THE EMERGENCE OF PROJECT "SCANATE"
THE FIRST ESPIONAGE-WORTHY REMOTE VIEWING EXPERIMENT
REQUESTED BY THE CIA (Summer 1973)
PART I OF II
by Ingo Swann (29Dec95)
Please note my (Ingo's) feeling that there is no use putting these experiments into the Net unless people are interested in reading them. It takes considerable time and effort to do so. So, if a number of positive interest replies are not received, this will be the last one.
The first experiment of the series was entitled "The 1973 Remote Viewing Probe of the Planet Jupiter."
I will delay giving the title of this second major experiment until the end in order not to cue the reader ahead of time as to what the target was. A rather lengthy background description is needed to place this experiment in its real-time contexts.
The term --remote viewing-- was coined on December 8, 1971 by myself, Dr. Janet Mitchell, Dr. Karlis Osis, and Dr. Gertrude Schmeidler at the American Society for Psychical Research (ASPR) in New York City.
We felt the novel term was needed to describe a particular type of experiment I had envisioned in order to distinguish that experiment from a number of other more conventional parapsychology experiment formats.
There were about ten kinds of these conventional experiments, all grouped together under the general heading of "out-of-body perceptual states." All of them utilized targets concealed somewhere in the ASPR premises.
The goal of the novel experiment was to see if special perceptions and/or clairvoyant perceptions could be extended across large distances rather than just within the local environment of the ASPR.
At my suggestion, we designed an experiment whereby Janet would give me the name of an American city. I would then attempt to "go there" and determine the weather. Janet would then immediately telephone for the local weather report to see if I was correct or not. A correct term for this would have been "traveling clairvoyance" or "distance viewing." But room-to-room traveling clairvoyance was the topic of several other kinds of experiments.
A "remote" distance was the principal difference in the novel experiment. We considered a number of terms. I suggested "remote viewing" and "remote sensing" -- the latter of which I preferred. Dr. Schmeidler and Dr. Osis preferred "remote viewing" because it had to do with "visual perceptions."
The first attempt worked quite well, and so we decided to do more weather trials -- and to call them "remote viewing" experiments to distinguish them from, for example, "clairvoyant flicker tuition tests" et.al.
I later designed another type of remote viewing experiment. A person was to select and go "outbound" as a "beacon" to a distant site somewhere in Manhattan. At a prearranged time the person was to make notes of where they were. Their location was unknown to me back at the ASPR, but I wish to focus on the beacon and attempt to describe where they were. The first of this kind of experiment took place on 22 February 1972.
This type of experiment worked quite well, too, and so we decided to do more and dub this kind of effort as an "outbound beacon RV experiment."
No one at the ASPR dreamt that remote viewing would later be considered as a thing-in-itself and be entered into the English language as a special term -- or that it would be considered identical to and tend to replace the term "psychic" as a stereotyping label.
If one wants to understand why the American intelligence community in late 1972 and 1973 took an interest in remote viewing, then it is absolutely necessary to comprehend it in more detail. Simplistic stereotypes will not suffice.
In her book, Out-of-Body Experiences (McFarland, 1981), Dr. Janet Mitchell states that the experiments at the ASPR were attempts to develop various methodologies by which it could be ascertained "whether a person could localize part of his or her consciousness in space some distance from the body."
Overall, the experiments were called "perceptual organization tests." The "distance" involved was near to the body, and increasingly far from it -- which is to say, increasingly remote from the body. Many, but certainly not all, of the perceptual organization tests at the ASPR were successful regarding different kinds of targets and experimental set-ups whose controls and protocols were excellent. But, as Mitchell correctly states, "these targets could have been perceived telepathically, clairvoyantly, precognitively, or fraudulently, but I have reasons to believe that they were perceived by some type of perception which operated outside of normal visual range."
It is counterproductive and misleading to lump into just one term all the possible explanations that might account for "some type of perception which operates outside of normal visual range."
In other words, what was being searched for was not remote viewing, but a type (or types) of perception that could be seen as operating outside of normal visual range. Thus, remote viewing can never be a thing-in-itself.
Rather, and as continued research under CIA and DIA auspices was to reveal, the perceptions operating outside of normal visual range were proven to consist of very many kinds of --sensing-- faculties. It was ultimately possible to list some --eighty-one-- of these faculties --- of which visualization --was just one.-- In other words, we are talking here about a large variety of sensing receptors that exist in the human sensorium in addition to the well-known five physical senses. A more correct term, then, would be "remote sensing," not "remote viewing," since the word "viewing" localizes us in just one of the eighty-one sensing abilities.
It is now very important to consider the following. We are not talking about anything psychic, clairvoyant, telepathic, or etc.
--- The Central Problem ---
The problem central to all of this has consisted of only one incorrect hypothesis.
According to earlier modern sciences, the human possessed only five physical senses that functioned only within the physical locality of the body. And this was the theory which was still in place as of the early 1970s.
Since then, however, biologists and neurologists (not parapsychologists) have identified at least --seventeen-- more kinds of --physical-- receptors that account for much which had earlier been thought of as "psychic."
If you are interested in following this up, I direct your attention to "Deciphering the Senses: The Expanding World of Human Perception," by Robert Rivlin and Karen Gravelle (Simon and Schuster, 1984) -- which book surveys the seventeen additional sense receptors as of that date.
