CIA's not so 'fair game' of spies, lies, and fMRIs?

Years before Valerie Plame was 'outed' as an undercover CIA operative, another government employee bearing an untold three-letter legacy was allegedly dragged through the mud and eventually marched before the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The story was told in a series of Pulitzer prize winning articles by New York Times writer Jeff Gerth, and cited by the Congressional Research Service history of the Clinton Administration's China-gate affair. Ken Timmerman of NewsMax added a few alleged insider details to the tale, which was largely forgotten until British author Jon Ronson's expose' of high-strangeness in the US government, The Men Who Stare at Goats.

The strange tale of spies, lies, and now, fMRIs, begins with the Internet, and a long list of the 'unusual suspects' who were pursuing alternative means to an end: paranormal access to the top secrets of the defense industry.

Ron Pandolfi, the CIA scientist who challenged the political climate of the Clinton Administration, by warning of the danger of missile technology transfer to China by US contractors, had moved from the real world of Chinese rocket science into the cloak and dagger shadows of an imaginary friend. When Dan T. Smith, the eccentric son of President Eisenhower's former tax advisor from Harvard, claimed he had been tasked by Pandolfi for reasons clear only to Smith himself, Pandolfi winked, and the rest of the world yawned in disinterest. It did seem, to all concerned (or at least those on the receiving end of Smith's voluminous Internet postings) that Ron had little if any real interest in Smith's tales of end-of-the-world eschatology and CIA intrigue.