RE: CIA-Initiated Remote Viewing
http://www.biomindsuperpowers.com/Pages/CIA-InitiatedRV.html
CIA-Initiated Remote Viewing
At Stanford Research Institute
by H. E. Puthoff, Ph.D.
Institute for Advanced Studies at Austin
4030 Braker Lane W., #300
Austin, Texas 78759-5329
Abstract - In July 1995 the CIA declassified, and approved for release,
documents revealing its sponsorship in the
1970s of a program at Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, CA, to
determine whether such phenomena as
remote viewing "might have any utility for intelligence collection"
<1>. Thus began disclosure to the public of a
two-decade-plus involvement of the intelligence community in the
investigation of so-called parapsychological or psi
phenomena. Presented here by the program's Founder and first Director
(1972 - 1985) is the early history of the
program, including discussion of some of the first, now declassified,
results that drove early interest.
Introduction
On April 17, 1995, President Clinton issued Executive Order Nr. 1995-4-17,
entitled Classified National Security
Information. Although in one sense the order simply reaffirmed much of what
has been long-standing policy, in another sense
there was a clear shift toward more openness. In the opening paragraph, for
example, we read: "In recent years, however,
dramatic changes have altered, although not eliminated, the national
security threats that we confront. These changes provide
a greater opportunity to emphasize our commitment to open Government." In
the Classification Standards section of the
Order this commitment is operationalized by phrases such as "If there is
significant doubt about the need to classify
information, it shall not be classified." Later in the document, in
reference to information that requires continued protection,
there even appears the remarkable phrase "In some exceptional cases,
however, the need to protect such information may be
outweighed by the public interest in disclosure of the information, and in
these cases the information should be declassified."
A major fallout of this reframing of attitude toward classification is that
there is enormous pressure on those charged with
maintaining security to work hard at being responsive to reasonable requests
for disclosure. One of the results is that FOIA
(Freedom of Information Act) requests that have languished for months to
years are suddenly being acted upon.1
One outcome of this change in policy is the government's recent admission of
its two-decade-plus involvement in funding
highly-classified, special access programs in remote viewing (RV) and
related psi phenomena, first at Stanford Research
Institute (SRI) and then at Science Applications International Corporation
(SAIC), both in Menlo Park, CA, supplemented
by various in-house government programs. Although almost all of the
documentation remains yet classified, in July 1995 270
pages of SRI reports were declassified and released by the CIA, the
program's first sponsor <2>. Thus, although through the
years columns by Jack Anderson and others had claimed leaks of "psychic spy"
programs with such exotic names as Grill
Flame, Center Lane, Sunstreak and Star Gate, CIA's release of the SRI
reports constitutes the first documented public
admission of significant intelligence community involvement in the psi area.
As a consequence of the above, although I had founded the program in early
1972, and had acted as its Director until I left in
1985 to head up the Institute for Advanced Studies at Austin (at which point
my colleague Ed May assumed responsibility as
Director), it was not until 1995 that I found myself for the first time able
to utter in a single sentence the connected acronyms
CIA/SRI/RV. In this report I discuss the genesis of the program, report on
some of the early, now declassified, results that
drove early interest, and outline the general direction the program took as
it expanded into a multi-year, multi-site,
multi-million-dollar effort to determine whether such phenomena as remote
viewing "might have any utility for intelligence
collection" <1>.
Beginnings
In early 1972 I was involved in laser research at Stanford Research
Institute (now called SRI International) in Menlo Park,
CA. At that time I was also circulating a proposal to obtain a small grant
for some research in quantum biology. In that
proposal I had raised the issue whether physical theory as we knew it was
capable of describing life processes, and had
suggested some measurements involving plants and lower organisms <3>. This
proposal was widely circulated, and a copy
was sent to Cleve Backster in New York City who was involved in measuring
the electrical activity of plants with standard
polygraph equipment. New York artist Ingo Swann chanced to see my proposal
during a visit to Backster's lab, and wrote
me suggesting that if I were interested in investigating the boundary
between the physics of the animate and inanimate, I should
consider experiments of the parapsychological type. Swann then went on to
describe some apparently successful experiments
in psychokinesis in which he had participated at Prof. Gertrude Schmeidler's
laboratory at the City College of New York. As
a result of this correspondence I invited him to visit SRI for a week in
June 1972 to demonstrate such effects, frankly, as
much out of personal scientific curiosity as anything else.
Prior to Swann's visit I arranged for access to a well-shielded magnetometer
used in a quark-detection experiment in the
Physics Department at Stanford University. During our visit to this
laboratory, sprung as a surprise to Swann, he appeared to
perturb the operation of the magnetometer, located in a vault below the
floor of the building and shielded by mu-metal
shielding, an aluminum container, copper shielding and a superconducting
shield. As if to add insult to injury, he then went on
to "remote view" the interior of the apparatus, rendering by drawing a
reasonable facsimile of its rather complex (and
heretofore unpublished) construction. It was this latter feat that impressed
me perhaps even more than the former, as it also
eventually did representatives of the intelligence community. I wrote up
these observations and circulated it among my
scientific colleagues in draft form of what was eventually published as part
of a conference proceedings <4>.
