by Armen Victoria
Extract from: Lobster Magazine
Issue 31 - 1996
from
MindControlForums Website
At the beginning the operational aspects of
RV were somewhat mixed
with the research and studies; in later years, they were separated
from each other.
The CIA’s disclosure of its work in RV began in
July 1995 when the agency declassified and released documents
concerning their sponsorship of their 1970s program at Stanford
Research Institute in Melano Park, CA, to
Russell Targ.
The CIA announcement On September 6,
1995, the Public Affairs Bureau of the
Central Intelligence Agency
released the following statement regarding that agency’s role in
Remote Viewing:
’As mandated by Congress, CIA is reviewing available
information and past research programs concerning parapsychological
phenomena, mainly "Remote Viewing" to determine whether they might
have any utility for intelligence collection.
- CIA sponsored
research on this subject in the 1970s.
- At that time, the program,
always considered speculative and controversial, was determined to
be unpromising.
- CIA is also in the process of declassifying the
program’s history.
We expect to complete the current
review this autumn and to make a recommendation regarding any
future work by the US Intelligence Community in this area.’
Pursuant to the statement, and at the
request of the Senate Appropriations Committee, CIA’s Office of
Research and Development [ORD], in June 1995 commissioned the
American Institute of Research (AIR) to conduct the review of the
CIA’s Star Gate program, whose mandate was to explore
and exploit
a parapsychological phenomenon known as ’remote viewing’ in support
of the US Intelligence community.
The initial mission assigned to
Star Gate was three-fold;
1. To assess similar foreign programs in
this field.
2. Through contractors to conduct research
into the existence, as well as cause and effect of this phenomenon.
3. To seek and see if RV
could be used as an intelligence tool. Initially, all RV
programs were suspended in spring 1995, mainly due
to a shift of policy in RV.
Results of multiple viewings obtained
used to be summarized in a three or four page report, which were
then sent to the original commissioning agency. But, from 1994,
recipient agencies of RV reports were formally asked to evaluate the
accuracy and value of the report contents. Seemingly, results did
not meet the updated, intelligence standard requirements.
Research evaluation,
’To evaluate the research program, a
"blue-ribbon" panel was assembled. The panel included two noted
experts in the area of parapsychology: Dr. Jessica Utts, a Professor
of Statistics at the University of California at Davis, and Dr.
Raymond Hyman, a Professor of Psychology at the University of
Oregon.
In addition to their extensive credentials, they were
selected to represent both sides of the paranormal controversy: Dr. Utts has published articles that view paranormal interpretation
positively, while Dr. Hyman was selected to represent a more
skeptical position’.
In addition AIR included two of its
senior scientists; Dr. Lincoln Moses, an Emeritus Professor at
Stanford University, to provide statistical advice, and Dr. David
A. Goslin, President of AIR, as coordinator of the research efforts.
’Panel members were asked to review all laboratory experiments and
meta-analytic reviews conducted as part of the research program;
this consisted of approximately 80 separate publications, many of
which are summary reports of multiple experiments.
In the course of this review, special attention was given to those
studies that,
(a) provided the strongest evidence for the remote
viewing phenomena, and
(b) represented new experiments controlling
for methodological artifacts identified in earlier reviews.
Separate
written reviews were prepared by Dr. Utts and Dr. Hyman. They
exchanged reviews with other panel members who then tried to reach a
consensus’.
The AIR Executive Summary makes the following
conclusions on the research studies conducted in various
laboratories:
1. A statistically
significant laboratory effort has been demonstrated in the sense
that hits occur more often than chance.
2. It is unclear whether the observed effects can
unambiguously be attributed to the paranormal ability of the
remote viewers as opposed to characteristics of the judges or of
the target or some other characteristic of the methods used. Use
of the same remote viewers, the same judge, and the same target
photographs makes it impossible to identify their independent
effects.
3. Evidence has not been provided that clearly
demonstrates that the causes of hits are due to the operation of
paranormal phenomena; the laboratory experiments have not
identified the origins or nature of the remote viewing
phenomenon, if, indeed, it exists at all. Operational evaluation
To assess the operational value of the remote viewing in
intelligence gathering, AIR applied a three fold strategy.
First the relevant research literature
was reviewed to identify whether the conditions applying during
intelligence gathering would reasonably permit application of the
remote viewing paradigm. Second, members of three groups were
involved in the program were interviewed:
(1) end users of the
information
(2) the remote viewers providing the reports
(3) the program manager. Third, feedback information
obtained from end users judgments of the accuracy and value
of the remote viewing reports was assessed
The results of these findings are
summarized and illustrated in the following conclusions.
1. The conditions under which
the remote viewing phenomenon is observed in laboratory settings
do not apply in intelligence gathering situations. For example,
viewers cannot be provided with feedback and targets may not
display the characteristics needed to produce hits.
2. The end users indicated that, although some accuracy
was observed with regard to broad background characteristics,
the remote viewing reports failed to produce the concrete,
specific information valued in intelligence gathering.
3. The information provided was inconsistent, inaccurate
with regard to specifics, and required substantial subjective
interpretation.
