Free Psychic Warrior by David Morehouse Page A

placement for me in the Washington, D.C., area. He couldn’t talk about the assignment over the phone, he said, because it was classified. He quickly arranged a flight from Savannah to the District of Columbia for me to interview with what I considered a very odd unit. I stayed at the Holiday Inn next to the Hoffman Building in Alexandria, Virginia, where I received several cryptic phone calls during the night telling me what I was to do, what I was not to do, and how and
where I would be contacted the following morning. This was a real cloak-and-dagger act, which I found comical. I thought these guys were kidding when they told me to walk out the east entrance of the hotel at precisely seven A.M. with a copy of The Washington Post under my right arm.
    I was an infantry officer, and in my wildest dreams I’d never imagined that there were parts of our army that conducted business in this way. I knew lots of intelligence officers, but they never mentioned crap like this. And then I remembered having dinner with Colonel Bartley E. Day, the professor of military science at BYU, and his wife back in Provo. The dinner conversation had centered around which branch of the army I should choose: artillery, armor, infantry, and so on. I had already unofficially made my choice to be an infantry officer, but we were kicking the issue around nonetheless. Colonel Day said to Debbie and me, “Whatever you do, don’t become an intelligence officer. There are aspects of that career choice that are very dark and without honor or integrity. Do anything but that.”
    Unfortunately, I didn’t heed Colonel Day’s warning. My choices over the next few days set into motion events that would bring to an end all that I considered normal.
    I was interviewed and examined by a group of military intelligence folks, assigned to a bizarre unit called the Secret Army of Northern Virginia, or SANV. Its actual code name was Sacred Cape, and I’d never experienced anything like it. Actually, if someone had told me, while I was still in the Rangers, that a unit like this existed, I would have laughed in his face. But it did.
    I underwent numerous psychological tests, written as well as oral. Supposedly, these were intended to enable the unit’s psychologist to develop a “psychological profile” on each member of the unit. This profile, used to determine the candidate’s emotional and psychological well-being, gave the commander inside information into exactly what made each member of his team tick—how far he could push you, what he could reasonably ask you to do before
you balked, etc. It was peculiar, but I went along with it, as much out of curiosity as anything else.
    I guess my appearance and psychological profile fit the unit’s mold; I was asked that day to join. I agreed, again as much out of curiosity as anything. The day I arrived back at Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah, two young men in cheap suits showed up at the Ranger battalion headquarters. They were there to initiate the processing of my orders to a classified assignment. This was my first awakening to the power of such units. Under normal circumstances, it would take weeks to get permanent change-of-station orders. These guys got it done in a matter of hours. I was out-processed and en route within two days.
    Once again, I left Debbie alone with the children to pack up and move while I spent six weeks at the Combined Arms and Services Staff School at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, before reporting to D.C. for my new assignment as a “spook.”
    As I settled in, I found the new unit intriguing for a while. But that soon wore off. For the first time, I wasn’t able to tell Debbie exactly what I was doing in the army. I was expected to lie to her about what the unit did and how it did it, as well as what I was doing there. And I didn’t just grin and shuffle my feet when she asked questions about the unit, I did exactly what they