part0027

Authors’ Note: The following is based on interviews with and written material from General Ratnikov. We have attempted to keep the narrative in context with the quoted material. We include much of his biographical background and stories of his place in politics in the USSR and Russia—as we do with General Savin in the next chapter—to provide an understanding of the mindset and political climate in which the modern psychic work existed.

A s the Soviet Union fell and the new Russia came into being, Major General Boris Konstantinovich Ratnikov was a key player in applying psychic techniques to security, intelligence gathering, and international politics. He established a parapsychological department in the new Federal Security Service (formerly the KGB) in the early 1990s, and the department’s techniques were brought to bear in defending Russian political figures against potential psychic scanning and attacks.

Covering his days with the KGB to the Federal Security Service, Major General Ratnikov provided us with a story that is quite interesting, even without the element of the ESP wars. His experiences before and after the fall of the USSR truly gives us a context in which the East’s side of psychic warfare exists. General Ratnikov provided us with his perspective of the political scene, having been a direct participant in several key historical events.

General Ratnikov speaks of ending up “in charge” of the nation for a couple of short hours during the attempted coup to take over the Soviet government. His place in other events shows how involved he was in different levels of government and the intelligence world. To give you an idea of how central he was to some of these events, let’s start with what happened during the coup, in this story provided by Boris Ratnikov.

A t home on August 21, 1991, the night before the attempted (and failed) coup1 to remove Gorbachev from power and silence Yeltsin, Boris Ratnikov was awakened by an alarm in the form of a phone call from a Secret Service officer on duty. The urgent call provided him with orders to report immediately to the Russian Federation Government Building (the Parliament Building, locally called the White House2 ) to protect Boris Yeltsin. Tanks and armored personnel carriers were moving toward the building. The crowds in the area were beyond indignant and saw this as an act of intimidation, but they felt no fear because they weren’t guilty of anything. They lay down under the tanks, certain that the army would not dare fight against its own people, who were reacting to social circumstances. The shelves in shops were bare and everything was being rationed—a real social explosion was building.

Yeltsin arrived at the Parliament Building from his dacha in Arkhangelskoye (near Moscow) with a minimum of security. He met with his activists and began writing decrees, keeping things moving in a business-as-usual mode, though outside the building the crowd grew larger and spontaneously began drawing together. The regular police force was protecting the building, yet there were no cordons, and people were entering the building just by showing their passes. Paul Grachev, commander of the Air Borne Forces, brought his deputy General Alexander Lebed to the Parliament Building, and Lebed assigned several tanks, supposedly to protect the building and people inside. In actuality, the tanks were empty of ammunition, and when the enlisted tank drivers drove up to the building, they abandoned their combat vehicles and fled.

The basements of the Parliament Building were seven floors underground, and were designated for use as a reserve post from which the nation could be governed during wartime or a global nuclear crisis. At the time, the site was inactive and being held in reserve—reactivating it required a decision by the Politburo. The site contained everything essential for emergencies. There were two big rooms, one 30-meters on a side and the other 50-meters (along with two toilets), all behind doors that were one and a half meters thick.

While General Ratnikov and his comrades were waiting for the assault, Alexander Korzhakov—the KGB general who was the head of Boris Yeltsin’s Presidential Security Services—said that the wives of the men from the Alpha Group Spetsnaz (Special Forces group) came and told him on their behalf that the Alpha fighters did not want a fratricidal massacre and would not engage in storming the Parliament Building. In addition, there was one more potentially disturbing issue: Yeltsin, Ratnikov and the rest of them were vulnerable to capture from below as a secret Metro line came right up to the bunker.

By two in the morning, they made the decision to go down into the basement bunker so that Yeltsin would be out of danger. The electricity went off as they were descending, leaving only emergency lighting. For Yeltsin’s protection against sniper fire, they convinced him to put on a bulletproof vest, a gift to Yeltsin from the chess champion Garry Kasparov. Yeltsin was very dissatisfied that there was no water, the phone didn’t work, the toilet was boarded up, and that the air was stuffy. It became even more difficult to breathe especially after Khazbulatov, then Chairman of the Supreme Soviet, arrived and filled the space with his pipe smoke. Below, a wide level passageway led to a station platform on the secret Metro line. To prevent assault from the underground Metro, they placed two trip-wire mines so they wouldn’t be caught by surprise in the darkness.

After a discussion with Korzhakov, General Ratnikov returned above ground to see what was happening up there. As he approached the President’s Reception Room, he noticed that there wasn’t a single policeman on guard there. The telephones were ringing off the hook. The situation was critical, but no one could understand what was going on. The general sat down in the Presidential armchair and began answering calls from all across Russia—from the Far East and the Urals, from Siberia and St. Petersburg. “I did the best I could to calm people down, telling them that everything was under control, the country was being governed, and there was no panic.” Suddenly the black telephone that was connected to the bunker rang. General Ratnikov picked up the receiver and heard a gruff bass voice:

“I could only imagine the colorful scene at the other end of the line,” said Ratnikov. Then a call from the U.S. Embassy came in. The Americans made an offer: they would open their gates to Yeltsin and company and hide them in their Embassy if they escaped through the back door of the Parliament Building. Yeltsin flatly refused the offer. When Korzhakov arrived, Ratnikov reported that, in his opinion, “no assault would take place. It would be real madness to launch an assault with such enormous crowds of people present.”

It was after three in the morning when they all came up from the bunker, the situation over. Mstislav Rostropovich, a well-known cellist, arrived and walked around the Parliament Building with a submachine gun. “Of course, no one would have allowed him to endanger his life, and the crowd was pleased at the time that the intellectuals were with them!” said General Ratnikov.

Later, the intelligence services analysts came to the conclusion that this was all done at Gorbachev’s instruction.4 They figured that nobody would have undertaken these measures without the leader’s knowledge and approval. The analysts were all afraid and covered their own behinds. Gorbachev wasn’t sure how this “comedy” would play out, so he kept aloof to ensure that he would win no matter what happened. But none of the members of the State Emergency Committee had anything like a charismatic personality. The entire nation saw them on TV with their shaking hands, their haunted looks—they all looked as if they wanted to avoid taking part in this farce and were simply carrying out orders. “That is why it all ended so badly: one of them hanged himself, another shot himself. They were weak individuals, unable either to dare to disobey the command of the leadership or to act on their own initiative.”