4. In no case had the information provided ever been used
to guide intelligence operations. Thus, remote viewing failed to
produce actionable intelligence. The AIR report concludes that
although statistically significant effects have been observed in
the laboratory, nevertheless, it remains unclear if remote
viewing exists as a paranormal phenomenon. It further argues
that the laboratory experiments have failed to provide
scientifically sound evidence as to the nature and the origins
of the remote viewing.
Therefore, AIR suggests that these
observations provide a compelling argument against the
continuation of the remote viewing program in the intelligence
community:
’Thus, we conclude that
continued use of remote viewing in intelligence gathering is
not warranted’. & It should be noted that the AIR did not
have access to all sensitive, operational documents, which,
I am confidently informed, are numerous. Neither could the
time frame within which AIR compiled its report be
considered sufficient.
As Dr. Marcello Truzzi commented:
’..the recent strange CIA/AIR report which on the one hand
indicates about a 15% above chance guessing rate while
somehow managing to conclude that RV is not operationally
useful (bad enough but also dismissing the many hits in the
operational, non-experimental efforts with RV).
Given the low reliability of so
many espionage methods and sources, one would have expected
them to be delighted with 15% over chance. Obviously, the
conclusions were dictated in advance of the evaluation study
and were mostly politically motivated’. - Dr. Edwin C. May,
Director of Research for Remote Viewing Programs for both
the CIA and the DIA, also believes that the AIR Report was
politically motivated, and neither the AIR nor the CIA were
given enough time to prepare the document.
Dr. May also believes that the reasons
for the cancellation of the RV programs were mainly due to the
geopolitical shifts, and a review of priorities by the intelligence
community.
He speculates on the possibility of maintaining a nucleus
of Remote Viewers in a classified level, and stated that while there
were half dozen Remote Viewers involved in the program, due to the
classified nature of the information he could not name them.
He further commented that Dr.
Jack Vorona, Director of the DIA’s RV programme, was on `e of the
Directors who had intimate knowledge of the programme and strongly
supported it.
Ingo Swann, who retired from the program in 1989,
believes the program took on several individuals and made it quite
busy to run; and, that some of the people involved did not have the
high standards required.
Ed Dames was one such individual who was
imposed on him for political reasons. According to Swann, Dames was
one student that he would rather not have had.
Background and history
Before 1971, when the American Intelligence community began
investigating the fact that the Soviet Union was heavily involved in
so-called ’Psychic Research’, the CIA had conducted some cursory
investigation into this matter.
Around 1970 the CIA discovered that
the Soviets were spending approximately 60 million roubles per year
in psychic research. (The Soviets used a Czech neologism, psychotronics, for their research.)
By 1975, this sum had increased
to 300 million Roubles - not a trivial sum to spend on researching a
controversial subject. It was not so much the Soviet research which
raised CIA’s concern, but its operational applications. It was
obvious that the Soviet’s tight security control, preventing any
information leakage, meant that they must have had some serious
breakthrough.
CIA analysts were faced with a dilemma: on one hand they were ill at
ease with the idea of explaining to the main scientific advisors of
the National Security Council (NSC) that the KGB and
GRU (Soviet Military Intelligence) were researching topics
considered in US to be speculative and controversial at best. On the
other, they were afraid that the Soviets might win this race, as
they had done with the Sputnik.
Finally, they came up with a
solution. By coining the phrase ’Psychic Warfare Gap’ they convinced the
NSC to take action.
By then the US intelligence community was aware that psychotronics
had an application, that something psychically aggressive might
threaten the security of US. With Congressional approval they set
out to research and examine the nature of this threat.
The CIA adopted a twin track approach. Publicly, through continuous
disinformation campaigns, they endeavored to discredit psychic
research. Secretly, they funded a series of projects and programs
over sixteen years, on which they spent over $20 million. The
Soviets, aware of the US policy, reacted similarly.
T. Chey too
publicly denied the credibility of any psychic research, imprisoned
a number of researchers, particularly those involved in information
exchange with their western counterparts, and closed down several
research institutes engaged in psychic research.
The
origins of Remote Viewing
The term Remote Viewing was coined on December 8, 1971 by Ingo
Swann, a homosexual New York artist, Dr. Janet Mitchell,
Dr. Karlis
Osis, and Dr. Gertrude Schmeidler at the American Society for
Psychical Research (ASPR), in New York City.
In the course of their
ten ’out-of-body perceptual state’ experiments, ASPR attempted to
locate hidden items on their premises, using clairvoyant perception.
They succeeded. ASPR later decided to expand these experiments to
targets outside their premises. Upon Swann’s suggestion, Dr. Janet
Mitchell would give him the name of an American city.
Swann would
attempt to determine the weather condition there. Dr. Mitchell would
then telephone the local weather bureau to see if Swann was correct.