In a few short weeks a pair of visitors showed up at SRI with the above
report in hand. Their credentials showed them to be
from the CIA. They knew of my previous background as a Naval Intelligence
Officer and then civilian employee at the
National Security Agency (NSA) several years earlier, and felt they could
discuss their concerns with me openly. There was,
they told me, increasing concern in the intelligence community about the
level of effort in Soviet parapsychology being funded
by the Soviet security services <5>; by Western scientific standards the
field was considered nonsense by most working
scientists. As a result they had been on the lookout for a research
laboratory outside of academia that could handle a quiet,
low-profile classified investigation, and SRI appeared to fit the bill. They
asked if I could arrange an opportunity for them to
carry out some simple experiments with Swann, and, if the tests proved
satisfactory, would I consider a pilot program along
these lines? I agreed to consider this, and arranged for the requested
tests.2
The tests were simple, the visitors simply hiding objects in a box and
asking Swann to attempt to describe the contents. The
results generated in these experiments are perhaps captured most eloquently
by the following example. In one test Swann said
"I see something small, brown and irregular, sort of like a leaf or
something that resembles it, except that it seems very much
alive, like it's even moving!" The target chosen by one of the visitors
turned out to be a small live moth, which indeed did look
like a leaf. Although not all responses were quite so precise, nonetheless
the integrated results were sufficiently impressive that
in short order an eight-month, $49,909 Biofield Measurements Program was
negotiated as a pilot study, a laser colleague
Russell Targ who had a long-time interest and involvement in parapsychology
joined the program, and the experimental
effort was begun in earnest.
Early Remote Viewing Results
During the eight-month pilot study of remote viewing the effort gradually
evolved from the remote viewing of symbols and
objects in envelopes and boxes, to the remote viewing of local target sites
in the San Francisco Bay area, demarked by
outbound experimenters sent to the site under strict protocols devised to
prevent artifactual results. Later judging of the results
were similarly handled by double-blind protocols designed to foil
artifactual matching. Since these results have been presented
in detail elsewhere, both in the scientific literature <6-8> and in popular
book format <9>, I direct the interested reader to these
sources. To summarize, over the years the back-and-forth criticism of
protocols, refinement of methods, and successful
replication of this type of remote viewing in independent laboratories
<10-14>, has yielded considerable scientific evidence for
the reality of the phenomenon. Adding to the strength of these results was
the discovery that a growing number of individuals
could be found to demonstrate high-quality remote viewing, often to their
own surprise, such as the talented Hella Hammid.
As a separate issue, however, most convincing to our early program monitors
were the results now to be described,
generated under their own control.
First, during the collection of data for a formal remote viewing series
targeting indoor laboratory apparatus and outdoor
locations (a series eventually published in toto in the Proc. IEEE <7>), the
CIA contract monitors, ever watchful for possible
chicanery, participated as remote viewers themselves in order to critique
the protocols. In this role three separate viewers,
designated visitors V1 - V3 in the IEEE paper, contributed seven of the 55
viewings, several of striking quality. Reference to
the IEEE paper for a comparison of descriptions/drawings to pictures of the
associated targets, generated by the contract
monitors in their own viewings, leaves little doubt as to why the contract
monitors came to the conclusion that there was
something to remote viewing (see, for example, Figure 1 herein). As
summarized in the Executive Summary of the
now-released Final Report <2> of the second year of the program, "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)." What happened next, however, made even
these results pale in comparison.
Figure 1 - Sketch of target by V1
Figure 2 - Target
(merry-go-round)
Coordinate Remote Viewing
To determine whether it was necessary to have a "beacon" individual at the
target site, Swann suggested carrying out an
experiment to remote view the planet Jupiter before the upcoming NASA
Pioneer 10 flyby. In that case, much to his chagrin
(and ours) he found a ring around Jupiter, and wondered if perhaps he had
remote viewed Saturn by mistake. Our colleagues
in astronomy were quite unimpressed as well, until the flyby revealed that
an unanticipated ring did in fact exist.3
Expanding the protocols yet further, Swann proposed a series of experiments
in which the target was designated not by
sending a "beacon" person to the target site, but rather by the use of
geographical coordinates, latitude and longitude in
degrees, minutes and seconds. Needless to say, this proposal seemed even
more outrageous than "ordinary" remote viewing.
The difficulties in taking this proposal seriously, designing protocols to
eliminate the possibility of a combination of globe
memorization and eidetic or photographic memory, and so forth, are discussed
in considerable detail in Reference <9>. Suffice
it to say that investigation of this approach, which we designated Scanate
(scanning by coordinate), eventually provided us
with sufficient evidence to bring it up to the contract monitors and suggest
a test under their control. A description of that test
and its results, carried out in mid-1973 during the initial pilot study, are
best presented by quoting directly from the Executive
Summary of the Final Report of the second year's followup program <2>. The
remote viewers were Ingo Swann and Pat
Price, and the entire transcripts are available in the released documents
<2>.
"In order to subject the remote viewing phenomena to a rigorous
long-distance test under external control, a request for
geographical coordinates of a site unknown to subject and experimenters was
forwarded to the OSI group responsible for
threat analysis in this area. In response, SRI personnel received a set of
geographical coordinates (latitude and longitude in
degrees, minutes, and seconds) of a facility, 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 codewords, data
subsequently verified by sponsor sources (report
available from COTR)."4
Since details concerning the site's mission in general,5 and evaluation of
the remote viewing test in particular, remain highly
classified to this day, all that can be said is that interest in the client
community was heightened considerably following this
exercise.
Because Price found the above exercise so interesting, as a personal
challenge he went on to scan the other side of the globe
for a Communist Bloc equivalent and found one located in the Urals, the
detailed description of which is also included in Ref.
<2>. As with the West Virginia Site, the report for the Urals Site was also
verified by personnel in the sponsor organization as
being substantially correct.
