What does the Army really do with goats?

Cover of Men Who Stare at Goats

When I was a reporter in the Washington bureau of Jane’s Defence Weekly, it was my job to uncover new things that the U.S. military was up to. By far the most tedious way of doing this was to comb through the FedBizOpps website, where the government publicly has to solicit pretty much everything it wants to buy. But for every sexy new missile or helicopter program you’d come across, there would be 10,000 requests for office furniture or lawnmowing services. But that one in 10,000 made it worth the time, so about once a week I got an extra cup of coffee and set to it.

One day, in 2005, I came across this solicitation, from the U.S. Army Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg, N.C.:

88 — LIVE, MALE, CAPRINES (GOATS)

This caught my attention. I had just read The Men Who Stare at Goats, and was blown away by the incredible story of serious military research done on the paranormal, and that it was ever considered that soldiers might walk into battle holding baby lambs to pacify enemies. And that the Army had a program called “Jedi Warrior.” And, of course, as per the title of the book, that researchers experimented on how to kill goats simply by staring at them. The research was being done, the book said, by U.S. Army Special Operations Command at Ft. Bragg.

So that listing obviously rang a bell. It went on: “The US Army has a a requirement for Caprines (goats) to be delivered to Fort Bragg, NC as required during the period 1 June 2002 thru 31 May 2003 with (2) one-year option periods. The caprines must be live, male, healthy, weighing fifty (50) pounds or more.”

Curious, I called the public affairs officer at Ft Bragg, and asked what it was about. He didn’t know — and, to my surprise, hadn’t heard of the book. I also emailed the author, Jon Ronson, through his website, thinking he might find the solicitation funny. (Unfortunately all of this email traffic was on my janes account, which has been lost, so I’m paraphrasing.)

I heard back quickly from Ronson, who said “Wow — so it might be true.” Which wasn’t the response I expected to get from an author of a purportedly nonfiction book. But as True/Slant’s Dan Kois reports, the opening title of the movie, opening Friday, reads: “More of this is true than you would believe.” So the filmmakers seem to be making no claims about airtight facts.

And then, I heard back from the public affairs officer at Ft. Bragg. He had found out what they used the goats for, but asked me not to report it: They were used for ballistics testing. Apparently goat flesh is a close enough approximation to human flesh that when researchers want to figure out how a human might react to being shot in various situations, well… (This was not a secret, anyway, plenty of people have discussed it.)

The army has solicited for goats lots of times, from at least 2002 to 2006. One time, for example, the army was looking for 150 goats, and specified that “[g]oats can not be fed the night prior to delivery.” Would cut down on the mess, I imagine. But I did a search on fedbizopps now, which lets you search for solicitations back 365 days, and found that there have been no goat orders in the past year.

So: does the army have a better means of ballistics testing now? Did they get in trouble with animal rights people? Are they raising their own goats now? Anyone reading this at Ft Bragg, drop a line…