REMOTE VIEWING

'Remote viewing' (RV) is a broad term for a variety of techniques or protocols employed to produce and control extra-sensory perception (ESP). The term was coined in the early 1970s by principal researchers at SRI International, Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff, mainly to distinguish the protocols they were investigating from older ESP protocols.^[1] (Targ & Puthoff 1977, Puthoff 1996, Schnabel 1997). There is no scientific proof for RV or ESP.
In RV, a ''viewer'' attempts to gather information via ESP on a remote ''target.'' The target is usually an object, a place, or a person, and many remote viewers believe that the target may be situated anywhere in space or time. The viewer often has no prior knowledge of the target's identity. Adherents believe that data generated by the remote viewer is best combined with data provided by other viewers and evaluated by a separate analyst. (Targ and Puthoff 1977, Puthoff 1996, Schnabel 1997.)

Contents

History

Background

Early SRI experiments

Government sponsorship

Criticism

Response to Criticism

Popular Culture

Selected remote viewing study participants

Books

Papers

References

External links

History

Background

From the World War II era the US government occasionally funded ESP research. But as of the early 1970's it had no significant program in this area. At the same time, the US intelligence community learned that the USSR and China were giving high priority to ESP research, and to psi research generally. U.S. intelligence officials therefore became receptive to the idea of having their own, competing psi research program. (Schnabel 1997)

Early SRI experiments

The report of a low-key psi experiment conducted in 1972 by SRI laser physicist, Hal Puthoff, with purported psychic Ingo Swann led to a visit from two employees of the CIA's Directorate of Science and Technology. The immediate result was a $50,000 CIA-sponsored project whose goal was to find some way of using psi operationally. (Schnabel 1997, Puthoff 1996, Kress 1977/1999, Smith 2005) As research continued, the SRI team published papers in ''Nature'' (Targ & Puthoff, 1974), in ''Proceedings of the IEEE'' (Puthoff & Targ, 1976), and in the proceedings of a symposium on consciousness for the American Association for the Advancement of Science (Puthoff, ''et al'', 1981).

