It’s hard to believe that so recently, “serious” people would fund research of literal mumbo jumbo. By all means, the 90s was a different time epistemologically. We aren’t immune to this today, far from it, though the hoaxes have become way more believable in my assessment.
The CIA has been this way since basically its inception. It's where a bunch of lead-lined brains are given unreasonable budgets and discretion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directorate_of_Science_and_Tec...
Yeah pretty much this unfortunately. Imagine some person tasked and genuinely interested in helping the united states but they do it all with subterfuge which backfires more than it helps anything. Such a person must experience a lot of cognitive dissonance and would generally be susceptible to conspiracy theories such as this which only reinforces the cycle of meddling.