What makes the West Virginia/Urals Sites viewings so remarkable is that
these are not best-ever examples culled out of a
longer list; these are literally the first two site-viewings carried out in
a simulated operational-type scenario. In fact, for Price
these were the very first two remote viewings in our program altogether, and
he was invited to participate in yet further
experimentation.
Operational Remote Viewing (Semipalatinsk, USSR)
Midway through the second year of the program (July 1974) our CIA sponsor
decided to challenge us to provide data on a
Soviet site of ongoing operational significance. Pat Price was the remote
viewer. A description of the remote viewing, taken
from our declassified final report <2>, reads as given below. I cite this
level of detail to indicate the thought that goes into such
an "experiment" to minimize cueing while at the same time being responsive
to the requirements of an operational situation.
Again, this is not a "best-ever" example from a series of such viewings, but
rather the very first operational Soviet target
concerning which we were officially tasked.
"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, carried out in three phases, was under direct control of
the COTR. To begin the experiment, the COTR
furnished map coordinates in degrees, minutes and seconds. The only
additional information provided was the designation of
the target as an R&D test facility. The experimenters then closeted
themselves with Subject S1, gave him the map coordinates
and indicated the designation of the target as an R&D test facility. A
remote-viewing experiment was then carried out. This
activity constituted Phase I of the experiment.
Figure 3 - Subject effort at building layout
Figure 4 - Subject effort at crane
construction
Figure 3 shows the subject's graphic effort for building layout; Figure 4
shows the subject's particular attention to a multistory
gantry crane he observed at the site. Both results were obtained by the
experimenters on a double-blind basis before
exposure to any additional COTR-held information, thus eliminating the
possibility of cueing. These results were turned over
to the client representatives for evaluation. For comparison an artist's
rendering of the site as known to the COTR (but not to
the experimenters until later) is shown in Figure 5.....
Figure 5 - Actual COTR rendering of Semipalatinsk, USSR
target site
Were the results not promising, the experiment would have stopped at this
point. Description of the multistory crane,
however, a relatively unusual target item, was taken as indicative of
possible target acquisition. Therefore, Phase II was
begun, defined by the subject being made "witting" (of the client) by client
representatives who introduced themselves to the
subject at that point; Phase II also included a second round of
experimentation on the Semipalatinsk site with direct
participation of client representatives in which further data were obtained
and evaluated. As preparation for this phase, client
representatives purposely kept themselves blind to all but general knowledge
of the target site to minimize the possibility of
cueing. The Phase II effort was focused on the generation of physical data
that could be independently verified by other client
sources, thus providing a calibration of the process.
The end of Phase II gradually evolved into the first part of Phase III, the
generation of unverifiable data concerning the
Semipalatinsk site not available to the client, but of operational interest
nonetheless. Several hours of tape transcript and a
notebook of drawings were generated over a two-week period.
The data describing the Semipalatinsk site were evaluated by the sponsor,
and are contained in a separate report. In general,
several details concerning the salient technology of the Semipalatinsk site
appeared to dovetail with data from other sources,
and a number of specific large structural elements were correctly described.
The results contained noise along with the signal,
but were nonetheless clearly differentiated from the chance results that
were generated by control subjects in comparison
experiments carried out by the COTR."
For discussion of the ambiance and personal factors involved in carrying out
this experiment, along with further detail
generated as Price (see Figure 6) "roamed" the facility, including detailed
comparison of Price's RV-generated information
with later-determined "ground-truth reality," see the accompanying article
by Russell Targ in the Journal of Scientific
Exploration, Vol. 10, No. 1. Click here to read the abstract.
Figure 6 - Left to right: Christopher Green, Pat Price,
and Hal Puthoff.
Picture taken following a successful experiment involving
glider-ground RV.
Additional experiments having implications for intelligence concerns were
carried out, such as the remote viewing of
cipher-machine type apparatus, and the RV-sorting of sealed envelopes to
differentiate those that contained letters with secret
writing from those that did not. To discuss these here in detail would take
us too far afield, but the interested reader can
follow up by referring to the now-declassified project documents <2>.
Follow-on Programs
The above discussion brings us up to the end of 1975. As a result of the
material being generated by both SRI and CIA
remote viewers, interest in the program in government circles, especially
within the intelligence community, intensified
considerably and led to an ever-increasing briefing schedule. This in turn
led to an ever-increasing number of clients, contracts
and tasking, and therefore expansion of the program to a multi-client base,
and eventually to an integrated joint-services
program under single-agency (DIA)6 leadership. To meet the demand for the
increased level of effort we first increased our
professional staff by inviting Ed May to join the program in 1976, then
screened and added to the program a cadre of remote
viewers as consultants, and let subcontracts to increase our scope of
activity.
As the program expanded, in only a very few cases could the clients'
identities and program tasking be revealed. Examples
include a NASA-funded study negotiated early in the program by Russ Targ to
determine whether the internal state of an
electronic random-number-generator could be detected by RV processes <16>,
and a study funded by the Naval Electronics
Systems Command to determine whether attempted remote viewing of distant
light flashes would induce correlated changes in
the viewer's brainwave (EEG) production <17>. For essentially all other
projects during my 14-yr. tenure at SRI, however, the
identity of the clients and most of the tasking were classified and remain
so today. (The exception was the occasional
privately-funded study.) We are told, however, that further declassification
and release of much of this material is almost
certain to occur.
What can be said, then, about further development of the program in the two
decades following 1975?7 In broad terms it can
be said that much of the SRI effort was directed not so much toward
developing an operational U.S. capability, but rather
toward assessing the threat potential of its use against the U.S. by others.