“Gorbachev soon returned to Moscow and squatted on his haunches in the Kremlin like a beaten dog—he had gained nothing,” said General Ratnikov. “It was clear to most people in Russia that this whole charade was his doing. Pity the poor besieged President of the USSR under siege. Besieged by whom?! Nothing of the sort! He had armed security forces under his personal command right there, military ships awaiting his signal, and phones that worked—not to mention Security Services communication systems. It was nothing more than a cheap performance.”5

Most likely, the State Emergency Committee idea was the brainchild of Gorbachev’s wife, Raisa Maksimovna. “She was the one capable of analyzing, calculating things and proposing such a plan. She, not Gorbachev, was the one who deployed the staff and wove together the plot.”

But times had already changed for the USSR. Since violence inevitably begets violence, popular discontent with the system had steadily grown. The winds of freedom were exhilarating, and fear could no longer be used to hold anything back. “It was no longer possible for the then General Secretary Gorbachev, who was a rather weak-willed person, to continue ruling by fiat, through force and coercion, as had been the case since Stalin’s times.”

After the stressful days of the August coup, Yeltsin decided to get some medical attention and rest and relaxation at the Palanga resort off the Gulf of Finland. Korzhakov accompanied him, and I stood in for Korzhakov. “At his suggestion, I met with the General Secretary,” said General Ratnikov. “I can see the scene before me now: Mikhail Sergeyevich (Gorbachev) in shirtsleeves and suspenders, walked over to a meeting table that seated twelve. Gorbachev greeted me and got right down to business. His business was a proposal to create a new security structure that would function separately from the KGB, because he no longer trusted the KGB’s agencies.” This was the origin of the General Directorate of Security, which was later divided into the Presidential Security Service headed by Korzhakov and the Federal Security Service headed by Barsukov. Ratnikov became Barsukov’s Deputy, responsible for operations and analysis. He also supervised the staff, technical operations service, and other departments.

Having set the foundation of Boris Ratnikov’s place in Soviet and Russian political history, and for the subject of this book, it was before the coup that General Ratnikov began his work in parapsychology, though it was in the new post-Soviet Russia that most of his work occurred.

“I came to parapsychology in a rather unexpected and roundabout way. I had nothing to do with it during my years of service as a rank-and-file KGB officer, and it wasn’t until I reached the rank of colonel that I came into contact with this field. Although I knew that the KGB kept track of psychics and scrutinized their activities closely, I wasn’t aware of any specialized parapsychology programs, probably because they were outside the purview of my responsibilities.”

His first encounter with the psychic world came when he wound up serving in the Secret Service, providing security for Boris Yeltsin when he was still Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Republic. As an officer-analyst, Ratnikov had always been interested in the circumstances in people’s lives that lead them towards a particular situation, and the lure of psychic experiences was one more “circumstance” that directed people’s lives to a specific place. It seemed that his life and career up until that point was leading him in that direction. How he got from the KGB to the parapsychological world is a story in itself. It may even seem superfluous to the ESP Wars, but understanding the people involved is always telling—context for what they later do with psi.

B oris Konstantinovich Ratnikov was born on June 11, 1944 in a village not far from Moscow. His father had fought during the war and was the chairman of a collective farm for 25 years. This was the Stalinist era, and as time progressed after the war, everything was in ruins and people were starving. People would occasionally write denunciations against his father, alleging that he was allowing collective farm property to be pilfered, and Ratnikov’s father really did look the other way when widows, hard-pressed to feed their children, took home farm milk hidden in hot-water bottles under their clothes. “My father could have been arrested and thrown into the Gulag for this, but somehow things worked out.”

Boris Ratnikov graduated from high school in 1964, then left for Moscow and enrolled in the Moscow Aviation Institute. He graduated from the Aviation Institute in 1969 and went to work in the design office of the Scientific Research Institute of Aviation in the town of Zhukovsky. Americans might be surprised by the next statements: “I worked there for three years and realized that this job was not for me. I was more interested in working with people, so I turned in an application to work for the KGB.” Most of us would assume that “working with people” was not a reason to work for such an entity, especially given the place of KGB agents in Western spy and crime novels, TV shows and movies. Just as we have overzealous government agents and ones with compassion (and a sense of humor) in our agencies, the KGB did as well.

The KGB checked him out for a year, scrutinizing not only the routine details in his application form, but also the psychological details of his personality profile. Ratnikov received a positive evaluation, and was sent to the KGB Officers School in Minsk. There he and others were trained to be dedicated public servants.

They taught us to look at all political and economic situations; in fact, everything that transpired from the point of view of the State and not from the vantage point of a separate individual. We were expressly required to read all the literature that our citizens were forbidden to read, and we took pride in understanding that we were protecting the interests of our fatherland, not the members of the Politburo. We were taught that working with people required our best human qualities. For example, although the KGB investigated many people, officers were taught that it was important to exercise extreme caution in dealing with people, that is, to conduct investigations without people suspecting it, so that innocent people were not morally traumatized.

All this does not match the image of the KGB that has lingered from Stalinist times and reinforced in the West, but it was precisely the way officers were trained in the KGB during the 1970s.

R atnikov completed his courses with honors and was assigned as an authorized regional operative in the Municipal Department of the KGB in Ramenskoye, a town near Moscow. He worked there for several years, at various classified aviation enterprises, supervising their operations. It was during that period—“the year 1980 as I recall”—that he had his first encounter with ESP. “We were on duty round the clock, providing security for the Moscow Olympics. Afterwards, I was rewarded with a month-long cruise to Southeast Asia.” But of course, this wasn’t just a cruise, it was also an official trip. The cruise was expensive and out of reach of the average person, so there were mostly sales people and high-level lawyers on board ship. There were three of them from the KGB. Their mission was to see that nobody embarrassed their nation abroad or defected.

