This is the third in a series of arti­cles by Mike Jamieson, the well known researcher and for­mer MUFON state sec­tion direc­tor for Napa County in Cal­i­for­nia.
Mike is a val­ued mem­ber of the REALITY uncov­ered forums and this arti­cle is the sec­ond part of his enthralling “His­tory of Remote View­ing” feature.

You can read Part 1 (Adop­tion of the term “Remote View­ing”) by click­ing here, and Part 2 (The CIA Gets Hip To A New Intel­li­gence Tool) by click­ing here.

Part 3 — ALL YOU REALLY NEED IS AN ADDRESS

10th May 2008
The focus for the first few months of SRI’s ini­tial 8 month long study for the CIA was on PK effects, but with min­i­mal suc­cess (and a lack of con­sis­tency) in the results, SRI exper­i­men­ta­tion refo­cused on the poten­tials of RV for use by their cur­rent client.

It was not clear at first how remote view­ing, in the way they had been exper­i­ment­ing with it, would be of use to any intel­li­gence agen­cies. The most typ­i­cal way they had been prac­tic­ing it was to send “out­bounder” teams to a site which the viewer would then focus on (via the pres­ence of the team).

The group at SRI was mulling this over with only a short time left on the ini­tial CIA con­tract (May ’73 to Aug. ’73, with the con­tract hav­ing begun in Jan­u­ary). A vis­i­tor to SRI, Jacques Vallee, sug­gested a sim­ple solu­tion: “All you really need is an address.”

Swann in turn sug­gested the use of geo­graphic coor­di­nates, some­thing Puthoff and Targ thought didn’t make sense due to the fact that coor­di­nates were arti­fi­cial and abstract representations.

But, pre­lim­i­nary experiements (sic) were sat­is­fac­tory enough and the CIA itself offered coor­di­nates to a wooded area in the hills of West Vir­ginia. So far as the CIA per­son offer­ing the coor­di­nates knew, there was only a vaca­tion cabin at the site.

Ingo Swann and another man named Pat Price were tasked with remote view­ing this loca­tion. (Price had recently heard about the project and, feel­ing he had a psy­chic apti­tude, vol­un­teered for experiments.)

Both Swann and Price described a par­tially under­ground mil­i­tary like facil­ity not far from the cabin! (Con­firmed in fol­lowup vis­its and consultations.)

Not only were the descrip­tions of the site (again, unknown even to the provider of the coor­di­nates) accu­rate, but the CIA’s project man­ager for the SRI con­tract, Dr. Ken Kress, noted: “Pat Price, who had no mil­i­tary or intel­li­gence back­ground, pro­vided a list of project titles asso­ci­ated with cur­rent and past activ­i­ties includ­ing one of extreme sensitivity.

Also, the code-name of the site was pro­vided. Other infor­ma­tion con­cern­ing the phys­i­cal lay­out of the site was accu­rate.” [pages 72–73, Ken Kress, “Para­psy­chol­ogy in Intel­li­gence: A Per­sonal Review and Con­clu­sions”, STUDIES IN INTELLIGENCE, Wash­ing­ton, DC, CIA, Win­ter 1977.]

Other double-blind coor­di­nates were tasked for the remote view­ers before the CIA con­tract ended in August 1973 and since the results were good over­all, CIA sup­port for this research at SRI con­tin­ued until 1975.

Ingo Swann would take a year long break from this study, but in addi­tion to Pat Price, oth­ers would become involved: Hella Ham­mid (pro­fes­sional pho­tog­ra­pher), Duane Elgin (SRI employee), Gary Lang­ford and Keith Harary.

Pat Price’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in RV efforts changed direc­tions when he began work­ing with the CIA directly, in the months just prior to his unex­pected death in Las Vegas in July 1975. Not long after Price died (an event about which some peo­ple have ques­tions), the CIA dropped out of the RV busi­ness. Being under fire in Con­gres­sional hear­ings over past ques­tion­able prac­tices, they were reluc­tant to hold onto what might be controversial.