The words threat assessment were often used to
describe the program's purpose during its development, especially during the
early years. As a result much of the
remote-viewing activity was carried out under conditions where ground-truth
reality was a priori known or could be
determined, such as the description of U.S. facilities and technological
developments, the timing of rocket test firings and
underground nuclear tests, and the location of individuals and mobile units.
And, of course, we were responsive to requests to
provide assistance during such events as the loss of an airplane or the
taking of hostages, relying on the talents of an increasing
cadre of remote-viewer/consultants, some well-known in the field such as
Keith Harary, and many who have not surfaced
publicly until recently, such as Joe McMoneagle.
One might ask whether in this program RV-generated information was ever of
sufficient significance as to influence decisions
at a policy level. This is of course impossible to determine unless
policymakers were to come forward with a statement in the
affirmative. One example of a possible candidate is a study we performed at
SRI during the Carter-administration debates
concerning proposed deployment of the mobile MX missile system. In that
scenario missiles were to be randomly shuffled
from silo to silo in a silo field, in a form of high-tech shell game. In a
computer simulation of a twenty-silo field with
randomly-assigned (hidden) missile locations, we were able, using
RV-generated data, to show rather forcefully that the
application of a sophisticated statistical averaging technique (sequential
sampling) could in principle permit an adversary to
defeat the system. I briefed these results to the appropriate offices at
their request, and a written report with the technical
details was widely circulated among groups responsible for threat analysis
<18>, and with some impact. What role, if any, our
small contribution played in the mix of factors behind the enormously
complex decision to cancel the program will probably
never be known, and must of course a priori be considered in all likelihood
negligible. Nonetheless, this is a prototypical
example of the kind of tasking that by its nature potentially had policy
implications.
Even though the details of the broad range of experiments, some brilliant
successes, many total failures, have not yet been
released, we have nonetheless been able to publish summaries of what was
learned in these studies about the overall
characteristics of remote viewing, as in Table 5 of Reference <8>.
Furthermore, over the years we were able to address
certain questions of scientific interest in a rigorous way and to publish
the results in the open literature. Examples include the
apparent lack of attenuation of remote viewing due to seawater shielding
(submersible experiments) <8>, the amplification of
RV performance by use of error-correcting coding techniques <19,20>, and the
utility of a technique we call associational
remote viewing (ARV) to generate useful predictive information <21>.8
As a sociological aside, we note that the overall efficacy of remote viewing
in a program like this was not just a scientific issue.
For example, when the Semipalatinsk data described earlier was forwarded for
analysis, one group declined to get involved
because the whole concept was unscientific nonsense, while a second group
declined because, even though it might be real, it
was possibly demonic; a third group had to be found. And, as in the case of
public debate about such phenomena, the
program's image was on occasion as likely to be damaged by an
overenthusiastic supporter as by a detractor. Personalities,
politics and personal biases were always factors to be dealt with.
Official Statements/Perspectives
With regard to admission by the government of its use of remote viewers
under operational conditions, officials have on
occasion been relatively forthcoming. President Carter, in a speech to
college students in Atlanta in September 1995, is
quoted by Reuters as saying that during his administration a plane went down
in Zaire, and a meticulous sweep of the African
terrain by American spy satellites failed to locate any sign of the
wreckage. It was then "without my knowledge" that the head
of the CIA (Adm. Stansfield Turner) turned to a woman reputed to have
psychic powers. As told by Carter, "she gave some
latitude and longitude figures. We focused our satellite cameras on that
point and the plane was there." Independently, Turner
himself also has admitted the Agency's use of a remote viewer (in this case,
Pat Price).9 And recently, in a segment taped for
the British television series Equinox <22>, Maj. Gen. Ed Thompson, Assistant
Chief of Staff for Intelligence, U.S. Army
(1977-1981), volunteered "I had one or more briefings by SRI and was
impressed.... The decision I made was to set up a
small, in-house, low-cost effort in remote viewing...."
Finally, a recent unclassified report <23> prepared for the CIA by the
American Institutes for Research (AIR), concerning a
remote viewing effort carried out under a DIA program called Star Gate
(discussed in detail elsewhere in this volume), cites
the roles of the CIA and DIA in the history of the program, including
acknowledgment that a cadre of full-time government
employees used remote viewing techniques to respond to tasking from
operational military organizations.10
As information concerning the various programs spawned by
intelligence-community interest is released, and the dialog
concerning their scientific and social significance is joined, the results
are certain to be hotly debated. Bearing witness to this
fact are the companion articles in this volume by Ed May, Director of the
SRI and SAIC programs since 1985, and by
Jessica Utts and Ray Hyman, consultants on the AIR evaluation cited above.
These articles address in part the AIR study.
That study, limited in scope to a small fragment of the overall program
effort, resulted in a conclusion that although laboratory
research showed statistically significant results, use of remote viewing in
intelligence gathering was not warranted.
Regardless of one's a priori position, however, an unimpassioned observer
cannot help but attest to the following fact. Despite
the ambiguities inherent in the type of exploration covered in these
programs, the integrated results appear to provide
unequivocal evidence of a human capacity to access events remote in space
and time, however falteringly, by some cognitive
process not yet understood. My years of involvement as a research manager in
these programs have left me with the
conviction that this fact must be taken into account in any attempt to
develop an unbiased picture of the structure of reality.
Footnotes
1 - One example being the release of documents that are the subject of
this report - see the memoir by Russell Targ
elsewhere in this volume.
2 - 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 cooperate 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.
3 - This result was published by us in advance of the ring's discovery
<9>.
