![\"kholkhov\"](\"http:\/\/www.echonyc.com\/~horn\/unbelievable\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/kholkhov.jpg\" "\\"kholkhov\\"")
\n\u201cWe will have a part-time relationship with a number of graduate students in psychology at Duke this year\u2014more than before. Including a former Russian Intelligence officer, Nikolai Khokhlov.\u201d – J. B. Rhine,\u00a0September 13, 1965.<\/p>\n
When I came across the letter which included that snippet naturally I thought. \u00a0‘Well, isn’t that<\/em> interesting?’ \u00a0I looked into Khokhlov’s story and learned he wasn’t just a former intelligence officer, but also a would-assassin.<\/p>\n <\/span>Eleven years before that letter was \u00a0written, when Khokhlov was a 31-year-old secret police officer working out of Moscow, he was sent to Germany to murder the anti-communist leader Georgi Sergeyevich Okolovich.\u00a0 His wife Yanina begged him not to commit murder, but he didn’t know how to get out of it.\u00a0 He’d already refused to kill someone once before and he knew he couldn’t refuse again.\u00a0 Khokhlov went to Frankfurt and early in the evening on February 18, 1954 he knocked on Okolovich’s door.\u00a0 But instead of killing him he said, \u201cI am a captain in the MGB\u2014the Ministry of State Security,\u00a0 I have been sent to Frankfurt to organize your assassination.\u00a0 I don’t want to carry it out and I need your help.\u201d\u00a0 Okolovich contacted the Americans.\u00a0 Khokhlov, who couldn’t go back to Moscow now, left Yanina and his 18-month-old son Aleksander behind and defected to the United States.\u00a0 He saw his son again several times after being pardoned by President Yeltsin, and he met his grandson on his second visit.<\/p>\n Khokhlov was working as a radio editor and broadcaster in 1963 when he first wrote Rhine about his encounters with paranormal phenomena.\u00a0 Rhine encouraged him to enroll at Duke, which he did, ultimately getting a PhD in psychology. \u00a0I emailed briefly with Khokhlov. \u00a0While at Duke, Khokhlov monitored Soviet involvement in parapsychology for Rhine, and when he got his PhD Rhine offered him a position on the staff.\u00a0 But by then Khokhlov had become disillusioned with Rhine’s approach which focused on \u201cpure statistical manipulations without touching the inevitable issue of human consciousness and its metaphysical essence.\u201d\u00a0 Khokhlov accepted an offer of a professorship from the California State University in San Bernardino instead.<\/p>\n I didn’t have the heart to ask\u00a0Khokhlov\u00a0about the wife and son who were left behind in Russia (why I will never be good at reporting certain kinds of stories). I know that he remarried, and had three more children, including a son who sadly died. And he retired from CSU\/San Bernardino in 1993. \u00a0I would have liked to have gotten to know\u00a0Khokhlov\u00a0better. His email was very kind and generous and it would have been great to interview him in person, and he was willing, but it wasn’t possible for me to go out West for a number of reasons. Which is unfortunate. \u00a0He died in September, 2007, seven months after we emailed. \u00a0I have a file on him, which includes testimony which he gave to the Committee on Un-American Activities in 1956, and some articles about attempts on his life after he defected.<\/p>\n Khokhlov said he was very close to the Rhines for a while, but he eventually severed the relationship. \u00a0He ended his last email to me with:<\/p>\n “There are too many speculations about the field of parapsychology in the popular media, but very little real substance in the analyzes of that extremely important view upon human nature. \u00a0Actually, that field is not “para” anymore, but while the paralyzing grip of behaviorism is weakening, the truly scientific components of “para” are becoming the pillars of psychological research today. Alas, not in the USA, but everywhere in the sobering world. \u00a0Again, I wish you all the success that such a topic deserves.”<\/p>\n Khokhlov died on September 17, 2007.<\/p>\n The pictures are from a November 20, 1954 Saturday Evening Post article titled I Would Not Murder for the Soviets<\/em>, written by Dr.\u00a0Khokhlov.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cWe will have a part-time relationship with a number of graduate students in psychology at Duke this year\u2014more than before. Including a former Russian Intelligence … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[5,11],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/piV6u-eq","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.echonyc.com\/~horn\/unbelievable\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/894"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.echonyc.com\/~horn\/unbelievable\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.echonyc.com\/~horn\/unbelievable\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.echonyc.com\/~horn\/unbelievable\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.echonyc.com\/~horn\/unbelievable\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=894"}],"version-history":[{"count":30,"href":"https:\/\/www.echonyc.com\/~horn\/unbelievable\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/894\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3283,"href":"https:\/\/www.echonyc.com\/~horn\/unbelievable\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/894\/revisions\/3283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.echonyc.com\/~horn\/unbelievable\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.echonyc.com\/~horn\/unbelievable\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.echonyc.com\/~horn\/unbelievable\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"kfamily\"](\"http:\/\/www.echonyc.com\/~horn\/unbelievable\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/kfamily.jpg\" "\\"kfamily\\"")
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