me.
The summer of 1994 passed, and Morehouse went from Walter Reed back down to Nort
h Carolina. The wrangling of lawyers and prosecutors continued. Deals came and w
ent. There was to be an NBC Movie of the Week, based on the Morehouse story. For
some reason it was cancelled. Martin claimed to me that it was because of press
ure on NBC from the DIA. 60 Minutes, increasingly in search of tabloidesque stor
ies about government conspiracies, also prepared to film a piece on Morehouse. T
hen for some reason, late that summer, they lost interest.
Around Christmas, Morehouse's fortunes suddenly rose. The Army, as it often did
in these cases, caved in, and offered Morehouse a way out. In lieu of a court-ma
rtial, he could merely agree to be discharged under "other than honorable" condi
tions, with no pension or medical benefits. He signed the requisite paperwork an
d separated from the Army in January 1995. He went to work as a vice president a
t Sandra Martin's production company -- now called Para View-- in New York.
After two long rewrites, Jim Marrs' book was finally put into shape in the summe
r of 1995, and Harmony prepared to publish it. All Morehouse had to do was sit b
ack and wait for the royalties to come in. ABC's 20/20 came along, and filmed a
segment on him, and he discussed remote viewing's harmful effects, and all the m
ental damage he said had been suffered by those in the program. 20/20 planned to
air the segment in September, when the book was launched. According to what Mor
ehouse told me that August, he also had appearances lined up on the Larry King S
how and Good Morning America.
Then Ed Dames took a look at a typescript of the Jim Marrs book. He hit the ceil
ing. The book, in his opinion, was all about Morehouse, who had only been briefl
y part of the remote-viewing program, and in its last and worst years. Moreover
the book was heavily fictionalized, "a screenplay." There was no way Dames was g
oing to give the green light to a story like that.
Some time in July or August 1995, Harmony decided they had had enough. They canc
elled the book. The 20/20 segment never aired.
But Morehouse wasn't about to give up. He started working on his own book, which
he titled Comes the Watcher. By October, Sandra Martin had sold Morehouse's pro
posal for the book to St. Martin's Press. Somewhere around this time, Morehouse
decided to split with Martin. He found a new agent, California-based Peter Donal
dson. In November, the two men began pitching the Morehouse story to Hollywood.
They made eighteen pitches over several days, and eventually got some offers. Ol
iver Stone narrowly lost out in the bidding to Interscope Communications, who ac
cording to Variety paid Morehouse $300,000, as an advance against "high six figu
res" if the film got made.
Comes the Watcher is now out in bookstores, under the breath-stealing title Psyc
hic Warrior: Inside the CIA's Stargate program: The true story of a soldier's es
pionage and awakening.
I have skimmed the book, as well as a similar draft typescript which Ed Dames ob
tained (through his own Hollywood connections, presumably) and circulated last s
ummer. The book begins with Morehouse, guided by another remote viewer (Ed Dames
has been airbrushed out of the story), psychically visiting a friend who died i
n a helicopter crash. The anecdote, along with its description of remote viewing
as a kind of vivid virtual reality game, is fictional, but it contains a grain
of truth: A similar helicopter crash was targeted by Fort Meade remote viewers i
n the late 1970s. Morehouse presumably heard about the story and decided to make
it his own.
Psychic Warrior moves on to a discussion of an accident in Jordan in the mid 198
0s, when Morehouse was hit in his helmet by a bullet from a careless Jordanian.
At DT-S, Morehouse told colleagues about the incident, but mentioned that it had
only given him a headache afterwards. In Psychic Warrior, the incident has been
transformed into a turning point in Morehouse's life. The trauma from the bulle
t, we are now told, destabilized his brain and caused him to have a variety of p
sychic and transcendental experiences, including meetings with an angel. Ultimat
ely, Morehouse claims, this led him to DT-S.