4 - Editor's footnote added here: COTR - Contracting Officer's
Technical Representative
5 - An NSA listening post at the Navy's Sugar Grove facility, according
to intelligence-community chronicler Bamford
<15>
6 - DIA - Defense Intelligence Agency. The CIA dropped out as a major
player in the mid-seventies due to pressure
on the Agency (unrelated to the RV Program) from the Church-Pike
Congressional Committee.
7 - See also the contribution by Ed May elsewhere in this volume
concerning his experiences from 1985 on during his
tenure as Director.
8 - For example, one application of this technique yielded not only a
published, statistically significant result, but also a
return of $26,000 in 30 days in the silver futures market <21>.
9 - The direct quote is given in Targ's contribution elsewhere in this
volume.
10 - "From 1986 to the first quarter of FY 1995, the DoD paranormal
psychology program received more than 200
tasks from operational military organizations requesting that the
program staff apply a paranormal psychological
technique know (sic) as "remote viewing" (RV) to attain information
unavailable from other sources." <23>
References
<1> "CIA Statement on 'Remote Viewing'," CIA Public Affairs Office, 6
September 1995.
<2> Harold E. Puthoff and Russell Targ, "Perceptual Augmentation
Techniques," SRI Progress Report No. 3 (31 Oct.
1974) and Final Report (1 Dec. 1975) to the CIA, covering the period January
1974 through February 1975, the
second year of the program. This effort was funded at the level of $149,555.
<3> H. E. Puthoff, "Toward a Quantum Theory of Life Process," unpubl.
proposal, Stanford Research Institute (1972).
<4> H. E. Puthoff and R. Targ, "Physics, Entropy and Psychokinesis," in
Proc. Conf. Quantum Physics and
Parapsychology (Geneva, Switzerland); (New York: Parapsychology Foundation,
1975).
<5> Documented in "Paraphysics R&D - Warsaw Pact (U)," DST-1810S-202-78,
Defense Intelligence Agency (30
March 1978).
<6> R. Targ and H. E. Puthoff, "Information Transfer under Conditions of
Sensory Shielding," Nature 252, 602 (1974).
<7> H. E. Puthoff and R. Targ, "A Perceptual Channel for Information
Transfer over Kilometer Distances: Historical
Perspective and Recent Research," Proc. IEEE 64, 329 (1976).
<8> H. E. Puthoff, R. Targ and E. C. May, "Experimental Psi Research:
Implications for Physics," in The Role of
Consciousness in the Physical World, edited by R. G. Jahn (AAAS Selected
Symposium 57, Westview Press, Boulder,
1981).
<9> R. Targ and H. E. Puthoff, Mind Reach (Delacorte Press, New York, 1977).
<10> J. P. Bisaha and 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.
<11> B. J. Dunne and J. P. Bisaha, "Precognitive Remote Viewing in the
Chicago Area: a Replication of the Stanford
Experiment," J. Parapsychology 43, 17 (1979).
<12> R. G. Jahn, "The Persistent Paradox of Psychic Phenomena: An
Engineering Perspective," Proc. IEEE 70, 136
(1982).
<13> R. G. Jahn and B. J. Dunne, "On the Quantum Mechanics of Consciousness
with Application to Anomalous
Phenomena," Found. Phys. 16, 721 (1986).
<14> R. G. Jahn and B. J. Dunne, Margins of Reality (Harcourt, Brace and
Jovanovich, New York, 1987).
<15> J. Bamford, The Puzzle Palace (Penguin Books, New York, 1983) pp.
218-222.
<16> R. Targ, P. Cole and H. E. Puthoff, "Techniques to Enhance Man/Machine
Communication," Stanford Research
Institute Final Report on NASA Project NAS7-100 (August 1974).
<17> R. Targ, E. C. May, H. E. Puthoff, D. Galin and R. Ornstein, "Sensing
of Remote EM Sources (Physiological
Correlates)," SRI Intern'l Final Report on Naval Electronics Systems Command
Project N00039-76-C-0077, covering
the period November 1975 - to October 1976 (April 1978).
<18> H. E. Puthoff, "Feasibility Study on the Vulnerability of the MPS
System to RV Detection Techniques," SRI Internal
Report, 15 April 1979; revised 2 May 1979.
<19> H. E. Puthoff, "Calculator-Assisted Psi Amplification," Research in
Parapsychology 1984, edited by Rhea White
and J. Solfvin (Scarecrow Press, Metuchen, NJ, 1985), p. 48.
<20> H. E. Puthoff, "Calculator-Assisted Psi Amplification II: Use of the
Sequential-Sampling Technique as a
Variable-Length Majority-Vote Code," Research in Parapsychology 1985, edited
by D. Weiner and D. Radin
(Scarecrow Press, Metuchen, NJ, 1986), p. 73.
<21> H. E. Puthoff, "ARV (Associational Remote Viewing) Applications,"
Research in Parapsychology 1984, edited by
Rhea White and J. Solfvin (Scarecrow Press, Metuchen, NJ, 1985), p. 121.
<22> "The Real X-Files," Independent Channel 4, England (shown 27 August
1995); to be shown in the U.S. on the
Discovery Channel.
<23> M. D. Mumford, A. M. Rose and D. Goslin, "An Evaluation of Remote
Viewing: Research and Applications,"
American Institutes for Research (September 29, 1995).
Copyright 1996 by H.E. Puthoff.
Permission to redistribute granted, but only in
complete and unaltered form.
Following are abstracts from the Journal of Scientific Exploration, Volume
10, Number 1, in which this article first
appeared... To read articles from past issues, and/or for subscription
information, click here to visit their Website.