Government sponsorship

The initial grant was later renewed and expanded. A number of CIA officials including John McMahon, then the head of the Office of Technical Service and later the Agency's deputy director, became strong supporters of the program. By the mid 1970s, facing the post-Watergate revelations of its "skeletons," and after internal criticism of the program, the CIA dropped sponsorship of the SRI research effort. Sponsorship was picked up by the Air Force, led by analyst Dale E. Graff of the Foreign Technology Division. In 1979, the Army's Intelligence and Security Command, which had been providing some taskings to the SRI psychics, was ordered to develop its own program by the Army's chief intelligence officer, Gen. Ed Thompson. CIA operations officers, working from McMahon's office and other offices, also continued to provide taskings to SRI's psychic subjects. (Schnabel 1997, Smith 2005, Atwater 2001)
The program had three parts (Mumford, ''et al'', 1995). First was the evaluation of psi research performed by the U.S.S.R. and China, which appears to have been better-funded and better-supported than the government research in the U.S. (Schnabel 1997)
In the second part of the program, SRI managed its own stable of "natural" psychics both for research purposes and to make them available for tasking by a variety of US intelligence agencies. The most famous results from these years were the description of a big crane at a Soviet nuclear research facility (Kress 1977/199, Targ 1996), the description of a new class of Soviet strategic submarine (Smith 2005, McMoneagle 2002) and the location of a downed Soviet bomber in Africa (which former President Carter later referred to in speeches). By the early 1980s numerous offices throughout the intelligence community were providing taskings to SRI's psychics. (Schnabel 1997, Smith 2005)
The third branch of the program was a research project intended to find ways to make ESP -- now called "remote viewing" -- more accurate and reliable. The intelligence community offices that tasked the psychics seemed to believe that the phenomenon was real. But in the view of these taskers, a remote viewer could be sensationally "on" one day and inexplicably "off" the next, a fact that made it hard for the technique to be officially accepted. Through SRI, psychics were studied for years in a search for physical (e.g., brain-wave) correlates that would reveal when they were on- or off-target.
At SRI, Ingo Swann and Hal Puthoff also developed a remote-viewing training program meant to enable any individual with a suitable background to produce useful data. As part of this project, a number of military officers and civilians were trained and formed a military remote viewing unit, based at Fort Meade, Maryland. (Schnabel 1997, Smith 2005, McMoneagle 2002)
In part because the program managers believed that anyone could learn accurate remote-viewing, the loss (through death and retirement) of the "naturals" was never replenished. Within the program, this was controversial. Some of the "naturals" believed that their talents were superior to those of the trainees.
The trainees (see Smith 2005, Schnabel 1997, Buchanan 2003) generally believed that the research program had succeeded not only in training them acceptably but in finding ways to make remote viewing an intelligence-collection tool as reliable as other standard methods (for example, human-source intelligence, which is not always reliable). Meanwhile, one of the authors of an official 1995 report, authorized by the CIA wrote that "There's no documented evidence it had any value to the intelligence community."³.
Some agencies and offices sent taskings to the program routinely but, fearing the "giggle factor," were loath to document their involvement. Only a few intelligence officials, including the Army generals Edmund Thompson and Albert Stubblebine, and senior DIA official Jack Vorona, were willing to champion it openly. Others, such as generals Harry Soyster and William Odom, and Admiral Sam Koslov, allegedly wished to end the project. The struggle between "true unbelievers" and "true believers" provided much of the program's actual drama. Each side seems to have been utterly convinced that the other's views were wrong.(Schnabel 1997, Smith 2005)
In the early 1990s the Military Intelligence Board, chaired by DIA chief Soyster, appointed an Army Colonel, William Johnson, to manage the remote viewing unit and, in effect, prove its uselessness. According to an account by former SRI-trained remote-viewer, Paul Smith (2005), Johnson spent several months running the remote viewing unit against military and DEA targets, and ended up a believer, not only in remote viewing's validity as a phenomenon but in its usefulness as an intelligence tool.
However, by this time Vorona, Stubblebine and Thompson had all retired, and the program's support essentially depended on a key group of Senators, especially Democrat Robert Byrd, who chaired the Appropriations Committee. One of Byrd's top aides, Richard D'Amato, was the boyfriend of a female remote viewer, and evidently on the order of the supportive Senators kept the program alive with earmarks to appropriations bills. After the Democrats lost control of the Senate in late 1994, and Byrd could no longer exert the same level of control over appropriations, the remote viewing program was effectively doomed. The project was transferred out of DIA to the CIA in 1995, with the promise that it would be evaluated there, but most participants in the program believed that it would be terminated. (Schnabel 1997, Smith 2005, Mumford, ''et al'' 1995)
The CIA hired the American Institutes for Research, a perennial intelligence-industry contractor, to perform a retrospective evaluation of the results generated by the remote-viewing program. Most of the program's results were not seen by the evaluators, with the report focusing on the most recent experiments, and only from government-sponsored research.^[2] One of the reviewers was Ray Hyman, a long-time opponent of psi research while another was Jessica Utts who, as a supporter of psi, was chosen to put forward the pro-psi argument. Utts maintained that there had been a statistically significant positive effect, with some subjects scoring 5%-15% above chance. Ray Hyman argued for a null result and the program was officially terminated. .^[3]

Criticism

According to Dr. David Marks in experiments conducted in the 1970s at the Stanford Research Institute, the notes given to the judges contained clues as to which order they were carried out, such as referring to yesterday's two targets, or they had the date of the session written at the top of the page. Dr. Marks concluded that these clues were the reason for the experiment's high hit rates.^[4][5]
Dr. Marks also suggested that the participants of remote viewing experiments were influenced by subjective validation, a process through which correspondences are perceived between stimuli that are in fact associated purely randomly. ^[6]
At the request of the Army Research Council, the National Research Council conducted an evaluation in 1987 (results published in 1988) to examine the effectiveness of various "human performance" technologies, among them remote viewing. The NRC's chief psi investigators, Ray Hyman and James Alcock, reported that they found no legitimate validation of any psi phenomenon, to include remote viewing (Druckman & Swets 1988, Smith 2005). Others have said that the remote viewing sessions often produce information which is vague, and much of which is erroneous. For example, the 1995 report for the American Institute for Research "An Evaluation of Remote Viewing: Research and Applications" by Mumford, Rose and Goslin, contains a section of anonymous reports describing how remote viewing was tentatively used in a number of operational situations. The three reports conclude that the data was too vague to be of any use, and in the report that offers the most positive results the writer notes that the viewers "had some knowledge of the target organizations and their operations but not the background of the particular tasking at hand."http://psiland.free.fr/dossiers/parapsy/psi_defense/remote.pdf "An Evaluation of Remote Viewing: Research and Applications" by Mumford, Rose and Goslin

Response to Criticism

SRI researchers responded to Marks' first criticism by noting that it could hardly have accounted for the very high positive hit rates. Moreover, the "outbound remote viewing" protocol criticized by Marks was used only in an early phase of the program. Later experiments were not vulnerable to such criticism. (See the discussions in Targ & Puthoff 1977, Puthoff 1996, and Schnabel 1997.)