This story also is evidently fictional, but once again, it contains a grain of s
omeone else's truth. It appears to be an attempt to mimic the story of remote vi
ewer Joe McMoneagle, who really was hospitalized, and really did report transcen
dental episodes, after a near-death experience while in the Army in Europe in th
e 1970s. Morehouse, who was not shy about discussing his life experiences with o
thers at DT-S, never mentioned any prior paranormal episodes to his colleagues t
here. Indeed, according to Angela Connor's testimony at Fort Bragg, Morehouse ex
pressed pride at having learned to be a psychic at DT-S, rather than having been
born or otherwise made that way.
Former colleagues will also be surprised to read that Morehouse was asked to "re
mote influence," detrimentally, Saddam Hussein and other bad guys. The history o
f this fabrication is particularly interesting. According to former remote viewe
r Mel Riley, the remote influencing claim does not even appear in the Dave Moreh
ouse story that was written (by Jim Marrs, with Morehouse hovering over his shou
lder) before the summer of 1995. Then in June 1995, while driving home from a fi
lming session with 20/20, another remote viewer "confided" to Morehouse that, th
ough he had never told anyone before, he had been secretly asked to try remote-i
nfluencing a key foreign leader around 1990. Morehouse was fascinated by the sto
ry. I have never thought this other remote viewer to be a liar, but I checked hi
s story about remote influencing with a half-dozen sources in a position to know
, all of whom told me that it was just bullshit. In any case, Morehouse apparent
ly thought it was a good enough story to insert into his new version of events i
n Psychic Warrior -- despite the fact that he had left DT-S by the time Iraq inv
aded Kuwait.
One of the earliest claims Morehouse has made, and certainly the central claim i
n his book, is that remote viewing helped to destabilize his mind. There is much
more than a grain of truth in that, for remote viewing, like any altered-state
regime (e.g., meditation), can, when overdone, bring about a susceptibility to s
pontaneous altered states. In other words, if you deliberately go into a trance
for four hours a day, five days a week, pretty soon you'll go into trances witho
ut wanting to. And it may be that the demons -- or angels -- you have lurking in
your subconscious will rise to haunt you.
But I'm far from being convinced that Morehouse suffered any real damage. For on
e thing, no one seemed to notice any problems when he was at DT-S, or even immed
iately afterward, at Team Six. The senior officer who was with him at Team Six t
old me: "If he actually engaged in [remote viewing], it didn't become evident in
his psychological being, if you will, at the time I knew him. I would not have
considered him unstable or unbalanced."
Morehouse also suggests in his book that others in the program were "hospitalize
d" with psychiatric problems. As far as I have been able to discover, this is an
other dramatic invention. There was one case in the early 1980s of a high-strung
Army lieutenant who suffered a brief psychotic episode while trying to have an
"out of body experience" -- but he was not part of the remote-viewing program, a
nd he also apparently had a history of psychiatric problems that made altered-st
ate games inadvisable. Morehouse is the only member of the remote-viewing progra
m ever to have been hospitalized for psychiatric reasons, and in his case, there
are good reasons to believe that he was, in Mel Riley's words, "playing crazy."

To tag every piece of fiction in the Morehouse book would mean commenting on vir
tually every page. Indeed, both Mel Riley and Lyn Buchanan remember Morehouse te
lling them that they were not to worry, the whole thing was going to be a novel
anyway. Or perhaps, as Ed Dames says, a screenplay, for there is lengthy screenp
layish dialogue throughout, and the entire thing seems calculated to push all th
e New Age and X-Files conspiracy buttons in the Hollywood version of reality, fr
om the repeated appearance of an angel to the cynical falsehood that the DIA was
using remote viewers to monitor US troops' chemical weapons exposure in the Gul
f War -- an exposure that Morehouse says they wanted to "cover up" to avoid a sc
andal over "Gulf War Syndrome." No wonder Oliver Stone loved this one.