Also very impor­tant: there was strong dis­agree­ment within the CIA over using remote view­ing. Many there felt it was nei­ther real nor poten­tially useful.

Paul Smith reports in his book Read­ing The Ene­mies’ Mind (“chron­i­cling America’s psy­chic espi­onage pro­gram”) that “even though a few in-house CIA employ­ees had shown some suc­cess with remote view­ing, and Price him­self was now work­ing exclu­sively for the agency and com­ing up with results cor­rob­o­rated by other intel­li­gence infor­ma­tion the CIA had already obtained, this ongo­ing debate con­tributed to the ter­mi­na­tion of CIA involve­ment after Price’s sud­den death in July 1975″ [p.76, paper­back edition]

A year before he died, Pat Price was still work­ing for SRI, though, and that’s when he was given the task of remote view­ing a research and devel­op­ment facil­ity in the old Soviet Union (near Semi­palatinsk, Kaza­khstan). After receiv­ing the coor­di­nates (on July 19, 1974), Price reported his impres­sions of that loca­tion from the sev­eral remote view­ing ses­sions he did over the fol­low­ing two weeks.

Some of his descrip­tions were con­firmed by satel­lite imagery: a large gantry crane that rode on rails and that passed over a 2–3 story build­ing and the pres­ence of gas cylin­ders. But not con­firmed for another few years were 60 foot diam­e­ter steel spheres that Price described being assembled.

The story of this par­tic­u­lar remote view­ing impressed many in the intel­li­gence com­mu­nity, but by July 1975 many oth­ers there felt that the fact Price pro­duced a lot of bad data and oth­er­wise descrip­tions that could be nei­ther eval­u­ated or con­firmed made RV use­less as an intel­li­gence tool.

• For exam­ple, this was the con­clu­sion of the offi­cers at the CIA’s Office of Research and Devel­op­ment when the CIA’s involve­ment with RV ended in 1975.

The SRI team spent its last stretch of time under CIA con­tract par­tially exam­in­ing the nature of RV phe­nom­ena (and see­ing what fac­tors enhanced suc­cess­ful use). But, they more impor­tantly focused on remote viewing’s poten­tial uses.

• For exam­ple, a series of dou­ble blind exper­i­ments, with 12 remote view­ers tar­get­ing 7 pieces of instru­ments and machin­ery, yielded some very detailed and accu­rate sketches.

At this stage, Paul Smith reports in his­tory that some key con­clu­sions and obser­va­tions had been made by those involved in the SRI study. He also notes that at this point “it was also just two years into the pro­gram, and many lessons about task­ing, analy­sis, and report­ing of remote view­ing data were yet to be learned.” [p.68, paper­back edition].

So far as some of the under­stand­ings acquired from the study, Smith sum­ma­rizes some, like these key points: (1) con­crete descrip­tions more accu­rate than label­ing and analy­sis; (2) using sev­eral remote view­ers for a sin­gle task improved qual­ity of the final data; (3) any­body could be taught RV; and, RV improves with practice.

• Though the CIA ended its involve­ment with RV in the sum­mer of 1975, later in the year SRI’s research effort would be sus­tained by fund­ing from the Air Force For­eign Tech­nol­ogy Divi­sion at Wright Pat­ter­son. This came about through the inter­est of a civil­ian employee there, Dale Graff.
• Then, two years later an Army Lt. (“Skip” Atwa­ter) begins form­ing an Army RV pro­gram at the direc­tion of Army Assis­tant Chief of Staff Intel­li­gence, Maj. Gen. Edmund Thompson.
• The DIA assumes con­trol of the program.
• Early 1980s, the remote view­ing pro­ce­dure is struc­tured and train­ing CRV to gov­ern­ment remote view­ers begins.
• The Remote View­ing process (as com­monly taught).
• Ques­tions, con­tro­ver­sies, debates.