While the new movie, “The Men Who Stare at Goats” continues a strong showing at the box office, viewers are left to sort out real story behind the U.S. Army’s use of psychics to gather intelligence.

One person who knows where Hollywood fantasy has replaced reality is retired Major Paul H. Smith, PhD. Smith spent seven years as a U.S. Army remote viewer tasked with using his psychic abilities to spy on the Soviets and other Army intelligence targets: “[The Men Who Stare at Goats] conflates all kinds of different things, puts them all together, meshes them together, and comes up with what apparently seems to be a fairly seamless account of all of these things being related to everything else. That’s not an accurate portrayal.” says Smith.

While Smith takes his work and the results he produced very seriously, he’s finds the book behind the movie lacking: “...the book is really more tabloid journalism than straight-ahead journalism. It’s not investigated journalism in a classic sense. It’s getting some interesting facts, pulling out the juiciest parts, sewing them together in a completely different garment than they originally were, presenting them in a way that isn’t true to the way the whole thing was done.”  Full Article