Morehouse evidently hopes that readers of all kinds will love the book, for he h
as tried to blend traditional "male" adventure elements with more "feminine" rel
ationship themes. Morehouse's relationship with Angela Connor gets little mentio
n, however. In fact, in the early draft of Psychic Warrior, obtained last spring
by Ed Dames, Morehouse is in denial about the whole thing. But the detailed lin
es of dialogue are recalled so clearly by Morehouse that we must presume he had
a tape recorder with him at the time:
"I called the prosecutor's office to see what was going on [says Morehouse's Arm
y defense counsel]. From your tone I figured something had to have originated fr
om there." He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, looking at some notes he'd
scribbled on a pad when he talked to [the] prosecutor I had met in the Chief's o
ffice. "Are you aware of
what's happening, Major Morehouse?" I shook my head no, I found it difficult eve
n to focus on him. "Well, you were told what the allegations are. It appears tha
t someone (he told me the name of a civilian woman I knew from around the base),
has sworn a complaint against you. Do you know her?" "Yes I know her. What is h
er complaint against me and why would she be doing this?" "Well I certainly have
no idea at present as to why she would be doing this, but her complaint is prov
ided in a deposition where she states that you verbally threatened her with phys
ical violence. She also claims that you were sexually involved with her for a pe
riod of several months, I believe three." "Yes, I knew her and I did take her to
dinner twice. I assure you that I never slept with her, and I never stayed with
her overnight." "Okay. Do you know of any reason why she might be making these
allegations?" "No." "Okay. What about the larceny charge? The prosecutor has all
eged that you stole an Army computer and gave it to this woman." "As a friend, I
gave her a computer for her work. The computer I gave her was an old Commodore
PC10-2. It's worthless, and after discussing it with my wife, we decided that we
didn't need it anymore and we agreed to help her out. She's even talked to my w
ife on the phone. There was nothing between us, ever. I don't understand this at
all."
Well, perhaps the tape recorder wasn't working right that day, for at some later
date (perhaps realizing that the court martial files were available to the publ
ic by FOIA request) Morehouse decided to revise his recollections about his non-
relationship with Angela Connor. Thus we read on page 203 of the final draft of
Psychic Warrior:
"I called the prosecutor's office to see what was going on," [my defense lawyer]
said. He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, looking at his notes. "Are you
aware of what's happening, Major Morehouse?" I shook my head. I found it difficu
lt even to focus on him. "Well, you were told what the allegations are. It appea
rs that someone" -- he named a civilian woman I knew from around the base -- "ha
s sworn a complaint against you. Do you know her?" "Yes. What is her complaint ag
ainst me, and why would she be doing this?" "Well, I certainly don't know why, b
ut her complaint is that you verbally threatened her with physical violence. She
also claims that you were sexually involved with her for three months." "I knew
her. In fact, you could say we had a relationship of sorts. I've spent the last
four
years of my life alone. Sometimes you just want to talk to another person, you k
now, someone who doesn't have to shave his face." He laughed. "I poured my heart
out to this woman. She was a good listener, too -- kind and caring." I shook my
head disbelievingly . . .
As I sifted back and forth through all this garbage the other day, with a borrow
ed copy of Psychic Warrior, the final thing to catch my eye was Morehouse's dedi
cation: "to my darling wife Debbie, whose love has nourished and sustained me fo
r longer than I can remember. We are together eternally."
I have no doubt that Americans will buy that, in droves, not only at bookstores
but in cinemas. Word on the street is that Sylvester Stallone wants to do the mo
vie. People are talking about a budget of $70 million. I can already see Stallon
e's head trembling with paranormal effort as he tries to psychically scramble th
e mind of Saddam Hussein or some unlucky cocaine cartel boss. Perhaps blood will
run from Stallone's nose, or his ears. And the audience will gape up at the scr
een, feeding themselves with popcorn, and somewhere Morehouse will be laughing,
all the way to the bank.
The last I heard, Morehouse was working on a Saturday morning kids' cartoon seri
es, featuring superheroes with paranormal abilities who fight for world peace.
FAIR USE COPYRIGHT NOTICE