He slips, too, very skilfully between registers in tone. There is a sort of gonzo spirit in his approach which sometimes lends an air of farce to his findings, but few more earnest investigative journalists would have had the brilliant bloody-mindedness to get what he has got and hardly any would have the wit to present it with as much clarity. Once he gets a fact, he clings to it, interrogates it, makes it relate to other facts. He affects an air of very British vagueness that wins over his uniformed interviewees, but he has a genius for detail. Ronson is happy to present himself as slow on the uptake in his quest, not least because it often seems so incredible. Channon's ideas, unbelievably, became current in certain branches of the US army and, in bizarre, mutant form, have been employed in the current war on terror. Their only weapons would be 'discordant sounds' and 'psycho-electric' guns that could direct positive energy into crowds. Having imbibed some of the more extreme Californian philosophies, Channon approached military top brass with the notion of a 'First Earth Battalion' of 'warrior monks' - soldiers who would carry with them into hostile countries 'symbolic animals' such as baby lambs, learn to greet people with 'sparkly eyes' and give the enemy 'an automatic hug'. Geller led him to Stubblebine and Stubblebine put him in touch with Lieutenant Colonel (retd) Jim Channon, who first started the madness.Ĭhannon had witnessed horrors as a young officer in Vietnam and he believed that the army required a new approach to combat. It began with Uri Geller, who Ronson interviewed three years ago about his claims that he was a 'psychic spy' working for US intelligence. Once he had this simple thought in mind, one thing led to another. There was, he believed, some deep-seated irrationality at the heart of America's war on terror. Ronson started out on his surrealist quest with a hunch.

Terrifyingly, however, all this - and much more - is shown, as he says, to be true. Or that the Pentagon's playlist of torture music for use at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib was, in reality, a juvenile attempt at satire. Or if the existence of a secret unit in which psyops personnel stared at goats for hours on end with the aim of killing them was actually a figment of a warped author's imagination. If he had not, for example, discovered that there was a Major General Albert Stubblebine III directing operations from Arlington, Virginia, who firmly believes he can walk through walls. It would be far, far better for all of us, you can't help thinking, if it turned out that Jon Ronson had actually made up his entire, wonderful investigation into 'psychological warfare' techniques used by America's elite Special Forces.

As you read on, it is hard to shift the impact of those five small words from your mind.

The men who stare at goats book