The WASHINGTONIAN MAGAZINE   February 1988

PENTAGON GROUP INSTALLS SDI WITHOUT PERMISSION OF TOP BRASS

   Don’t tell Mikhail Gorbachev, but a small group at the Pentagon has already deployed its own SDI. 

     Members of the Pentagon Meditation Club aren’t sitting still while Congress wrangles with Ronald Reagan over the Strategic Defense Initiative.  Through meditation and concentration they are constructing a peace shield they call the “Spiritual Defense Initiative.”

     Ed Winchester, a systems accountant in the comptroller’s office of the assistant secretary of Defense and the president (and founder) of The Pentagon Meditation Club, explains; “Every person has their own personal peace shield around them.  It can be stronger or weaker depending on your state of mind.  When your peace shield is strong, it can protect you.  But when we project divisive thoughts toward our adversaries – the Soviets – we weaken the peace shield and literally create mental barriers that have to be taken down.”

     Winchester’s group encourages workers at the Pentagon to learn and practice the meditation techniques necessary to learn and practice the meditation techniques necessary to strengthen one’s personal peace shield and to create “coherence in the brain.  The theory is that strong individual peace shields will merge together to form one huge, very powerful peace shield.  The group’s slogan: “Love is the ultimate first-strike capability.”… 

     …Winchester concedes that the Spiritual Defense Initiative may be a little too unusual for many Pentagon employees.  “But,” he says “it’s only far-out and unbelievable until you come into direct contact with it and see what’s happening.  “He says that there are already several high-ranking military officers, committed to the project, and that the Meditation Club is launching a special program to offer “home meditation kits” to admirals and generals who are interested but who, Winchester says. “don’t like to come to group meetings and be instructed. 

By Steven D. Kaye