Ingo Swann’s 1971 experiments were based on earlier, similar work
conducted by the French researcher, Rene Warcolier (1881-1962) who,
during the 1920’s, had conducted similar long-distance experiments
between Paris and New York, and J. Hittinger, a British
researcher. Amongst the terms ’remote viewing’ and ’remote sensing’ Swann argues
the latter portrays a more accurate definition, but Dr. Osis and
Schmeidler preferred ’remote viewing’. Swann took these experiments
a step further.
A person would go ’outbound’ as a ’beacon’ to a
distant site somewhere in Manhattan. At a prearranged time the
beacon would start making notes of the site - whilst his location
would remain unknown to Swann back in ASPR. Swann then would focus
on the beacon, attempting to describe where he was. The first of
these experiments took place on Feb. 22, 1972.
In her book Out of Body Experiences Dr. Janet Mitchell suggests that
these experiments were designed to develop means by which to
ascertain,
’whether a person could localize part of his or her
consciousness in space some distance from the body’.
While Mitchell
believes that the targets in these experiments might have been
perceived telepathically, clairvoyantly, precognitively, or
fraudulently, Ingo Swann suggests that,
’they were perceived by some
type of perception which operated outside of normal visual range’.
Swann extrapolates further:
’We are talking about whether the
bio-human possesses additional receptors for organizing information
that exceeds the local limits of the five physic senses. This he
does with the help of at least seventeen more different types of
senses that have been identified by biologists and neurologists.’
Enter
the Central Intelligence Agency
It is now clear that at least as early as 1971, the CIA had been
monitoring the results of the ASPR experiments, and, comparing them
with similar information obtained from the Soviet Union, had become
convinced that there were some significance in this research work.
According to Swann:
’In late October 1971, I and a colleague were in
Washington. This was still a time when no one wanted a psychic
anywhere near their official premises. So, we met in bars and pizza parlours. On this occasion there were six spooks. But, one seemed
very important because when he opened his mouth to talk, everyone
else shut up immediately. Actually, he did not say much, but when he
did it was always with a pointed question.
"Mr. Swann," he said, "If you
were going to set up a threat analysis program to match what
the Soviets are up to, what would you do?"’
In 1972
Harold Puthoff was involved in
laser research at
Stanford Research Institute (SRI), now
SRI
International, in Melano Park, California.
At that time he was also
circulating a proposal to obtain a grant for some research work in
quantum biology. In it he raised the issue of whether physical
theory, as publicly known, was capable of describing life processes,
and had suggested some measurements involving plants and lower
organism. Cleve Backster received a copy from Puthoff.
He was
involved in measuring the electrical activity of plants with
standard polygraph equipment in New York. Ingo Swann, Backster’s
friend, saw this proposal during a visit to his laboratory.
Subsequently, in March 30, 1972, he
wrote to Puthoff suggesting that if Puthoff was interested in
investigating this subject, he should conduct some experiments in
parapsychology, including in his letter accounts of some of his
successes in PK in Dr. Gertrude Schmidler’s laboratory at the City
College, New York. Puthoff invited Swann to visit SRI for a week in
June 1972 and demonstrate these effects.
Prior to Swann’s visit Puthoff concealed a well-shielded
magnetometer below the floor of the building. It was used for
quark-detection experiments. Its existence seemed to perturb Swann.
To Puthoff’s surprise, Swann remotely viewed this complex piece of
machinery and drew a reasonable outline of its interior working
mechanism. Puthoff, impressed by Swann’s finding, wrote a paper
about this event and circulated it amongst his scientific
colleagues.
A few weeks after the the publication of this paper two CIA officers
turned up at SRI. They had done their homework on Puthoff’s
background, his work as an Officer of Naval Intelligence, and then
as a civilian with the National Security Agency (NSA) a few years
before.
Puthoff was told that there was increasing concern in the
CIA about Soviet parapsychology efforts and its KGB, GRU funding.
Since parapsychology was considered dubious at best by the Western
scientific community, the CIA was looking for a research
establishment somewhat outside the academic mainstream to handle a
quietly funded and classified, investigation program.
They asked Puthoff if he was willing to
conduct some more experiments with Ingo Swann; and, provided the
results of these tests were encouraging, would he consider a pilot
programme to further this investigation? Puthoff agreed, and
arranged for a series of tests.
Puthoff commented subsequently:
’Since the reputation of the
intelligence services is mixed among members of the general
populace, I have on occasion been challenged as to why I would
agree to co-operate with the CIA or other elements of the
intelligence community in this work.
My answer is simply that as
a result of my own previous exposure to this community I became
persuaded that war can almost always be traced to a failure in
intelligence, and that therefore the strongest weapon for peace
is good intelligence.’
The first tests at SRI were simple and
successful.
The CIA officers visiting the lab would ask Swann to
describe items they hid in a box. As result of these tests in
October 1972, an eight months pilot study program, with a budget of
$49,909, was negotiated. It was called Biofields Measurement
Program, and it ran from January to August 1973. One of Puthoff’s
colleagues, Russell Targ, with a long history of involvement in
parapsychology, joined the team.
In the course of this pilot study
at SRI, three of the CIA’s contract monitors themselves participated
as remote viewers in order to critique the protocols. They were
contributors to seven of fifty-five viewings during this time,
several of striking quality.