Popular Culture

★ In the movie Suspect Zero detectives must track a killer who has the Remote Viewing ability. A major theme of the film is remote viewing, and the DVD's extra features include interviews with people who worked with the US military and intelligence agencies as part of those programs.

★ In the second season of The Dead Zone, episode 16 (''The Hunt'') involves the protagonist, John Smith, being recruited by a covert government remote viewing team. He enables the team to provide real-time intelligence information to U.S. special forces engaging with terrorists in Afghanistan.

★ In the TV Series John Doe (2002-2003) remote viewing also played a key role as John struggled to learn his identity.

★ Remote Viewing is a common topic on the late-night radio talk show Coast to Coast AM.

★ In the video games and Second Sight, the main characters have remote viewing as one of their abilities.

★ In the science fiction novel Three Days to Never by Tim Powers one character is a psychic spy, but also blind, using her Remote Viewing to see normally through the eyes of others. The underground US military Remote Viewing spy training facility in the desert which honed her RV capabilities as a child is loosely based on an actual CIA program which existed until the 1980s.

★ In the TV series Numb3rs, season two episode "Mind Games" features John Glover as a remote viewer who assists Eppes' FBI team with a case.

★ In the animated TV series Delta State, one of the four protagonists has the power of remote viewing.

★ In the book Sole Survivor by Dean Koontz, a genetically modified remote viewer is able to possess control of a persons body at any location, usually indoors.

★ Remote viewing is a major theme of the 2006-2007 ''Deadman'' series by Bruce Jones.

Selected remote viewing study participants

★ Ingo Swann, one of the founding participants

★ Pat Price, early participant

★ Russell Targ, cofounder of the Stanford Research Institute's investigation into psychic abilities in the 1970s and 1980s

★ Joseph McMoneagle, early participant

★ Ed Dames, formerly associated with PSI TECH, Inc.

★ Courtney Brown, founder of the Farsight Institute

★ David Morehouse, participant during the Stargate program

★ Lyn Buchanan

★ David Marks, critic of remote viewing, after finding sensory cues in the original transcripts generated by Russell Targ and Hal Puthoff at Stanford Research Institute in the 1970s

Books

★ F. Holmes Atwater, ''Captain of My Ship, Master of My Soul: Living with Guidance'', Hampton Roads 2001, ISBN 1-57174-247-6

★ Richard Broughton, The Controversial Science''. Rider and Company, 1991.

★ Courtney Brown, Ph.D., ''Remote Viewing : The Science and Theory of Nonphysical Perception''. Farsight Press, 2005. ISBN 0-9766762-1-4

★ Buchanan, Lyn, ''The Seventh Sense: The Secrets Of Remote Viewing As Told By A "Psychic Spy" For The U.S. Military'', 2003. ISBN 0-7434-6268-8

★ Druckman, Daniel & John A. Swets ''Enhancing Human Performance: Issues, Theories, and Techniques'', 1988, National Academy Press.

★ Graff, Dale E. ''River Dreams'', Element Books, 2000.

★ David Marks, Ph.D., "The Psychology of the Psychic (2nd edn.)" Prometheus Books, 2000. ISBN 1-57392-798-8

★ McMoneagle, Joseph, ''The Stargate Chronicles: Memoirs of a Psychic Spy'', Hampton Roads 2002, ISBN 1-57174-225-5

★ David Morehouse, ''Psychic Warrior'', St. Martin's, 1996, ISBN 0-312-96413-7

★ Jim Schnabel, Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies'', Dell, 1997 , ISBN 0-440-22306-7

★ Paul H. Smith, ''Reading the Enemy's Mind: Inside Star Gate -- America's Psychic Espionage Program'', Forge, 2005, ISBN 0-312-87515-0

★ Targ, Russell and Hurtak, J.J. The End of Suffering2006, Hampton Roads.

★ Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff, ''Mind-Reach: Scientists Look at Psychic Abilities'' Delacorte Press, 1977, ISBN 0440056888 (currently published by Hampton Roads Publishing Co., 2005)

Papers

★ Bisaha, J.P. & B. J. Dunne, "Multiple Subject and Long-Distance Precognitive Remote Viewing of Geographical Locations," in ''Mind at Large'', edited by C. T. Tart, H. E. Puthoff and R. Targ (Praeger, New York, 1979), p. 107.

★ Bremseth, Commander L.R., USN, Unconventional Human Intelligence Support: Transcendent and Asymmetric Warfare Implications of Remote Viewing

★ Dunne, B.J., and Bisaha, J.P. (1979) Precognitive remote viewing in the Chicago area. ''Journal of Parapsychology''. 43: 17-30.

★ Kress, Kenneth A., Parapsychology in Intelligence: A Personal Review & Conclusions ''Studies in Intelligence'', Washington, DC: Central Intelligence Agency, Winter 1977. (Republished with addendum in ''Journal of Scientific Exploration'', Vol. 13, No. 1 (Spring 1999), pp. 69-85

★ Mumford, Michael D.; Rose, Andrew M.; & Goslin, David A. An Evaluation of Remote Viewing: Research and Applications, American Institutes for Research, September 29, 1995

★ Nelson, R. D., B. J. Dunne, Y. H. Dobyns, and R. G. Jahn. 1996. Precognitive Remote Perception: Replication of Remote Viewing. ''Journal of Scientific Exploration'', 10(1), 109-10

★ Puthoff, H.E., "CIA-Initiated Remote Viewing at Stanford Research Institute", 1996

★ Puthoff, Harold E., Russell Targ, and Edwin C. May, "Experimental Psi Research: Implications for Physics," in Robert G. Jahn (ed), ''The Role of Consciousness in the Physical World: AAAS Selected Symposium 57'', American Association for the Advancement of Science: Boulder, CO, 1981.

★ Puthoff, H.E. & R. Targ, A Perceptual Channel for Information Transfer over Kilometer Distances: Historical Perspective and Recent Research ''Proceedings of the IEEE'' 64, 329 (1976)

★ Radin, Dean, Precognition, Presentiment & Remote Viewing

★ Targ, Russell, Remote Viewing at Stanford Research Institute in the 1970s: A Memoir ''Journal of Scientific Exploration'', Vol. 10, No.1, 1996, pp.77-88.

★ Targ, R. & H.E. Puthoff, "Information Transfer Under Conditions of Sensory Shielding," ''Nature'', Vol. 2, No. 5476 (October 18, 1974), 602-607.

★ Utts, J.M., (1996) An Assessment of the Evidence for Psychic Functioning, ''Journal of Scientific Exploration'', 10 (1), 3-30. Also in Journal of Parapsychology, 59(4), 289-320.

★ Utts and Josephson, "The Paranormal: The Evidence and Its Implications for Consciousness", 1996 [1]

References

1. http://parapsych.org/glossary_l_r.html#r Parapsychological Association website, Glossary of Key Words Frequently Used in Parapsychology, Retrieved January 8, 2006
2. May, E.C., “The American Institutes for Research Review of the Department of Defense's STAR GATE Program: A Commentary”, The Journal of Parapsychology. 60, pp 3-23, March 1996
3. ''Time'' magazine, 11 Dec 1995, p.45, ''The Vision Thing'' by Douglas Waller, Washington
4. Marks, D.F. & Kammann, R. (1978). "Information transmission in remote viewing experiments", Nature, 274:680-81.
5. http://www.nap.edu/books/POD276/html/647.html "A comprehensive review of major empirical studies in parapsychology involving random event generators or remote viewing" by Alcock, J.
6. Marks, D.F. (2000). The Psychology of the Psychic. Amherst, New York:Prometheus Books.

Stargate FOIA (freedom of information act) remote viewing documents and other remote viewing files and history can be found at remoteviewed.com

External links

★ The International Remote Viewing Association

★ History of Remote Viewing and its Connection to the OT-Levels of Scientology

★ STAR GATE Controlled Remote Viewing

★ The Remote Viewing Conference Website

★ Interview with noted remote viewer and researcher, Stephan A. Schwartz

★ http://www.remoteviewed.com FOIA Stargate papers, remote viewing results, history and much more

★ Remote Viewing? Remote Chance. A Skeptical look at Remote Viewing by Karen Stollznow

★ Remote Viewing What is Remote Viewing Parts 1, 2 & 3 by Kevin Pirolo