The tour program included a “Miss Cruise” pageant. As if to spite the situation, “all the women in our group could hardly be called young. What could we do?” Ratnikov recalls that he “decided to help my group ‘hypnotize’ all the tourists. I looked quite young and had a trim figure.” So he thought about it and volunteered himself to compete for the title of “Miss Cruise.” The ladies present started to giggle, but enthusiastically embraced his idea. Said Ratnikov:

They put lipstick on my lips, squeezed me into a stiff bra, and wrapped towels around my hips. They decked me out in a wig and a hat, and, as a fragrant finishing touch, sprayed me with perfume. They turned this KGB officer into quite a pretty woman! To be more convincing, I began attuning myself to the “ archetypal feminine,” visualizing an attractive mental image and silently suggesting that I was a woman to my associates.

And it all worked. There I was, walking down the runway! Everyone was amazed—where had this beauty come from, where had she been hiding? The contest began and they posed the question, “How did the weight of our ship change after we stopped in Tokyo? I answered in my pretend female voice that the weight of our ship had decreased, because people lose weight under stress. The passengers rushed out to go shopping onshore but when they saw the high prices, they got very upset and lost weight—and so did our ship. Everyone was delighted by my answer. Then they judged our figure, the way we walked, and our manners. And I placed first again! In short, I won the entire contest, and was declared “Miss Cruise.” I was presented with a crown and a big sash. Halfway down the runway to receive the awards, I silently took off my disguise and wig. What a scene!

Whether his success was due to the effect of his “mental suggestion” or because the ladies in his group had done their very best, his debut in the role of a female “hypnotist” was unforgettable. Ratnikov’s success was also memorable for another reason that had unforeseen consequences. “I had snatched the beauty contest victory from our cruise ladies, and I couldn’t imagine that I would now inevitably confront an enemy that was much more formidable than any terrorist—a woman’s jealousy, where hypnosis wouldn’t protect me!”

Two tall, powerful women from the Rostov group decided to seek revenge. Ratnikov was quietly swimming in a pool, enjoying life, when he was attacked by these two Amazonian women. One of them squeezed him between her thighs, and the other one forcefully lowered his head under water and held him there. “I began to choke, and tried to free myself with all my might, but no such luck! I could see that things were getting really bad and I’d have to save myself, so I bit one of them in a most tender place. She howled from the pain and savagely shredded my back with her sharp claws. I jumped out of the pool and took off, blood running down my back. These wounds took so long to heal that I couldn’t sunbathe for the rest of cruise.”

Things changed for Boris Ratnikov after that. In 1981, he was sent to Afghanistan. During several years of service there, he took part in numerous intelligence and combat operations. He met and negotiated with many Afghani leaders, including the leaders of armed bands. He found a common language with almost all of them, so that there was practically no military action in the extensive area that he oversaw, even though it was near the “hot spot” of Kandahar. As a senior KGB officer involved in intelligence who had an inside view of the Afghan campaign in all its details, Ratnikov understood how profoundly terrible the crime was, perpetrated by the instigators of the war, the top leadership of the USSR. “Afghanistan radically changed my attitude toward the Soviet system, and I was not alone—it impacted other KGB officers as well.”

After the return from Afghanistan, he worked in aircraft security at the Moscow department of the KGB for nearly three years. It was in early 1991, and the country was already collapsing. “I could see that no one was going to need our services, so I left the KGB and accepted an invitation from Alexander Korzhakov to serve as his assistant in the Security Department for the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR, of which Boris Yeltsin had recently become chairman.” There were twelve people in the Department; some of them were from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and some from the KGB.

When the coup broke out, the way was paved for the disintegration of the USSR. The structure of the Security Services changed, and a new interpretation of their mission arose. The 9th Directorate of the KGB of the USSR was reformed, and they conducted a great deal of analytical work on the real and potential threats to President Yeltsin and his entourage, threats to the government and threats against the populace. This was when Ratnikov first learned about psycho-technologies. The KGB recommended using Lt. Colonel Georgi Rogozin, an expert in psi-technologies, to develop mechanisms to neutralize the threat of these technologies. Ratnikov secured Rogozin’s transfer from the KGB to serve as an advisor in his service.

In 1991, Ratnikov began working with Rogozin, at which time he introduced Ratnikov to the concepts and details of psi. Rogozin displayed his own extrasensory abilities and showed Ratnikov how it was possible to access information as if from thin air by changing one’s state of consciousness. Since Ratnikov had a technical education, he naturally wanted to understand the physical aspects of this process. He soon discovered that science views these phenomena in different ways. “After reading Vernadsky and his theory of the noosphere, Tsiolkovsky, the theories of our cosmologists, psychologists and physicists, and studying the literature from the West, I formed an understanding of this phenomenon based on this knowledge. Academic science is very orthodox. It tries to explain these phenomena from the position of the materialistic world and repeatedly excludes the concept of a higher source. Everything that does not fit into its established system is considered unacceptable. ”

For this reason, his initial attitude toward psycho-technologies was not very positive, and he considered them akin to spiritism or even charlatanism. However, he gradually opened his mind to the concepts he was being exposed to. He came to understand a bit more about the history of beliefs about psi, shamanic tradition, and practices that would otherwise be called “magical,” even though he recognized that in their appropriate context, such things were no more “magical” than many beliefs in Christianity and other major religions. As commentary on this, he said “Those of our ancestors who were initiated into them undermined the authority of the church—primarily the Christian church—which considered that only members of a religious cult would possess these secrets, never ordinary citizens. Thus the Christian Ecumenical Council of 533 declared that initiations into altered states of consciousness were the Devil’s instigations, and that they needed to be stopped by any means necessary.” History has shown that in the time since, such reaction and doctrine led to the persecutions and eventually massive witch hunts and burnings in the Old World, and accusations and hangings in the New—even though as many (or some say more) of the accusations and executions were actually politically or economically motivated.