An Assessment of the Evidence for Psychic
Functioning
by Jessica Utts
Division of Statistics, University of California,
Davis, CA 95616
Volume 10 Number 1: Page 3.
Research on psychic functioning, conducted over a two decade period, is
examined to determine whether or not the
phenomenon has been scientifically established. A secondary question is
whether or not it is useful for government purposes.
The primary work examined in this report was government sponsored research
conducted at Stanford Research Institute,
later known as SRI International, and at Science Applications International
Corporation, known as SAIC. Using the
standards applied to any other area of science, it is concluded that psychic
functioning has been well established. The
statistical results of the studies examined are far beyond what is expected
by chance. Arguments that these results could be
due to methodological flaws in the experiments are soundly refuted. Effects
of similar magnitude to those found in
government-sponsored research at SRI and SAIC have been replicated at a
number of laboratories across the world. Such
consistency cannot be readily explained by claims of flaws or fraud. The
magnitude of psychic functioning exhibited appears
to be in the range between what social scientists call a small and medium
effect. That means that it is reliable enough to be
replicated in properly conducted experiments, with sufficient trials to
achieve the long-run statistical results needed for
replicability. A number of other patterns have been found, suggestive of how
to conduct more productive experiments and
applied psychic functioning. For instance, it doesn't appear that a sender
is needed. Precognition, in which the answer is
known to no one until a future time, appears to work quite well. Recent
experiments suggest that if there is a psychic sense
then it works much like our other five senses, by detecting change. Given
that physicists are currently grappling with an
understanding of time, it may be that a psychic sense exists that scans the
future for major change, much as our eyes scan the
environment for visual change or our ears allow us to respond to sudden
changes in sound. It is recommended that future
experiments focus on understanding how this phenomenon works, and on how to
make it as useful as possible. There is little
benefit to continuing experiments designed to offer proof, since there is
little more to be offered to anyone who does not
accept the current collection of data.
Evaluation of a Program on Anomalous Mental
Phenomena
by Ray Hyman
1227 University of Oregon, Department of Psychology,
Eugene, OR 97403
Volume 10 Number 1: Page 31.
Jessica Utts and I were commissioned to evaluate the research on remote
viewing and related phenomena which was carried
out at Stanford Research Institute (SRI) and Scientific Applications
International Corporation (SAIC) during the years from
1973 through 1994. We focussed on the ten most recent experiments which were
conducted at SAIC from 1992 through
1994. These were not only the most recent but also the most methodologically
sound. We evaluated these experiments in the
context of contemporary parapsychological research. Professor Utts concluded
that the SAIC results, taken in conjunction
with other parapsychological research, proved the existence of ESP,
especially precognition. My report argues that Professor
Utts' conclusion is premature, to say the least. The reports of the SAIC
experiments have become accessible for public
scrutiny too recently for adequate evaluation. Moreover, their findings have
yet to be independently replicated. My report also
argues that the apparent consistencies between the SAIC results and those of
other parapsychological experiments may be
illusory. Many important inconsistencies are emphasized. Even if the
observed effects can be independently replicated, much
more theoretical and empirical investigation would be needed before one
could legitimately claim the existence of paranormal
functioning. Note: This article is followed by a response from Jessica Utts.
Remote Viewing at Stanford Research Institute in the
1970s: A Memoir
by Russell Targ
Bay Research Institute, 1010 Harriet Street, Palo
Alto, CA 94301
Volume 10 Number 1: Page 77.
Hundreds of remote viewing experiments were carried out at Stanford Research
Institute (SRI) from 1972 to 1986. The
purpose of some of these trials was to elucidate the physical and
psychological properties of psi abilities, while others were
conducted to provide information for our CIA sponsor about current events in
far off places. We learned that the accuracy
and reliability of remote viewing was not in any way affected by distance,
size, or electromagnetic shielding, and we
discovered that the more exciting or demanding the task, the more likely we
were to be successful. Above all, we became
utterly convinced of the reality of psi abilities. This article focuses on
two outstanding examples: One is an exceptional,
map-like drawing of a Palo Alto swimming pool complex, and the other is an
architecturally accurate drawing of a gantry
crane located at a Soviet weapons laboratory, and verified by satellite
photography. The percipient for both of these
experiments was Pat Price, a retired police commissioner who was one of the
most outstanding remote viewers to walk
through the doors of SRI.
The American Institutes for Research Review of
the
Department of Defense's STAR GATE Program: A
Commentary
by Edwin C. May
Cognitive Sciences Laboratory, 330 Cowper Street, Suite 200,
Palo Alto, CA 94301
Volume 10 Number 1: Page 89.
As a result of a Congressionally Directed Activity, the Central Intelligence
Agency conducted an evaluation of a 24-year,
government-sponsored program to investigate ESP and its potential use within
the Intelligence Community. The American
Institutes for Research was contracted to conduct the review of both
research and operations. Their 29 September 1995 final
report was released to the public 28 November 1995. As a result of AIR's
assessment, the CIA concluded that a statistically
significant effect had been demonstrated in the laboratory, but that there
was no case in which ESP had provided data that
had ever been used to guide intelligence operations. This paper is a
critical review of AIR's methodology and conclusions. It
will be shown that there is compelling evidence that the CIA set the outcome
with regard to intelligence usage before the
evaluation had begun. This was accomplished by limiting the research and
operations data sets to exclude positive findings, by
purposefully not interviewing historically significant participants, by
ignoring previous DOD extensive program reviews, and by
using the discredited National Research Council's investigation of
parapsychology as the starting point for their review. While
there may have been political and administrative justification for the CIA
not to accept the government's in-house program for
the operational use of anomalous cognition, this appeared to drive the
outcome of the evaluation. As a result, they have come
to the wrong conclusion with regard to the use of anomalous cognition in
intelligence operations and significantly
underestimated the robustness of the basic phenomenon.
