Jon Ronson

The film follows a reporter, Bob Wilton, who stumbles into the story of a lifetime when he meets a special forces operator, Lyn Cassady. As they embark on a new mission, Lyn reveals his twenty-year involvement in this top secret, psychic military unit and shares details of their activities, each more bizarre than the last (including staring at goats in order to stop their hearts psychokinetically).

The book examines connections between paranormal military programs and psychological techniques being used for interrogation in the War on Terror. The book traces the evolution of these covert activities over the past three decades, and sees how they are alive today within U.S. Homeland Security and post-war Iraq. It examines the use of the theme tune to Barney the Dinosaur on Iraqi prisoners-of-war, the smuggling of a hundred de-bleated goats into the Special Forces command centre at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and the connection between the U.S. military and the mass-suicide of a new religious movement from San Diego.[