A s it happened, a new wave of mass immersion in psi and related concepts resurfaced in the USSR. “The stressful conditions of people’s lives led to the mass induction into altered states of consciousness in which people met and spoke with their relatives, both dead and alive,” said Ratnikov. “This helped people to survive in intolerable conditions of physical and moral degradation. Security guards were unaware of it as prisoners did not openly reveal their meditation activity at all nor even discuss it out loud. But, this is how people received the truth and food for their own spirits, how they evolved.”

When Ratnikov understood the basic concept, Rogozin familiarized him with the trance process, and how to enter and maintain it. Since we receive information externally with the help of our sensory organs, there are many different ways of entering into a trance — through tactile sensations, massage, hypnotic passes, fragrances, smoke and beverages with particular flavorings. Music and certain rhythms also facilitate entry into altered states of consciousness. All these methods enhance the ability of one’s consciousness to float, so to speak, and “by entering altered states, it is possible to connect with the information field of the Earth.”

There are different ways to receive information in an altered state of consciousness. One of them is commonly known as automatic writing, which occurs when one allows one’s hand to write (or draw or paint) without conscious control. This can happen while in an altered state, or even in a “normal” state of consciousness, and was a technique also used by some of the US military remote viewers. The hand is under control of the unconscious, which is passing through information either from the unconscious (and often a creative process) or outside sources of information. Ratnikov learned that one can ask questions, go into a trance and write down answers to these questions as if taking dictation. “But this method is fraught with many errors: an individual cannot enter into a state of deep hypnosis by himself, and many external factors in the environment can prove distracting or irritating.

“Another method is that of isolated self-hypnosis, when a person no longer sees or hears anything around him: the information that comes through is purer and more authentic than with automatic writing.” The ideal method is immersion in an isolation tank of warm salty water—a sensory deprivation tank—which John Lilly describes so well in his somewhat dated book The Center of the Cyclone and which was central to the plot of the film Altered States (1980).

“I became very interested in the practical application of ESP and these psi-techniques to carry out intelligence missions. Of course, distortions in the information are possible, depending on the time an experiment is conducted, how the psychic felt the night before the experiment, whether he was under stress or drank, in what season the research was conducted, and so on.” All these external environmental factors exert particular influences on the information obtained, and point to the perennial problem in psi research for everyone.

Ratnikov and the researchers tried to compensate for these distortions through comparative analysis of the data. They posed questions about real and potential threats, filmed the responses of the psychic operatives and recorded them on tape. After decoding the data, they did an analysis. “If there was logical proof that a threat was real, we wrote a request to Intelligence and other branches of the KGB and Special Services to investigate and ‘illuminate’ these issues. As a result we had the confirmation of real intelligence data that we could append to the document that we were sending to our superiors so they could take appropriate measures.” The following are some early striking examples, the first related to their primary mission: protecting top State officials.

In the middle of the visit, the psychic operative suddenly informed us that some kind of technique of psychic influence was being applied to Skokov. It turned out that he was attending a meeting at the country estate of a major American businessman who was connected with the CIA. Naturally, US leaders were very interested in the internal mechanism by which political decisions were being made in Russia. This mechanism constantly shifted due to the rapid changes in the former USSR and Yeltsin’s unpredictability, and it was difficult for the CIA to track it. As a result, the CIA could not resist the temptation of using Skokov’s presence to try to learn about this mechanism from him through psychic means.

Naturally, we tried to protect Skokov from this psychic influence and to block the leak of information through extrasensory methods. I think we were successful. The truth be told, Skokov felt bad physically at this time and soon left that meeting. When he returned from the visit to the US, I personally verified all our ESP data with him, and he confirmed it completely.

A second situation happened at the end of 1992, when diplomatic channels were studying the matter of Yeltsin’s visit to Japan. According to the State Security Council’s data, Yeltsin was preparing to hand over two or three of the Kuril Islands to Japan during his visit to demonstrate his new foreign policy. He was being influenced to take this step by certain members of his inner circle. As the issue of the Kuril Islands was very delicate, there was a need to check out the situation and the possible scenarios of how events might unfold. Ratnikov continued:

We prepared a very skilled psychic to connect with the information field. We conducted a session and received information that indicated that as soon as Yeltsin transferred the islands to Japan, China would lay claim to territories they disputed with Russia. This situation would be favorable to many political forces in the world, so their goal was to steer China’s leaders toward a military confrontation with Russia, and have the international community declare China an aggressor. Then the United Nations and a number of countries could apply economic and political sanctions against China as an aggressor that had encroached on the sovereign territory of another state .

This would be very advantageous for China’s political and economic competitors. But that wasn’t all—the situation would go much further. China could react to the pressure in this case and undertake local military action against Russia, as it had at the end of the 1960s. However, in 1993 it would have resulted in a large-scale war in Southeast Asia.

When Ratnikov and company received this catastrophic prediction, they simply could not believe it. The decision was made to check out whether this information had a solid basis and whether the events might unfold according to the predicted script through the intelligence and counterintelligence agencies and services. “A careful check showed that the proposed situation and its consequences were entirely realistic. So that meant it would be impossible to return the islands to Japan.”

After meeting with Barsukov and Korzhakov, he reported on the situation to Yuri Skokov. He supported them completely, immediately went to the President, and insisted that the visit be cancelled. But the answer he got from Yeltsin, in addition to some very unpleasant words, was, “Am I the Tsar or not?! If I want to, I’ll give them away! If I don’t want to, I won’t!”

Yeltsin must not visit the monument in Kyoto dedicated to the Russian sailors who died rescuing the Japanese during an earthquake, because the cemetery was densely overgrown, and there could be a terrorist hiding in the bushes. If the President were to engage in these activities, the Japanese side would not guarantee the President’s safety.

Ratnikov’s group decided to use these three prohibitions as a pretext to cancel Yeltsin’s trip and not permit him to go to Japan. The next day, Minister of Foreign Affairs Kozyrev was meeting with the Japanese Minister of Foreign Affairs. “I was instructed to talk with Kozyrev. I intercepted him before the negotiations and told him that I had been instructed by the President to have a conversation with him, although the President had not given me any such instructions. I explained that the Japanese side was not providing a 100% guarantee of Yeltsin’s safety, and I had been asked to request guarantees once again from the Japanese minister in case Yeltsin failed to observe the three prohibitions stipulated in their protocol. Naturally, the Japanese minister would not assume any additional responsibilities. We immediately wrote up Kozyrev’s answer in a memorandum to the State Security Council.