FieldREG Anomalies in Group Situations
by R. D. Nelson, G. J. Bradish, Y. H. Dobyns, B. J.
Dunne, and R. G. Jahn
Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research, School of
Engineering/Applied Science,
Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544
Volume 10 Number 1: Page 111.
Portable random event generators with software to record and index
continuous sequences of binary data in field situations
are found to produce anomalous outputs when deployed in various group
environments. These "FieldREG" systems have
been operated under formal protocols in ten separate venues, all of which
subdivide naturally into temporal segments, such as
sessions, presentations, or days. The most extreme data segments from each
of the ten applications, after appropriate
correction for multiple sampling, compound to a collective probability
against chance expectation of 2 X 10^-4. Interpretation
remains speculative at this point, but logbook notes and anecdotal reports
from participants suggest that high degrees of
attention, intellectual cohesiveness, shared emotion, or other coherent
qualities of the groups tend to correlate with the
statistically unusual deviations from theoretical expectation in the
FieldREG sequences. If sustained over more extensive
experiments, such effects could add credence to the concept of a
consciousness "field" as an agency for creating order in
random physical processes.
Anomalous Organization of Random Events by Group
Consciousness:
Two Exploratory Experiments
by Dean I. Radin, Jannine M. Rebman, and Maikwe P.
Cross
Consciousness Research Laboratory, Harry Reid
Center,
University of Nevada, Las Vegas, NV 89154-4009
Volume 10 Number 1: Page 143.
Two experiments explored the hypothesis that when a group of people focus
their attention on a common object of interest,
order will arise in the environment. An electronic random number generator
was used to detect these changes in order. Events
judged to be interesting to the group were called periods of high coherence
and were predicted to cause corresponding
moments of order in the random samples collected during those events;
uninteresting events were predicted to cause chance
levels of order in the random samples. The first experiment was conducted
during an all-day Holotropic Breathwork
workshop. The predictions were confirmed, with a significant degree of order
observed in the random samples during high
group coherence periods (p = 0.002), and chance order observed during low
group coherence periods (p = 0.43). The
second experiment was conducted during the live television broadcast of the
67th Annual Academy Awards. Two random
binary generators, located 12 miles apart, were used to independently
measure order. The predictions were confirmed for
about half of the broadcast period, but the terminal cumulative
probabilities were not significant. A post-hoc analysis showed
that the strength of the correlation between the output of the two random
generators was significantly related (r = 0.94) to the
decline in the television viewing audience.
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http://www.biomindsuperpowers.com/Pages/CIA-InitiatedRV.html
CIA-Initiated Remote Viewing
At Stanford Research Institute
by H. E. Puthoff, Ph.D.
Institute for Advanced Studies at Austin
4030 Braker Lane W., #300
Austin, Texas 78759-5329
Abstract - In July 1995 the CIA declassified, and approved for release,
documents revealing its sponsorship in the
1970s of a program at Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, CA, to
determine whether such phenomena as
remote viewing "might have any utility for intelligence collection"
<1>. Thus began disclosure to the public of a
two-decade-plus involvement of the intelligence community in the
investigation of so-called parapsychological or psi
phenomena. Presented here by the program's Founder and first Director
(1972 - 1985) is the early history of the
program, including discussion of some of the first, now declassified,
results that drove early interest.
Introduction
On April 17, 1995, President Clinton issued Executive Order Nr. 1995-4-17,
entitled Classified National Security
Information. Although in one sense the order simply reaffirmed much of what
has been long-standing policy, in another sense
there was a clear shift toward more openness. In the opening paragraph, for
example, we read: "In recent years, however,
dramatic changes have altered, although not eliminated, the national
security threats that we confront. These changes provide
a greater opportunity to emphasize our commitment to open Government." In
the Classification Standards section of the
Order this commitment is operationalized by phrases such as "If there is
significant doubt about the need to classify
information, it shall not be classified." Later in the document, in
reference to information that requires continued protection,
there even appears the remarkable phrase "In some exceptional cases,
however, the need to protect such information may be
outweighed by the public interest in disclosure of the information, and in
these cases the information should be declassified."
A major fallout of this reframing of attitude toward classification is that
there is enormous pressure on those charged with
maintaining security to work hard at being responsive to reasonable requests
for disclosure. One of the results is that FOIA
(Freedom of Information Act) requests that have languished for months to
years are suddenly being acted upon.1
One outcome of this change in policy is the government's recent admission of
its two-decade-plus involvement in funding
highly-classified, special access programs in remote viewing (RV) and
related psi phenomena, first at Stanford Research
Institute (SRI) and then at Science Applications International Corporation
(SAIC), both in Menlo Park, CA, supplemented
by various in-house government programs. Although almost all of the
documentation remains yet classified, in July 1995 270
pages of SRI reports were declassified and released by the CIA, the
program's first sponsor <2>. Thus, although through the
years columns by Jack Anderson and others had claimed leaks of "psychic spy"
programs with such exotic names as Grill
Flame, Center Lane, Sunstreak and Star Gate, CIA's release of the SRI
reports constitutes the first documented public
admission of significant intelligence community involvement in the psi area.