By 1975 Puthoff and Targ could report
that,
’The development of this capability
at SRI has evolved to the point where visiting CIA
personnel with no previous exposure to such concepts have
performed well under controlled laboratory conditions (that is,
generated target descriptions of sufficiently high quality to
permit blind matching of descriptions to targets by independent
judges).’
Coordinate Remote Viewing
ASPR experiments, using a ’beacon’, were not of much use for any
espionage remote viewing program: they required an agent to be
placed in the target area, which was not feasible.
And providing the
name of the distant target would have resulted in too much cueing of
the viewer. Swann consulted with a number of scientists outside the
SRI circles in Silicon Valley, on how to combat this problem.
Eventually,
Jacques Vallée came up with
a solution. He suggested that Swann use an address as the focus.
Swann later interpreted and developed this into map co-ordinates -
latitude and longitude - thereby later on leading to the birth of Project SCANATE (Scanning by Co-ordinates).
Remote
Viewing Jupiter
One of most intriguing of the fifty-five experiments was number 46,
the second major co-ordinate viewing in the CIA-funded eight month
pilot study.
The purpose of this experiment was,
’To try to ascertain
if long distance remote sensing could extend to a very far distant, to record the time it took before impressions began to be
given, and to compare the impressions with published scientific
feedback.’
The target chosen was the planet Jupiter; the date of
experiment, April 27, 1973. NASA’s Pioneer Ten was already en route
to the planet, but too far away to send data back to Earthbase,
principally at Jet Propulsion Laboratories (JPL).
The viewers were Ingo Swann in California, and Harold Sherman in Arkansas. With two
viewers 2000 miles apart, the idea was to see whether the
independent data obtained would correspond with each other - which
it did.
In the course of this attempt a ring around Jupiter was discovered.
’Very high in the atmosphere there are crystals, they glitter.
Maybe the stripes are like bands of crystals, maybe like rings of
Saturn, though not far out like that. Very close within the
atmosphere. I bet you they’ll reflect radio probes. Is that possible
if you had a cloud of crystals that were assaulted by different
radio waves?’
The existence of the ring was discovered and confirmed
in early 1979, six years after this experiment. A copy of the 300
page long report of this viewing was sent to a number of scientific
institutions including NASA.
According to Ingo Swann, the first CIA selected co-ordinate remote
viewing experiment took place on July 21 and 22, 1973, an attempt at
remote sensing the joint Soviet-French weather installation on the Island of Kerguelen, in the South Indian Ocean. Swann comments:
’It was to be nearly six years
before I saw a topographical map of Kerguelen, which included
the buildings and other man-made features. I had missed some of
them, but was told that the major buildings were orange and
there were a number of outhouses whose locations needed to be
moved every once in a while.’
The Kerguelen experiment was not
classified, and, about a week later, its details were leaked by the
intelligence community.
The Executive Summary of the CIA Final
Report of the second year, provides an insight into
Pat Price and
Ingo Swann’s coordinated RV work funded by the CIA:
’In order to subject the remote
viewing phenomena to a rigorous long-distance control, a request
for geographical coordinates of a site unknown to subject and
experimenters was forwarded to the [CIA’s] OSI [Office of
Scientific Intelligence] group responsible for threat analysis
in this area. In response SRI personnel received a set of
facility [co-ordinates] hereafter referred to as the West
Virginia Site.
The experimenters then carried out a
remote viewing experiment on a double-blind basis, that is blind
to experimenters as well as subject. The experiment had as its
goal the determination of the utility of remote viewing under
conditions approximating an operational scenario. Two subjects
targeted on the site, a sensitive installation.
One subject drew
a detailed map of the building and grounds layout, the other
provided information about the interior including code-words,
data subsequently verified by sponsor sources [i.e. CIA].’
CIA ’s Project Atlas
- Remote Viewing Semipalatinsk, USSR
On Christmas Day of 1962, Soviet Union conducted its last of the
series of 65 nuclear weapons tests.
These tests which started on
August 1, 1962, were conducted on and over the mountains of Semipalatinsk and the
ice of Novaya Zemlya. Early in 1963, Soviets
signed a Test Ban Treaty, and their testing program went
underground. The big question for the US was; What of the future? US
intelligence community lacked sufficient information concerning the
Soviet’s nuclear material production, patterns of use, future
application and trends.
Since the CIA had nowhere else to go to
obtain further information on the Soviet’s nuclear installations in
Semipalatinsk, Pat Price, in July 1974, was asked to remote view the
region.
This was the firs ]t official remote viewing project
targeting the Soviet Union.
’To determine the utility of remote
viewing under operational conditions, a long-distance remote
viewing experiment was carried out on a sponsor-designated
target of current interest, an unidentified research center at
Semipalatinsk, USSR. This experiment was carried out in three
phases, was under direct control of the COTR [Contracting
Officer’s Technical Representative].
’In Phase one, map co-ordinates were furnished to the
experimenters, the only additional information provided being
the designation of the target as an R&D [Research and
Development] test facility. The experimenters then carried out a
remote viewing experiment with subject 1 [Pat Price - author] on
a double-blind basis. The results of the experiment were turned
over to client representatives for data evaluation.
