From the
bestselling author of Them: Adventures with Extremists, the
"hilarious and unsettling" (The Boston Globe) true story
about what happened when a small group of men—highly placed within
the US military, government, and intelligence services—began
believing in very strange things.
In 1979 a secret
unit was established by the most gifted minds within the U.S. Army.
Defying all known accepted military practice—and indeed, the laws
of physics—they believed that a soldier could adopt a cloak of
invisibility, pass cleanly through walls, and, perhaps most
chillingly, kill goats just by staring at them.
Entrusted with
defending America from all known adversaries, they were the First
Earth Battalion. And they really weren't joking. What's more, they're
back and fighting the War on Terror.
With firsthand
access to the leading players in the story, Ronson traces the
evolution of these bizarre activities over the past three decades and
shows how they are alive today within the U.S. Department of Homeland
Security and in postwar Iraq. Why are they blasting Iraqi prisoners
of war with the theme tune to Barney the Purple Dinosaur? Why have
100 debleated goats been secretly placed inside the Special Forces
Command Center at Fort Bragg, North Carolina? How was the U.S.
military associated with the mysterious mass suicide of a strange
cult from San Diego? The Men Who Stare at Goats answers these
and many more questions.