Our American mainstreams, and even conventional parapsychology, have a hard time getting this book together with things "psychic." I highly recommended this book to those truly interested. Consult your local library.
In other words, things psychic and things that can be sensed are no longer two separate worlds -- except for the skeptical idiots who like to keep them apart so as to demoralize our species' superpowers.
Returning now to the main theme of this report, when the CIA did take an interest in "remote viewing," its interest did not focus on things psychic, but more precisely on whether "a person could localize part of his or her consciousness in space some distance from the body."
While participating as a subject at the ASPR, there was one thing that constantly surprised me. This was the speed by which the perceptions took place. There was a long-standing tradition in psychical research and parapsychology that subjects needed to take their time, lay down, close their eyes, and prepare themselves to "receive" information that "came in" slowly.
I, on the other hand, experienced information the moment I turned my head to doing so. And BANG! There it was, almost instantaneously, and so quickly that I could hardly grasp it.
I talked this over with a number of people, and Cleve Backster recommended I get in touch with a certain physicist named Dr. Harold E. Puthoff at Stanford Research institute in California. Puthoff was interested in tachyons, hypothesized particles that move very fast, maybe exceeding the speed of light.
On 30 March 1972, I fired off a letter to him, explaining the remote viewing and other experiments at the ASPR and especially asked him about speed of paranormal perceiving. As it turned out, Dr. Puthoff invited me to visit SRI to "poke around" with various kinds of experiments. I visited SRI twice in 1972, first in June and later in October.
I exported from the ASPR to SRI the models for the two types of remote viewing experiments, after which Puthoff and other scientists there began testing them. The SRI remote viewing tests proved significant enough, and were later to be shaped up with very good protocols.
At some time during 1972, under Puthoff's excellent auspices and government connections, the remote viewing and other experiments at SRI attracted the interest of the CIA. The outcome of this interest was a very unique one.
At some point in October 1972, the CIA offered SRI $50,000 to permit Puthoff and myself to find one repeatable phenomenon that might have intelligence applications. The first project was to last eight months -- January through August, 1973.
The identity of the sponsor was to be kept concealed, and in fact Dr. Puthoff never admitted to me who the sponsor was until today, 29 December 1995, when he agreed that descriptions of this and other experiments should be published on the Internet.
But it was rather common knowledge all along who the sponsor was, although in documents the identity of the Agency was concealed behind the sobriquet of "an east-coast scientist."
As we will see in later experiments of this series of nine, the Agency's interest was quite extensive. A number of agents of the CIA came themselves ultimately to SRI to act as subjects in remote viewing experiments, as did some members of Congress.
Dr. Puthoff eventually was to give remote viewing a more exact and correct descriptive context as "A Perceptual Channel Across Kilometer Distances." And indeed, it was such a "channel" that those later --trained-- in remote viewing were to experience. Do not, however, confuse this channel with so-called "channeling."
The meaning of "the repeatable experiment" will be lost on the average reader. Therefore it is necessary to discuss it briefly.
"Psychic" faculties, as they are called in the United States, cannot really be utilized unless they are made predictable, repeatable and dependable. Such faculties are notoriously "illusive" in this regard, as had been noted by researchers from about 1882.
The faculties are much more likely to occur spontaneously, and usually never in the same way regarding either frequency of occurring, or quality of information. During the 1960s, it became fashionable in parapsychology to believe that the repeatable experiment was never to be obtained.
With this conviction, parapsychologists lost interest in "psychics," and set about trying to demonstrate the existence of general psi in different ways rather than depending on "gifted" individuals.
During 1971, I participated in four repeatable experiments in the New York area. In a certain sense, these molded parapsychology history and catapulted me toward some fame as "parapsychology's most tested guinea pig." I was later to participate in fourteen more repeatable experiments with variety
It was the repeatable nature of my aptitudes that attracted first Dr. Puthoff at SRI, and then the initial interests of the American intelligence community.
(The blow-by-blow details of this story will appear in my book in preparation "Remote Viewing: The Real Story.")
The two remote viewing models originated at the ASPR in 1971 had not undergone extensive testing, and were not at first considered ideal for espionage purposes. Their repeatability was not exactly known, and I, myself, pointed out this drawback.
But beyond this drawback, two elements suggested that it would be impossible to utilize remote viewing methods for espionage purposes.
Regarding Model One, the name of a distant place or site would have to be given to the viewer as a point to focus on. Doing this would cue the viewer too much. This was a problem in the whole of parapsychology, since critics and experimental overseers wished to guard against cueing the subjects in any way.
Regarding Model Two, the beacon type of RV experiment, an agent-beacon would have to be insinuated into the distant location for the viewer to focus on.
This would be extremely difficult and costly, if not completely impossible to achieve, since the sites that interested the intelligence community were top secret ones in the Soviet Union, and elsewhere.
So, during the first part of the eight-month project, remote viewing was abandoned as a feasible espionage tool. Hundreds, and then thousands, of other kinds of experimental formats and trials were pursued. Some of these produced "suggestive" results, but on the whole by May 1973 it could already be seen that the eight-month ]project would not achieve the purpose demanded by the CIA.
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