’Were the results not promising, the experiment would have
stopped at this point. The results were judged to be of
sufficiently good quality, however, that Phase two was entered
in which the subject was focused on the generation of physical
data which could be client-verified, providing a calibration in
the process.
The end of Phase two gradually evolved into the
first part of the phase three, the generation of unverifiable
data not available to the client, but of interest nonetheless.
Evaluation of the data by the client is under way.’
Some of the results of RV experiments
were startling.
On the Night Line TV show on Remote Viewing, on
November 28, 1995, a CIA representative, known only as ’Norm’, a
former CIA Technical Advisor to John McMahon, Deputy Director, on
the use of RV programs in mid-1980s, stated,
’Well, if it is the
eight martini results you want to talk about, I won’t talk about
them’.
’Eight martini results’ is an in-house term for remote
viewing data so good it cracks everyone’s sense of reality.
On the
same program Robert Gates, the ex-Director of CIA, added that the
remote viewing had a promising future.
Ingo Swann has provided an account of one such ’eight martini
result’, which took place between 1975/76. He was asked to remote
view Soviet submarines. According to Swann, in that event, ’there
was all sorts of brass sitting there and Puthoff was on my left and
this two or three star general was on my right and I was fussing
away as they gave me the co-ordinates.
This was one of those "big
tests" things that went on, with witnesses and the room was filled.
And so I was doing my remote viewing bugaloo and finally I came
across something that I stopped in my tracks and I looked at it and
said, "Oh my God".
So I whispered over Hal’s ear and said,
"Hal, I don’t know what to do. I
think that this submarine has shot down a UFO or the UFO fired
on her. What shall I do?"
And Puthoff was as pale as anything
you know, and he looked at me and whispered, "Oh, Christ. It is
your show. You do what you think you should do."
So, I sketched out this picture of
this UFO and this brass sitting on my right grabbed it and said,
"What’s that, Mr. Swann?"
I said, "Sir, I think it is rather
obvious what that is."
And he took that paper and he stood
up, and when he stood up everybody else stood up, except me and
Puthoff, and walked out of the room, so did the others. So
Puthoff and I went back to the hotel and I said, "Oh Christ,
We’ve blown the program".
So we went out and got drunk on
margaritas and things like that and went back. Three days later
Puthoff got a call. The call said, "OK, how much money do
you want?"’
Science Applications International
Corporation (SAIC)
The ’Anomalous Mental Phenomena’ programs which were carried out at
SRI from 1973 through 1989, were continued in SAIC from 1992 through
1994. In a memorandum issued on July 25, 1995, by Dr. Edwin C.
May
provided titles and details of the ten experiments which were
carried out at SAIC.
The title of these experiments are as followed:
-
Target Dependencies
-
AC with Binary Coding
-
AC Lucid Dreams, base
-
AC Lucid Dreams, pilot
-
ERD AC Behaviour
-
Entropy II
Other experiments carried out in SAIC
were:
-
AC of Binary Targets
-
MEG Replication
-
Remote Observation
-
ERD EEG Investigation
Project
Grill Flame
One of the operational sections of the RV program was the DoD
project GRILL FLAME.
Records concerning this project were denied to
me by several US Intelligence community member organizations.
Eventually, on February 1, 1996, I managed to obtain relevant
documents regarding this little-known project. These records were
specifically located and declassified pursuant to my on going
request of December 7, 1995, by US Intelligence and Security
Command.
The operational wing of the overall STAR GATE program could be
traced back to 1977, when the US Army began a program to discover
what intelligence information the enemy could discover using Remote
Viewing. The Assistant Deputy Chief of Staff - Operations; Human
Intelligence branch (ADCSOPS-HUMINT) through its ’Special Action
Branch’, was tasked for that mission.
By 1978, and by establishment
of Detachment ’G’, (later listed in the Intelligence and Security
Command [INSCOM] books as GRILL FLAME), the US Army was given a new
mission: to actually utilize Remote Viewing as an intelligence
gathering tool.
By this time the entire DoD’s RV program was moved
under the administrative umbrella of GRILL FLAME, a joint effort by
several US departments and agencies, with the DIA’s oversight.
Swann
quits
In 1983, Detachment G [GRILL FLAME] whose personnel and operations
up until then had been trained by Ingo Swann, parted company with
him.
Major Ed Dames had managed to put together a team apparently
capable of producing the required data. This separation created a
bitter dispute between the two which continues today. The new team
under the designation CENTER LANE continued its operations.
In 1986,
after several controversies, the newly appointed INSCOM commanding
general, on the orders of his superiors, passed this unit to the
Defense Intelligence Agency. They merged with SUN STREAK, which was
under the control of DIA’s Scientific and Technical Intelligence
Directorate (DT-S).
In the early nineties the Remote Viewing program had been
reclassified from SAP (Special Access Program) to LIMIDS (Limited
Distribution), and was once more re-designated, this time as as
STAR GATE.