Following this, Ratnikov had to fly to Tokyo. Korzhakov signed a document, granting him special powers. In Tokyo, he met with the Russian Ambassador to Japan and explained to him that it was necessary to prevent the visit. “I think that it terrified him, and he didn’t know how to react. Then I met with representatives of the Japanese Security and Secret Services, and we discussed how to organize protection procedures, the formation and the route of the procession, the means of communication. While I was leaving I asked, as if an afterthought, whether they could fully provide for the President’s security with regard to the three designated points, because our President allegedly would not agree to any restrictions.”

Ratnikov received a negative response and boiled over with feigned righteous indignation: “What? How can you, the Security and Secret Services professionals, not provide 100% guarantee of our President’s safety?! Why did you invite him to your country? I will report that the visit was badly planned on your part.”

That evening, Ratnikov gave an interview to a representative of the Russian TV-program Time. “They asked how the preparations for our President’s visit were going, and I replied that the situation was not good, that the Japanese side was not ready, and that our President’s security was not being adequately guaranteed.” Ratnikov immediately sent off an encrypted message to Moscow. Skokov urgently convened the State Security Council with a single issue on the agenda: whether Yeltsin should go to Japan. All the members of the council were already predisposed by the Time program, and there was also his encrypted message and the memo about Kozyrev’s conversation with the Japanese minister. “Well, who would dare vote for the visit after getting such a snow job? Everyone voted against the visit.”

Skokov presented Yeltsin with a fait accompli: the Security Council had decided to postpone the President’s visit to Japan for security reasons. The mission was accomplished, and we retained the islands. As for the Japanese, they hardly would have been overjoyed to receive these islands if it resulted in a war in this region .

O n December 29, 1992, the psychic operative from Ratnikov’s group received information relating to a meeting between President Yeltsin and the first President Bush, scheduled in Sochi three days later. The psychic’s information purported that if the meeting of the Presidents was to be held in Sochi, serious problems would arise during the negotiations. Neither Russia nor America needed such complications. This meant that the meeting needed to be moved elsewhere, that is, to Moscow. But how? “Yeltsin did not understand reasonable arguments, and he was already drinking, celebrating the upcoming New Year’s holiday early. My rank did not permit me to telephone Bush personally. But there wasn’t enough time to develop a complex intrigue like the one in the case of the visit to Japan.”

Ratnikov was given instructions to fly immediately to Sochi, where preparations for the visit were going on. As New Year’s Eve arrived, it was snowing lightly, and a frost began to set in late in the day. President Bush’s plane was scheduled to land at the Sochi airport, but there was a plane ahead of it with the people providing security for his visit. The landing strip was a little slippery and shorter than standard airstrips, and the heavy Boeing taxied almost to the edge of the airport, where some old, broken-down planes were parked. Ratnikov met the delegation at the passenger stairs, and when asked about Bush’s security, he pointed to the scrap metal that lay about and said to them: “Look, you nearly wound up in a dump. The landing strip is already iced over, and it’ll soon get even worse. Weather like this is unusual for Sochi, and we don’t have the equipment to clear the landing strip. Bush’s plane could go into a skid. It would be better to fly to Moscow.”

The Secretary of State contacted Bush’s plane, which was already in the air. Bush agreed to change the route, but the Secretary asked Ratnikov to call Yeltsin. “I had to do this so that it would appear as if changing the venue for the meeting was Bush’s idea and not mine, otherwise Yeltsin would not take the call. I pretended that I kept calling on the satellite communication system but couldn’t get connected to the President. I suggested to the Americans that they try calling Yeltsin, and that’s what they did. It looked as if the American President himself wanted to fly to Moscow and have the meeting there. This was good for both Russia and America, and, as for me, I felt that I had done my duty well and I enjoyed a carefree New Year’s in Sochi.” In Moscow, everyone was in a major uproar, doing the impossible to prepare a new venue for the Presidential meeting on New Year’s Eve. “But I think that it was all worth it. I was now already accustomed to trusting my psychics.”6

Although the Soviet Union had already disintegrated, Yeltsin decided to play peacemaker between Azerbaijan and Armenia, by force of his old habit as the all-Union arbitrator. War had not broken out yet, but skirmishes were occurring, and a conflict was brewing. Yeltsin believed that the growing conflict could be extinguished if he personally visited Nagorno-Karabakh, an internal political hot spot. Ratnikov’s psychic aides stated that Yeltsin’s trip to Nagorno-Karabakh would only aggravate the conflict, and that a real war would break out in the Caucasus.

Officially, Ratnikov went to Azerbaijan with the mission of arranging for Yeltsin’s visit: to develop their security services procedures and to coordinate the interaction with the KGB of Azerbaijan. When he arrived, he decided to talk to Ayazov Mutalibov, the President of Azerbaijan, about the situation. The President granted Ratnikov an audience at once, and they spoke for about 40 minutes. They reached the decision to persuade Yeltsin not to fly to Karabakh, and Mutalibov promised to do his best.

When Yeltsin’s plane landed, Ratnikov rushed on board to report to him that an analysis of this situation predicted that his visit to Nagorno-Karabakh would have extremely negative consequences. “Yeltsin, already tipsy, listened to me and, eyeing me like an angry bull, pushed me away with his hand and silently moved toward the exit. It wasn’t until that moment that I understood that the magnificent feast Mutalibov had prepared for the occasion of the Russian President’s visit, and all the drinking that would accompany it, was much more important to Yeltsin than the entire Caucasus region and the whole of politics.”

The feast began. Mutalibov did not drink, but Yeltsin downed glass after glass. He got roaring drunk. Picture the scene with these two heads of state: Mutalibov trying to convince Yeltsin not to go to Nagorno-Karabakh, Yeltsin obstinately sticking to his position, “I’m going, and that’s final! And I won’t take you with me!” said Yeltsin to the President of the independent country to which Nagorno-Karabakh belongs!

