This is the sec­ond arti­cle, The CIA Gets Hip To A New Intel­li­gence Tool, in the three-part series by Mike Jamieson.

You can read the first part (part 1) — Adop­tion of the term “Remote View­ing” by click­ing here.

Part 2 — THE CIA GETS HIP TO A NEW INTELLIGENCE TOOL

First pub­lished 8th August 2007

Less than a year after Ingo Swann “remote viewed” weather con­di­tions in Tuc­son, Ari­zona as part of exper­i­ments con­ducted at the New York City offices of the Amer­i­can Soci­ety of Psy­chi­cal Research, the CIA would be giv­ing an inde­pen­dent research orga­ni­za­tion, for­merly a part of Stan­ford Uni­ver­sity until divested to its nuclear research projects, an “exploratory con­tract” of $49,909 to do clas­si­fied research into the via­bil­ity and poten­tial of remote view­ing.

The per­son at Stan­ford Research Insti­tute (SRI) cho­sen to over­see this ini­tial eight month project (called Biofield Mea­sure­ments Pro­gram) was Hal Puthoff, at that time work­ing on laser research at SRI. Join­ing him later would be a col­league (from laser research and also with an inter­est in para­psy­chol­ogy), Rus­sell Targ.

Puthoff in a 1996 paper recounts the his­tory of “CIA-Initiated Remote View­ing at Stan­ford Research Institute”.

That paper could be writ­ten because in July 1995 the CIA declas­si­fied papers and reports gen­er­ated by SRI’s research and use of remote view­ing for the ben­e­fit of the CIA.

(see http://www.militaryremoteviewers.com/cia_remote_viewing_sri.htm)

Another detailed account, in the form of an online book was writ­ten by Ingo Swann (who along with a man named Pat Price would be the remote view­ing par­tic­i­pants in this ini­tial remote view­ing project on the CIA’s behalf).

(see http://www.biomindsuperpowers.com and the link there)

And, per­haps most valu­able of all due to the author’s access to not only his own notes of involve­ment in an unit of the government’s remote view­ing oper­a­tions since 1983 but also his inter­views with most of the key fig­ures (includ­ing Puthoff and Swann), is the book “Read­ing the Enemy’s Mind: America’s Psy­chic Espi­onage Pro­gram” by Paul H. Smith.

Famed Pulitzer Prize jour­nal­ist Jack Ander­son wrote the for­ward to this book and sum­ma­rizes his own his­tory of exam­in­ing and report­ing on this long secret program.

(Peo­ple can see Smith’s web­site, http://www.rviewer.com, for more information.)

In March 1972, Swann saw some intrigu­ing cor­re­spon­dence, a paper on “quan­tum biol­ogy” by Hal Puthoff, at Cleve Backster’s home in New York. (Dur­ing this time Swann was still doing exper­i­ments at the Amer­i­can Soci­ety of Psy­chi­cal Research.)

Swann soon wrote to Puthoff, shar­ing his expe­ri­ences with the early exper­i­ments that attempted a PK influ­ence over organic mat­ter. Puthoff responded not longer after by phone and the stage was being set for Swann to visit SRI early in June 1972.

Puthoff pre­pared a sur­prise test for Swann on this first visit, involv­ing get­ting access to a shielded, quark detect­ing mag­ne­tome­ter at Stan­ford University’s Physics Depart­ment. On his visit, it appeared Swann was able to dis­turb the oper­a­tion of the mag­ne­tome­ter (while located on the floor above the vault).

He fur­ther went on to impress Puthoff by draw­ing details of the the com­plex inte­rior of the mag­ne­tome­ter. (No such schemat­ics had been pub­lished prior to this.)

All this so impressed Puthoff that he wrote a paper about it and cir­cu­lated it among sci­en­tific col­leagues. What in par­tic­u­lar impressed Puthoff were Swann’s detailed draw­ings of the magnetometer’s make-up. And, this is what also what impressed the two CIA rep­re­sen­ta­tives who showed up shortly after Puthoff send­ing his report out. They also had a copy of the report.

(After this visit, Puthoff did write to Dr. Christo­pher “Kit” Green about the exper­i­ment. Green was then at the Life Sci­ence Desk, part of the CIA’s Office of Strate­gic Intel­li­gence. Puthoff’s con­tact with him begin their many years of association.)

No one writ­ing the his­tory of remote view­ing seems to know how these two CIA vis­i­tors came across Puthoff’s paper, but they were aware that Puthoff had worked as a Naval Intel­li­gence Offi­cer and then later as a civil­ian employee with the National Secu­rity Agency (NSA).

And, Puthoff reports in his account of this meet­ing that these rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the CIA expressed con­cern about Soviet para­psy­cho­log­i­cal research and uti­liza­tion of psy­chic skills as an intel­li­gence tool. (Puthoff ref­er­ences a later-1978-paper by the Defense Intel­li­gence Agency, iden­ti­fied as DST-18105–202-78 and enti­tled “Para­physics R and D–Warsaw Pact U.)

The vis­i­tors explained that they had been look­ing for a research lab­o­ra­tory that was uncon­nected for­mally with an aca­d­e­mic insti­tu­tion and that could serve as a quiet, low-profile place for clas­si­fied research and inves­ti­ga­tion. SRI seemed to fit the bill. So, as a result, they gave SRI a small amount of money to fly Ingo Swann out to Stan­ford and have him par­tic­i­pate in some tests to observe and eval­u­ate his remote view­ing skills.

This test­ing and eval­u­a­tion hap­pened in August 1972. CIA sci­en­tists came out to par­tic­i­pat­ing in test­ing and eval­u­at­ing Swann’s poten­tial enhanced per­cep­tual abil­i­ties. Basi­cally, Swann was asked to remote view the con­tents of sealed containers.

In three cases, the CIA vis­i­tors placed items in three sealed boxes (con­tents picked and known only by them). Swann did well alto­gether, though he was very puz­zled by what he saw in one of the boxes pre­pared by the CIA vis­i­tors. He thought he saw a “brown leaf” float­ing up by the under­side of the lid. In fact, the CIA guys had placed a large brown moth in the box.

These tri­als were suf­fi­cient to move the CIA to fund on Octo­ber 1, 1972 (the first day of the government’s fis­cal year for 1973) a con­tract with SRI in the amount of $49,909 for exploratory research into para­psy­chol­ogy. This con­tract would fund the research for eight months (which began in Jan­u­ary 1973).