From over 40 personnel officially serving throughout the
duration of the program, 23 were military. In the eighties, when the
program was at its peak, it employed seven full-time viewers,
supported by teams of administrative and analytical personnel.
Throughout the history of RV programs several operations and
projects were created.
To name a few:
-
BLUE BIRD, that targeted Libyan
leader Moammar Gadhafi
-
LANDBROKER, targeting Panamanian
General Manuel Noriega
-
Project THORN, dealing with the
UFO problem
-
Project ARROW SHOP, about which
little is known
The
latter Project Star Gate
The second phase of Project STAR GATE, which was mainly under DIA’s
control, used three individuals, two of whom were women.
The demise
of the program could be mainly attributed to WRV, Written Remote
Viewing, which was introduced, to the dismay of the original
viewers, in 1988. WRV was a combination of channelling and automatic
writing, as well using tarot cards. WRV produced much less reliable
results than that of the SRI-developed CRV (Coordinated Remote
Viewing) and ERV (Extended Remote Viewing), a hybrid relaxation/
meditative-based method.
WRV was immediately adopted by the
intelligence community as the main modus operandi. Compared to CRV
and ERV, it lacked the necessary laboratory-based trials. At the
time of its transfer from DIA to CIA in June 1995, the STAR GATE
programme was left with only three viewers, two using WRV, and only
one using CRV. Mismanagement also plagued the program during its
latter years.
During its life time from 1986 [its first phase] to the spring of
1995 [second phase], it received more than 200 tasks from
operational military organizations to use remote viewing to attain
information unavailable from other sources.
The activities of the
project, which led to the demise of the RV program, are too complex
to be discussed here.
As one intelligence source commented on RV
programs 6:
’In the historical files there are
also a number of customer evaluations from the likes of the
Secret Service, NSA, the Military Services, Joint Chiefs of
Staff, and ironically the CIA, reporting (occasionally even in
rather glowing terms) the usefulness of remote viewing as an
intelligence tool’.
During the past twenty two years, remote
viewing programs, geared with continuous research, including
several hundred scientists from various scientific disciplines to
oversee these programs, generated wealth of valuable research data
that should not be discarded for current, political reasons.
Independent of, and contrary to their overt military and
intelligence applications, this vast array of information is a
testimony to the fact that the human bio-sensorium is not limited to
its five sense prison.
While in letters of July 22 and November 27, 1992, the CIA had
previously denied to author having any documents on this subject, it
has now admitted to possessing over one hundred thousand pages of
records Copies of these documents were sent to me in August 1995. On
August 27, 1995, by a curious coincidence, Channel 4 in Britain
screened the documentary ’The Real X-Files’ on the RV program, in
the UK (later shown in US), nicely preparing the ground further for
their public announcement.
’The Real X-Files’ was written by
Jim
Schnabel who had previously been involved in the debunking of the
crop circle phenomenon, and, in his book Dark White, of the alien
abduction allegations. Schnabel was introduced to Ingo Swann by two
of Swann’s friends. Telephone conversation with Swann, March 31, and
Apr. 6, 1996.
Allegations have been made to me by a usually reliable
intelligence source that Schnabel is a CIA asset but I have seen no
evidence.
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Amongst others participating in CIA/DoD
RV programmes were Dr. Christopher ’Kit’ Green, and Geoff
Harrison, both from Directorate of Intelligence (Office of
Science and Technology), CIA - now retired.
-
For Kit Green see ’The Birds’, UFO
Magazine, Vol. 11, issue 3, 1992; and ’John Alexander;
Pentagon’s Penguin’, Lobster 28.
-
3 Reuter, Washington, DC, Nov.
28, 1995
-
For Hyman see ’The Pentagon’s
Psychic Research’, in Lobster 30.
-
’An Evaluation of Remote Viewing:
Research and Applications’, by Michael D. Mumford, Phd., Andrew
M. Rose, Phd., David A. Goslin, Phd.; prepared by The American
Institute of Research (AIR), Sep. 29, 1995.
-
Executive Summary; Research
Evaluation, p. E-2. After the publication of this report
in January 1996, Congress, with the DoD and CIA, halted further
funding for psychic research.
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On April 19, 1996 I wrote to David
Goslin, AIR President asking him 17 questions concerning the
manner in which AIR had handled their RV report. In his reply of 26 April Goslin
wrote, ’I find your questions to be insulting’ and asserted that
throughout AIR’s history it had maintained the highest standards
of integrity and scientific objectivity.
-
Op. cit. 5, Executive Summary
[Operational Evaluation], AIR report, p. E-3 Dr. Marcello Truzzi
letter of March 17, 1996, to author.
-
Telephone Conversation with Dr.
Edwin C. May, April 6, 1996. Dr. May added that there is a great
deal of on-going research regarding the EEG of the remote
viewers that as yet has not been published.
-
After Jack Vorona, Director of
Department of Defense RV programs STARGATE and CENTER LANE until
1986, Dale Graff, a civilian Physicist from Office of Scientific
and Technical Intelligence Directorate DT-S, DIA, took over the
directorship of the SUN STREAK RV program.