Following this, Yeltsin phoned Nursaltan Nazarbayev, the President of Kazakhstan, with an invitation to accompany him to Karabakh. A few hours later, Nazarbayev arrived and took a helicopter to Karabakh with Yeltsin. “I assumed personal responsibility at that point,” said Ratnikov, “and, at my own peril, asked Mutalibov to board a second helicopter with me, and we flew to Karabakh, too. When the two helicopters landed, Yeltsin and Nazarbayev climbed out of one, Mutalibov and I out of the other. When Yeltsin saw Mutalibov, he told Korzhakov pointedly, ‘Make sure that I don’t see him here!’ I was confused and at a loss as to what to do. And what could I do, if our President was so culturally inept and insensitive? ”

Ratnikov sequestered Mutalibov in a nearby building for his protection, and asked him to keep out of Yeltsin’s sight. In the meantime, an improvised stage on which Yeltsin was to speak was set up; a truck drove up, ramps were lowered, and security guards were posted. A line of local police was stationed about 30 meters from the truck and behind them, a crowd of local residents, mostly Armenians, had already gathered.

Ratnikov was standing and watching the crowd as Yeltsin began his half-inebriated though fiery speech about how everyone needed to live in peace. Suddenly he noticed a movement that reminded him of something he had seen in Afghanistan. The men moved toward the back, leaving the women and children facing the police line. Ratnikov quickly approached the men from the Special Forces Alpha group and instructed them to close ranks “because a breakthrough was obviously being prepared: first the children would dive under the row of police, and then the women would rush after them.” The police line would be breached, and then the men would break through the opening.

That’s exactly what happened—or rather what they attempted. The crowd tried to break through, but the Alpha group stood firm, and everyone understood that if something happened, these men would shoot. “People began shouting that the land should be given to the Armenians, and they threw rotten vegetables. Yeltsin quickly withdrew, and they were forced to evacuate him, along with Nazarbayev, to Gandzha, a small neighboring town.”

Just as had been surmised, Yeltsin’s visit only aggravated an already critical conflict. A real war broke out soon after his trip to Nagorno-Karabakh. “It turned out that our psychic operatives were completely correct in their predictions,” though the information could not be acted upon in a way to prevent Yeltsin from undertaking the visit.

“Yeltsin’s actions towards the Chechen Republic resulted in even more catastrophic consequences, and we were unable to prevent them. Our psychic operatives warned us repeatedly about the terrible events that were coming to a head in the Chechen Republic, and that it was essential to demonstrate the maximum mutual understanding, self-control and good will to balance the critical situation. All sober-minded, reasonable people also understood this fact.”

Dzhokhar Dudayev, the President of Chechnya, repeatedly tried to have a meeting—or at least a telephone conversation—with Yeltsin, but he failed in all his attempts. Prime Minister Chernomyrdin, Minister of Defense Pavel Grachev, and the President’s Assistant Victor Ilyushin exhibited particular enthusiasm for kindling this conflict. Conspiracy was closing around Chechnya and many people wanted to use the military conflict in the Chechen Republic to privatize its oil resources, engage in illegal arms trade, and plunder the money budgeted for that region.

The top management at the Security Services understood this and tried their utmost to prevent the military conflict. Based on intelligence information and the predictions they received from the psychics, Korzhakov and Ratnikov wrote an agency memo stating that sending troops to Chechnya and engaging in combat operations there would lead to disastrous consequences. They cited the example of Afghanistan.

That evening Korzhakov informed the President about the memo, and to their relief, Yeltsin agreed with it on the whole. However, the next morning he made the decision to send troops to Chechnya anyway. “We investigated why Yeltsin had reversed his decision and discovered that, after Korzhakov left that evening, Chernomyrdin visited Yeltsin later and that they had apparently talked with plenty of drinking until midnight. It immediately became clear that vodka bore the most responsibility for starting the Chechen war.”

A ccording to Ratnikov, the work with ESP is fraught with a number of limitations as well as “off-limits information” that for some reason cannot be accessed, or at least gotten with any degree of accuracy or depth. “We were continuously interested in how the political situation in Russia would develop in the near future, and thus, in detecting the initial indications of social unrest and preventing civil war,” said Ratnikov.

They tried to get more clarity about the situation to ensure that it was reliable, but the answer received was on the order of, “This information is not completely reliable, but you won’t get information that is more exact because the world is filled with probable ways in which events can unfold—different versions of the future are possible. Besides, you simply must not be given key information about the future because of your level of spiritual development, otherwise the whole world would go to hell.” In other words, according to Ratnikov sometimes someone or something interfered with the information process in order to protect humanity.

“In addition to certain information being essentially off-limits to us, there was also the matter of interpretation.” In order for information to be evaluated more precisely, criteria needed to be developed to understand what relates to what. These criteria were developed over time during investigative research as well as through an operative’s individual life experience. On countless occasions, the group received information about attempts to assassinate the President: they described the nature of the attempt, the time, and the individual would-be perpetrator who would carry it out.

“We would record it and carefully check it out—but there would be no correlation and no assassination attempt. I would return to the operatives again and again with the question: why was the information erroneous?” The operatives would tell Ratnikov that they had interpreted the symbolic picture they received literally. “One has to be able to separate the symbolic from the real, interpret it skillfully and take into account a great many factors including the operative’s mental state and his level of personal interest, the specific techniques being used.” This is very difficult to do—only teams of skilled psychics and their monitors can do it. “Using group methods and group consciousness is advisable. In addition, after a careful analysis of the facts, they must be compared with information received from other sources such as traditional intelligence gathering.”

As a result of trial and error, they found that it was more effective to ask about the probabilities of a particular threat before it reached the point when it was to happen. They could clarify each probability’s significant attributes or indicators (“We called them znakovye priznaki) to track them at the level of reality as benchmarks of the changing likelihood of the event. We asked for advice about what to focus on. We were given the znakovye priznaki, and I would immediately start writing up a card of the indicators of each probability. Then, with the help of my colleagues, I would analyze which of the probabilities was rapidly unfolding and map out a system of its indicators to help us consciously calculate how the probability would develop, and track its consistency. This was how I came to understand where this particular probability could lead in reality.” Using this method of tracking probabilities can substantially increase the reliability of information.

