The men who stare at credibility

An effectively infinite budget free from public scrutiny is a helluva drug.

That's what they want you to think. In reality the psychic goat explosion test worked, but there's a catch. It only works on goats.

Get a small monkey or child to ride a goat towards the designated target. Problem solved
- Ya goat shrapnel is no joke

I don't think the KGB felt like the CIA were always ahead of them.

Aldrich Ames is an interesting character to read about for example.

Context?

The CIA is often attributed great cunning and intelligence, both in popular culture and by their enemies.
In reality, they were busy during the Cold War dosing up on LSD and trying to cultivate psychic powers, including tests to try to kill goats with mind-powers
- Counterpoint; you're more likely to only hear about the things that didn't work.
  ...the things that do work are important, so kept quiet.
- And, consequently, the movie The Men Who Stare at Goats
- Is that all they were doing?
- They were both. They were the organization that both spiked their own punch bowl with LSD and that overthrew several democratically elected leaders for American interests.
There was an excellent movie called The Men Who Stare at Goats that'll get you up to speed, just remember it's a 100% factual documentary.
Now that I think about it, if NCD had to make a movie, it would end up exactly like The Men Who Stare at Goats.
- The movie is a loose adaption of Jon Ronsons book and documentrary series which is a 100% factual documentary.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Men_Who_Stare_at_Goats

The CIA didn't just spin their wheels, they knew something.

They knew if they didn't use up the budget they'd lose it for the next year
- If they were a business or a public school maybe. But it's an intelligence agency in a nation that gives its military so much money that said military is begging for cuts, but no one's listening because "Well I own stock in a weapons company and I'm in congress, lol."
There was a time when human psychic powers were a legitimate line of scientific inquiry. The ultimate conclusion was "nah, never mind", but the CIA probably got a whiff of the more mainstream research and wanted to know how to weaponize it.
From what we know of Mk Ultra, their "experiments" barely deserve the term. No controls, no good statistical models, and not even a clearly described hypothesis. It's unlikely they figured out anything of value, and probably caused unnecessary human suffering along the way.
- You do realize that more recently evidence for Psi is actually proving valid, it's merely being resisted - https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/out-of-the-darkness/202302/why-some-scientists-resist-the-evidence-for-psi
  https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/debunking-myths-the-mind/201804/the-biology-telepathy
  tl;dr Psi is real, it's just being held to an unfair standard.

In reality the Soviets deliberately spread rumours that they were doing psychic shit (which they did to some very limited extent) and that lead to a panicky CIA going "Aw, shit. They must be unto something. Let's dump billions into paranormal research."