-
On Dames, see ’John Alexander, the
Pentagon’s Penguin’ in Lobster 28.
-
Ingo Swann commented that most of Ed
Dames’ RV work at that time, and since the establishment of PSI-TECH
lacked any positive feed-back. (Telephone conversation with
Swann, May 4 1996). Swann is also critical of Dames’ RV
work on UFOs. Yet Swann himself has been involved in remote
viewing UFOs. In particular he has conducted
extensive RV work on the Roswell incident. He prepared his first
official remote viewing report on Roswell on April 28, 1993,
when 4 remote viewers were involved. As recently as April this year he
was still involved in remote viewing the UFO phenomenon and the
alleged aliens. (Copies of his UFO RV work are in my archives.)
-
Russell Targ also believes that none
of the RV work done by the Ed Dames group had any positive
outcome.
-
Telephone conversation with Russell
Targ, April 23, 1996.
-
13 For example, the research at the
Maimonides Hospital in New York, discussed in ’The Pentagon’s
Psychic Research’ in Lobster 30.
-
This is discussed in ’A Close-up
Look at Remote Viewing’, Ingo Swann, Dec. 6, 1995 - InterNet.
-
In the aftermath of CIA’s public
announcement, Swann has published several articles on the
InterNet. Swann’s accounts are carefully chosen to follow the
official line. For more information on Swann, also
see his Your Nostradamus Factor (Simon and Schuster, New York,
1993
-
14 ’A Close-up Look at Remote Viewing’, Ingo Swann, Dec. 6, 1995
- InterNet.
-
A May 1992, Defense Intelligence
Agency (DIA) document, classified Secret/NOFORN (no foreigner),
still reflects the US Intelligence community fears about psychic
research; ’Photography and available open source literature
concerning the scope and thrust of the Chinese PS
[parapsychology - author] effort. Collection Efforts are an attempt to
update DIA holdings and plug a 5-10 year intelligence gap in
this area. Among the half dozen senators
supporting the programme, were Clairborne Pell [Democrat-Rhode
Island] and Robert C. Byrd [Democrat-West Virginia]. In the course of the programme, C.
Richard D’Amoto, Senator Byrd’s staff member, and an
intelligence specialist, several times successfully quashed
DIA’s effort to kill the RV programme. British newspapers gave a
variety of figures.
-
The Sunday Times, December 3, 1995,
quoted the figure $12 million, and Guardian, September 30, 1995,
quoted a figure of $11 million. This is discussed in Lobster 30
’The
Emergence of Project SCANATE; The First Espionage-worthy Remote
Viewing Experiment - Summer 1973’.
-
Ingo Swann, Dec. 29, 1995, InterNet.
-
See Mind to Mind, Rene Warcollier,
Creative Age Press, NY 1946
-
See Exploring the Ultra-Perceptive
Faculty, J. Hittinger, Rider & Co., London, 1941
-
Ingo Swann interview on ’Dreamland’
transcribed Organization: University of Wisconsin, Dec. 12,
1996. Russell Targ also confirmed that some RV work was done on the
Soviet’s submarine, but the result was never fed back to them
due to the classified nature of the relevant programme.
(Telephone conversation with Targ, April 23, 1996.) A similar experiment was conducted
in Paul McKenna’s ’Paranormal’ TV show in Feb. 19, 1996.
-
Joseph McMoneagle, a former Army
Intelligence officer, was the Remote Viewer Swann, op. cit. 22
Janet Mitchell, McFarland, 1981. New York Swann, op. cit. 22 ’Remote Viewing as One of Sidhis’, Ingo Swann, Jan. 10, 1996,
InterNet. Also see The Expanding World of
Human Perception, Robert Rivlin and Karen Gravelle, Simon and
Schuster, New York, 1984.
-
’Messages Regarding Remote Viewing;
For the Glory of our Species’, Ingo Swann, InterNet, December
10, ’Toward a Quantum Theory of Life Process’, unpublished paper
by H.E. Puthoff, 1972 - SRI. Swann visited SRI twice in 1972; in
June, and October A version of this paper, ’Physics, Entropy and
Psychokinesis’, by Puthoff, H.E. and Targ, R., was later
published in Proceedings of the Conference in Quantum Physics
and Parapsychology, 1975 (Geneva, Switzerland), New York,
Parapsychology Foundation.
-
’CIA-Initiated Remote Viewing
Program at Stanford Research Institute’, H.E. Puthoff, in
Journal for Society for Scientific Exploration, Vol. 10. No. 1,
1996, [from draft copy - p.3 Ibid].
-
Footnote 5. ’A Perceptual Channel
for Information Transfer over Kilometer Distances: Historical
Perspective and Recent Research’, H.E. Puthoff, R. Targ, in
Proc. IEEE - 1976.
-
’Perceptual Augmentation Techniques
[Classified; Secret], Part One - Executive Summary. Final Report
Covering the Period Jan. 74 through Feb. 75’, H.E. Puthoff, and
Russell Targ.