This view of precognition lines up with the research of Ed May and a number of other western parapsychologists. It seems precognition works with probable futures, whether or not they actually come to pass. In other words, at the moment of the precognitive perception, the viewer is picking up on the most (or one of the most) probable future outcomes—later events bring that future into being, or change the probabilities so that it does not happen.

According to Ratnikov, “Psychic operatives claim that all predictions are probabilistic by nature. The future contains a spectrum of opportunities rather than one absolutely certain future. The choice depends on us. However, choosing the future involves more than just what we desire—it includes our efforts, our understanding, our ethics, and our own work. Even the most talented psychics, even the saints, cannot make choices for us, not to mention fortunetellers and all the other sorts of charlatans!”

And there are certainly charlatans to spare in this field. Ratnikov recalled meeting with one of them—Grigory Grabovoi. “In 1994, our psychologist and I were invited for consultation by Dmitry Rumyantsev, the head of personnel department for the Russian Federation Presidential Administration. Grabovoi had talked his way into a meeting with Rumyantsev and began to praise his extrasensory abilities, puffing himself up in every possible way. He lived in Tashkent at the time and wanted to be hired by the President’s Administration at a salary of no less than two thousand dollars a month, plus a three-room apartment in Moscow.”

Both Ratnikov and the psychologist were surprised at Grabovoi’s aplomb, his demands, and his obviously unacceptable behavior. It was clear that what they had in front of them was a swindler suffering from pathological megalomania. Nevertheless, to be completely rigorous, they asked Grabovoi to demonstrate his ESP abilities by stopping the elevator between floors. Grabovoi refused, claiming an ability to diagnose mechanisms, not influence them. He probably forgot that he had just assured the two of the total opposite several minutes before; nor could he show off his diagnostic abilities, and so Ratnikov’s agency had absolutely no interest in him.

Ratnikov informed Korzhakov about the conversation, and Korzhakov remarked that Moscow had enough swindlers already without adding any more from Tashkent. Ten years later, they learned that Grabovoi was deceiving mothers in Beslan by promising to resurrect their lost children. “I sincerely regretted that our Special Services had not dealt with this swindler effectively when we encountered him in 1994,” said Ratnikov. “After all, we could have cleared society of trash like him back then and protected the Beslan mothers and many other people from being defrauded.”

W hen the throne beneath Yeltsin began to wobble in 1993, bureaucrats from the administration came to Ratnikov with their questions about which side they should lean toward and where they should place their bets in order not to lose out in the political intrigues. His answer to all of them was, “Guys, place your bets on the Fatherland, and you’ll be respected by both your friends and your opponents. This way you won’t lose.” He openly pointed out one of the main znakovye priznaki, but they thought that he was hiding extrasensory information about the future and playing political games. However, Ratnikov’s group really did not have any authentic psychic information about the shelling of the Parliament and other impending events .

His own disappointment with the political and social course on which their ruling elite had embarked grew steadily. Yeltsin, who was still concerned about the Russian people and still trying to do something for them at the end of the 1980s, had turned into “a reigning petty tyrant. Power had completely corrupted him, and he thought only of his own greatness and vodka. His entire inner circle was primarily engaged in pillaging the nation. I was disgusted of having to take part in this and I refused an elite apartment in the center of Moscow and a summer dacha in the fashionable Moscow suburb of Zarechye, and I absolutely refused to accept bribes or take any part in shady commercial operations. As a result I became a thorn in the Kremlin’s side.”

Ratnikov tried to do analytical work, studied the probabilities of threats, assessed social probabilities, and submitted his reports to his superiors. They reacted with irritation to his memos, because this would have required that they think about the country and take action, and the higher-ups had other concerns. There were remarkable and honest people among them too, but they had no influence at all. Yeltsin was in charge—he was the only one who mattered. Boris Ratnikov’s personal crisis coincided with the crisis of power and authority in Russia and the shelling of the Parliament in October 1993.

The day before the Russian White House initially came under assault, Barsukov ordered me to investigate a new weapon for crowd control that had been recommended to him by a government official. I thought that it might be some psychotronic weapon from the classified research institutes that I had no part developing. When the inventor arrived with the device, we discovered that it was a powerful laser intended for cutting up objects. I immediately sent the inventor and the device away, and told the bosses what I thought about it in no uncertain terms.

I could not endure this any longer. I did not side with Parliament, but after all the blood that had been spilled, after the outrages against human conscience and the Russian Constitution, I could no longer remain in the service. I wrote an official report tending my resignation. But I did not bring it to Barsukov, I had the secretary deliver it.

An hour later, the secretary brought me a decree about my dismissal signed by Yeltsin, with no indication of the reason. For some crafty reasons I was being discharged, not dismissed, and was to be kept in reserve temporarily. I was given verbal instructions to turn over my safe, and told that I would be placed under house arrest. My phone would be tapped, and I would be put under overt surveillance. Because it was understood that I was respected by my colleagues in the KGB-FSB, and could always reach some agreement with them, I was placed under the surveillance of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The top leadership was in fear over their dark secrets. I knew too much, and they were afraid that I would switch over to the opposition and pass classified information to them. I had no intention of doing this because I understood that the opposition was no better than the central leadership. I did what I had advised others to do: I placed my bet on the Fatherland, which was the only right and honest decision at the time.

I was under overt surveillance round the clock for a few weeks. December was coming to an end, and it was snowing. One day I was sitting at home and looking through the window at the surveillance car. The two young guys sitting in it were totally stiff from the cold. I poured some hot tea into a thermos, made sandwiches and took them to the frozen subordinates guarding me. The next day I went to the Kremlin and shamed my former colleagues about using two brigades of police to watch over me while there were so many criminal groups around.