As a consequence of the above, although I had founded the program in early
1972, and had acted as its Director until I left in
1985 to head up the Institute for Advanced Studies at Austin (at which point
my colleague Ed May assumed responsibility as
Director), it was not until 1995 that I found myself for the first time able
to utter in a single sentence the connected acronyms
CIA/SRI/RV. In this report I discuss the genesis of the program, report on
some of the early, now declassified, results that
drove early interest, and outline the general direction the program took as
it expanded into a multi-year, multi-site,
multi-million-dollar effort to determine whether such phenomena as remote
viewing "might have any utility for intelligence
collection" <1>.
Beginnings
In early 1972 I was involved in laser research at Stanford Research
Institute (now called SRI International) in Menlo Park,
CA. At that time I was also circulating a proposal to obtain a small grant
for some research in quantum biology. In that
proposal I had raised the issue whether physical theory as we knew it was
capable of describing life processes, and had
suggested some measurements involving plants and lower organisms <3>. This
proposal was widely circulated, and a copy
was sent to Cleve Backster in New York City who was involved in measuring
the electrical activity of plants with standard
polygraph equipment. New York artist Ingo Swann chanced to see my proposal
during a visit to Backster's lab, and wrote
me suggesting that if I were interested in investigating the boundary
between the physics of the animate and inanimate, I should
consider experiments of the parapsychological type. Swann then went on to
describe some apparently successful experiments
in psychokinesis in which he had participated at Prof. Gertrude Schmeidler's
laboratory at the City College of New York. As
a result of this correspondence I invited him to visit SRI for a week in
June 1972 to demonstrate such effects, frankly, as
much out of personal scientific curiosity as anything else.
Prior to Swann's visit I arranged for access to a well-shielded magnetometer
used in a quark-detection experiment in the
Physics Department at Stanford University. During our visit to this
laboratory, sprung as a surprise to Swann, he appeared to
perturb the operation of the magnetometer, located in a vault below the
floor of the building and shielded by mu-metal
shielding, an aluminum container, copper shielding and a superconducting
shield. As if to add insult to injury, he then went on
to "remote view" the interior of the apparatus, rendering by drawing a
reasonable facsimile of its rather complex (and
heretofore unpublished) construction. It was this latter feat that impressed
me perhaps even more than the former, as it also
eventually did representatives of the intelligence community. I wrote up
these observations and circulated it among my
scientific colleagues in draft form of what was eventually published as part
of a conference proceedings <4>.
In a few short weeks a pair of visitors showed up at SRI with the above
report in hand. Their credentials showed them to be
from the CIA. They knew of my previous background as a Naval Intelligence
Officer and then civilian employee at the
National Security Agency (NSA) several years earlier, and felt they could
discuss their concerns with me openly. There was,
they told me, increasing concern in the intelligence community about the
level of effort in Soviet parapsychology being funded
by the Soviet security services <5>; by Western scientific standards the
field was considered nonsense by most working
scientists. As a result they had been on the lookout for a research
laboratory outside of academia that could handle a quiet,
low-profile classified investigation, and SRI appeared to fit the bill. They
asked if I could arrange an opportunity for them to
carry out some simple experiments with Swann, and, if the tests proved
satisfactory, would I consider a pilot program along
these lines? I agreed to consider this, and arranged for the requested
tests.2
The tests were simple, the visitors simply hiding objects in a box and
asking Swann to attempt to describe the contents. The
results generated in these experiments are perhaps captured most eloquently
by the following example. In one test Swann said
"I see something small, brown and irregular, sort of like a leaf or
something that resembles it, except that it seems very much
alive, like it's even moving!" The target chosen by one of the visitors
turned out to be a small live moth, which indeed did look
like a leaf. Although not all responses were quite so precise, nonetheless
the integrated results were sufficiently impressive that
in short order an eight-month, $49,909 Biofield Measurements Program was
negotiated as a pilot study, a laser colleague
Russell Targ who had a long-time interest and involvement in parapsychology
joined the program, and the experimental
effort was begun in earnest.
Early Remote Viewing Results
During the eight-month pilot study of remote viewing the effort gradually
evolved from the remote viewing of symbols and
objects in envelopes and boxes, to the remote viewing of local target sites
in the San Francisco Bay area, demarked by
outbound experimenters sent to the site under strict protocols devised to
prevent artifactual results. Later judging of the results
were similarly handled by double-blind protocols designed to foil
artifactual matching. Since these results have been presented
in detail elsewhere, both in the scientific literature <6-8> and in popular
book format <9>, I direct the interested reader to these
sources. To summarize, over the years the back-and-forth criticism of
protocols, refinement of methods, and successful
replication of this type of remote viewing in independent laboratories
<10-14>, has yielded considerable scientific evidence for
the reality of the phenomenon. Adding to the strength of these results was
the discovery that a growing number of individuals
could be found to demonstrate high-quality remote viewing, often to their
own surprise, such as the talented Hella Hammid.
As a separate issue, however, most convincing to our early program monitors
were the results now to be described,
generated under their own control.
First, during the collection of data for a formal remote viewing series
targeting indoor laboratory apparatus and outdoor
locations (a series eventually published in toto in the Proc. IEEE <7>), the
CIA contract monitors, ever watchful for possible
chicanery, participated as remote viewers themselves in order to critique
the protocols. In this role three separate viewers,
designated visitors V1 - V3 in the IEEE paper, contributed seven of the 55
viewings, several of striking quality. Reference to
the IEEE paper for a comparison of descriptions/drawings to pictures of the
associated targets, generated by the contract
monitors in their own viewings, leaves little doubt as to why the contract
monitors came to the conclusion that there was
something to remote viewing (see, for example, Figure 1 herein). As
summarized in the Executive Summary of the
now-released Final Report <2> of the second year of the program, "The
development of this