-
Electronics and Bioengineering
Laboratory, SRI Project 3183. Approved by Earle Jones, Director,
Electronics and Bioengineering Lab., Bonner Cox, Executive
Director, Information Science and Engineering Division. Records released by the CIA, 1995.
Also, in mid-1970s, the CIA requested a lengthy examination of
the RV, in which some viewers as well as a number of
professional consultants were involved. The result was a report titled
’Social Resistance to Psi’. ’Remote Viewing vs. Its Skeptics’,
Ingo Swann, Jan. 20, 1996, InterNet. In 1988 an analysis was made of all
the experiments at SRI from 1973 until that time - 1988. The analysis was based on all 154
experiments conducted during that era, consisting of over 26,000
individual trials. Of those, almost 20,000 were of the
forced choice type and just over a 1000 were laboratory remote
viewing. There were a total of 227 subjects
in all experiments.
-
’An Overall Analysis of the SRI
Experiments: 1973-88’, pp. 3-14. See also SRI International Technical
Report, March 1989, ’Review of the Psychoenergetic Research
Conducted at SRI International (1973-88)’ by May et al. Other remote viewers of this era are
Keith Harary, a Trburon psychologist who joined SRI in 1980, and
later continued his work with SAIC (SAIC is discussed below);
Larissa Vilenskaya, a Russian emigrant who worked as a psychic
in the Soviet Union from 1969 to 1975 and later joined SRI; and
Joseph McMoneagle who obtained a Legion of Merit award in 1984
for providing 150 essential elements of information through RV,
of value to US defense.
-
’The 1973 Remote Viewing Probe of
The Planet Jupiter’, Ingo Swann. Dec. 12, 1995, InterNet
-
Harold Sherman was a psychic who, in
late 1930s, had taken part in long distance viewing experiments
between New York City and the Arctic. These experiments were conducted in
conjunction with the Arctic explorer Sir Hubert Wilkins. See Thoughts Through Space, Sir
Hubert Wilkins and Harold M. Sherman, Creative Age Press, NY
1942. Op. cit. 38.
-
Ms. Beverly Humphrey, a Research
Associate and Statistical Analyst, SRI Radio Physics Lab.,
prepared a Formal Report on behalf of Puthoff and Targ. The report was 300 pages long, and
was widely distributed. Also, see Mind Reach, H.E. Puthoff
and Russell Targ, Russell, Delacorate Press/Eleanor Friede, New
York, 1977.
-
See ’The Pentagon’s Psychic
Research, in Lobster 30.
-
’The First CIA-Selected Coordinate
Remote Viewing’, Ingo Swann, undated - InterNet; and ’Category
I: Long Distance Remote Viewing’, p.4, classified Secret ’DC
Power and Cooling Tower’, Henry Rubenstein, in Studies in
Intelligence, CIA, vol. 16, No. 3, (Autumn 1972), pp. 81,82.
Classified Secret. Also, see Inside CIA’s Private
World, By H. Bradford Westerfield, Yale University Press, 1995,
p. 3 Progress Report No. 5, Covering Period 1 April to August
1974 - Project Atlas Remote Viewing, p. 2. Also, see, Final Report January 1974
through February 1975, Program Results; Applied Research
Efforts, pp. 8 and 9.
-
In his telephone conversation of
April 10, 1996, with the author, Swann claimed that all of his
RVs were of 8-martini grade. Ingo Swann interview on "Dreamland"
transcribed Organization: University of Wisconsin, Dec. 12,
1996. One of main partners of Science
Application International Corporation (SAIC) is retired Admiral
Boby Inman, former Director of NSA, ONI, and Deputy Director of
CIA.
-
Remote Viewing work carried out in
SAIC was a substantial one which requires a separate paper Op.
cit. 5, ’The SAIC Era’ and ’The Ten Experiments’, pp. 3-17,
3-18.
-
See ’Pentagon’s Psychic Research’,
Lobster 30, for previous information on Grill Flame Previously,
the ’Special Branch’ of Assistant Deputy Chief of Staff for
Operations, Human Intelligence, created in 1979, was
specifically used as a vehicle for GRILL FLAME . (Formalization
of Project GRILL FLAME. Record released to author Feb. 1, 1996.) But according to a Secret/Eyes
Only/Not Releasable to Foreigners teletype, from Major General
E.R. Thompson, Assistant Chief of Staff, Intelligence; ’Effective 14 Jan. 81, by approval of Under Secretary of Army,
INSCOM [Intelligence Security Command] is now the only active
operational GRILL FLAME element in Army’.
-
US Army Intelligence Command record
released to author in Feb. 1, 1996. See also ’Former "Project
Stargate" Operative Sets the Record Straight’, by Ed Dames, in
CE Chronicles, Vol. 4, No. 1, Jan.-Feb. 1996, p. 8. The address of CE Chronicles is
given below in the ’Sources’ section. For Operation Blue Bird, a
see ’Psychic Warned CIA of Attack’, the Dallas Morning News,
Dec. 8, 1995.
-
For LANDBROKER, see ’Pentagon’s
Psychic Research’, Lobster 30 Confidential Source
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