Ratnikov remained in this situation, under surveillance and out of work from November 1993 until May 1994. Time softened the intensity of the conflict, and the opposition was crushed. His own outlook also changed somewhat, though not in any moral sense as his outlook on and assessment of the situation remained the same throughout. But he no longer considered his own actions to be so correct. If everyone who didn’t like the present state of politics stuck their noses up in the air and left, then who would remain? “I thought about it, and came to the conclusion that perhaps it would be truer to remain in my place and try to do whatever was in my power to improve the situation. It might not be much, but I would do it anyway!”

Ratnikov went to the Kremlin in May. He had been dismissed from the Secret Service due to staff cutbacks—his position of deputy chief was eliminated the day before he actually left. He met with Korzhakov in the Kremlin and was offered a shot of vodka and asked to work as Korzhakov’s advisor in the President’s Secret Service. He thought it over and accepted the offer. “I was given an office, a government switchboard telephone, and a car, and I began working as an analyst again. But now there were obstacles arising constantly in our routine work with psychics. To a large extent, this was due to the ruling clique, who feared that we could read their minds, and almost all of them were guilty of something.” One wonders if any in the US Congress worried about this with regard to the US psychic spying efforts .

Nonetheless, they did receive curious data from their psychics from time to time. “For example, when we asked why our leadership did not support new technology, the answer we received was that the leadership’s spiritual and moral levels were very low, their interests so mercenary, and their inner worlds so impoverished, that they were incapable of comprehending the higher global tasks of saving our civilization. Spiritual and moral issues were too abstract for them, whereas for the Cosmos ethical questions are primary.” Again, one might consider whether such issues were (and are) the same for those in the US Government or even Corporate America.

With regard to Yeltsin, Ratnikov and his group were told that Yeltsin’s rise to power was not accidental. The populace supported him at that point, but the time would come when people would be disgusted, remembering what he had done. At the time he needed to be susceptible to the same deficiencies that prevailed in Russian society, and “he must not be different from the majority, because people actually do not want a radiant miracle, and would throw stones at it if it suddenly appeared.” Yeltsin was a perfect match to the historical situation and corresponded to the overall intellectual and cultural level of the country at the time. A nation virtually always has the leader it deserves. “It was the same for us—we got what we deserved.”

His group also worked on emergency situations and accidents. Several days after the Kursk submarine disaster on August 12, 2000, they were able to obtain information about the reasons for the accident with the help of ESP. The accident occurred because the crew was not trained sufficiently to test a new torpedo. A lack of technical readiness resulted in the explosion—a torpedo blew up inside the submarine. The press wrote a lot about the Kursk colliding with another submarine. There was no such collision—ordinary sloppiness, laziness and just showing off were the causes. “If they had assessed all the probable scenarios, the accident would not have happened,” said Ratnikov. “But these are technical details, although they are bound up with organizational issues.” The most resonant words in the information their psychic operative received was a signal that the wreck of the Kursk was not an accident, it was a critical warning to all people, “Stop! If you do not stop acting the way you do, technology-based accidents will occur with increasing frequency, and their scale will grow larger and more awful until they reach global magnitude!”

“Simply improving technical control ‘somewhere out there’ is not enough to prevent such accidents. All of us need to work constantly to raise the level of group consciousness. Ideas are like a virus, they invisibly penetrate into the consciousness of people in our environment according to the concept known as the ‘information transfer field.’ Even if the person does nothing to disseminate information and simply tries to comprehend it, he is a participant in the process because others will respond to the ideas that arose in his mind. ”

A t the same time Boris Ratnikov’s parapsychological program was happening in the Federal Security Service and the Presidential Security Service, a new military ESP program started in Russia. The pressure of dull Marxist-Leninist ideology was no longer applied—the climate for exploring ESP had changed. The creation of this program was not elicited by any particular strategic confrontation, but was the natural manifestation of exciting possibilities that had been reawakened. It was for this very reason that the main objective of the most extensive military ESP program in the world, begun in the 1990s in the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the USSR and Russia, was not ESP in and of itself, but the investigation and development of extraordinary human potential. Psychic studies and military applications of ESP methods in this program were means of developing human potential, creating the human of the future, and cultivating super-geniuses as is normally understood. The program was supported by many major government officials, including Soviet Prime Minister Valentin Pavlov, several chiefs of the General Staff, secretaries of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, and a host of the most eminent Academician scientists of Russia’s Academy of Sciences.

The creator and head of this program, General Alexei Savin, tells us about it in the next chapter.

3. When Russians use two names, as in “Mikhail Sergeyevich,” this is not what westerners would do when using middle names (i.e. Mary Ann). They are using a patronymic, which is a modified name of a father. In the example of Gorbachev’s name, Sergeyevich means “son of Sergey.” Think of this as an extended first name.

4. This version is universally accepted among the personnel of Russian security services and politicians possessing reliable information, as well as in many social circles. For example, this declaration was made repeatedly by the current head of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, Gennady Zyuganov: http://www.newsru.com/russia/17Aug2001/zuganov.html . In fact, most Russians see Mikhail Gorbachev as the reason for the demise of the USSR. While few in the West see it this way, many Russians, who know Gorbachev and his politics better, are convinced of it. According to a survey by the Public Opinion Foundation, 44% of Russia’s population consider him to be responsible for the Soviet Union’s collapse: http://bd.fom.ru/report/cat/societas/image/collapse_FSU/of19953203. More than once, the issue of Gorbachev being prosecuted for his actions during the coup of 1991 has been discussed widely. Thus, in an interview about Gorbachev’s guilt, former vice-president of the Military Panel of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, Lieutenant General of Justice Anatoly Ukolov stated openly, “I am convinced and truly believe that this issue should be raised as a criminal case.” http://www.kp.ru/daily/23758/56414/ .

5. Further information on this subject can be found in The Kremlin Plot, whose co-authors are Russia’s former public prosecutor-general, Valentin Stepankov, and his deputy, Evgeny Lisov. Another good source can be found in documents from the 1992 hearings conducted by a governmental commission in the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Federation, directed by Representative and Deputy Minister of Security Sergei Stepashin, who is also an expert on the role of the KGB during the events of the coup in August, 1991, and in other documents.