THE EMERGENCE OF PROJECT "SCANATE"
THE FIRST ESPIONAGE-WORTHY REMOTE VIEWING EXPERIMENT
REQUESTED BY THE CIA (Summer 1973)
THIS IS PART TWO OF TWO PARTS
by Ingo Swann (29Dec95)
With failure looming ahead, I began to think again of the remote viewing models -- that there ought to be a way to get around their obvious limitations.
The problem involved how to give a viewer something pertinent to the distant location to focus on, but which would not cue him or her in any way.
I consulted a number of scientists outside of the SRI orbit, but not far away, in Silicon Valley. No one could recommend anything. But Dr. Jacques Vallee recognized the problem was one of addresses."
If I remember correctly, he said that you need an address that gets the perceptual channel to the right place, exactly as one needs a street address to find a house, or an address menu code in a computer to find and call up the desired information.
I considered remote viewing vital enough, and preliminary work at SRI had already begun suggesting its repeatability, as had been shown back at the ASPR. There was only this hated problem of utilizing it.
I had rented an apartment in Mountain View for the duration of the eight-month project. The complex of the apartments had two very nice swimming pools.
In an early evening of the second week of April 1973, I took a bottle of Scotch and a bucket of ice and floated alone in one of those pools. I had only one thought in mind -- how to transcend the problem of utilizing RV for espionage purposes.
How to get the viewer to the distant site without cueing him. Finally I was so tanked up that I had to hold on to the side to keep from sinking.
Then --I heard a voice speak-- outside of my head at about six feet above it and to the right side. It said two words.
"--Try coordinates--."
Don't ask how this came about. I can't explain it.
By this was meant geographic coordinates, of course -- longitude and latitude. Well, this --was-- how seafarers found their way around the oceans, and how locations were identified on maps.
Yes, Vallee had been right. A coordinate --was-- an "address."
I mulled this idea round for the weekend. How much would a coordinate cue the viewer? Perhaps, somewhat -- if they were familiar with general map locations. Critics could say that the viewer memorized the coordinates or had an eidetic memory of them.
But I began tabulating up how --many-- coordinates there were, ending up with millions of them once one got to degrees, minutes and seconds. Memorizing --all-- of these millions would take some Super Kind of eidetic memory.
In any event, what the intelligence community would be interested in was not what was visible from the surface, but what was hidden inside buildings or underground. Even eidetic memory of coordinates themselves would not suffice here.
OK. So now the only problem was whether the remote viewing perceptual channel could utilize coordinates to obtain an accurate fix on a distant location. I determined to find out.
So, on the following Monday morning I presented this idea to Dr. Puthoff and his associate, Mr. Russell Targ.
Both thought it was the most ridiculous idea they had ever heard of.
A tremendous flap now occurred, one which came to involve the entire chain of command in the Radio Physics Lab in which we were housed, and ultimately our sponsors at the CIA.
After a few days of ongoing screaming and hollering, Puthoff and Targ finally admitted to their essential objection.
If it should by chance work, they said, they would not be able to say --how-- it worked in terms of physics theory, and their scientific associates would demand that particular explanation.
I responded by saying that there are many things of which no one knows how they work, but they're utilized anyway. Besides, the goal here is spying -- not explaining things to physicists, most of whom don't believe remote viewing exists in the first place. I accused them of being unresponsive to the original purpose of the eight-month project. I said "I'm outta here, going back to New York." Since the eight-month project had been set up for me to find something repeatable, --Puthoff and SRI-- would have to give back what remained of the $50,000.
After mulling this over, they agreed to do what I wanted. But I was so angry that I went to Dr. Bart Cox, director of the Radio Physics Lab.
I insisted that he provide three independent witnesses to sit in and monitor not only me but Puthoff and Targ during all of the forthcoming initial coordinate experiments. These were duly provided, and among them was the noted perceptual specialist, Dr. Hew Crane.
I felt we needed to do 100 coordinate experiments in order to judge success and failure rates. I broke these into ten sets of ten coordinates each. On each of ten days (two working weeks), then, I was to do one session during which I was sequentially given a run of ten coordinates.
After doing all ten, my responses were to be compared with what could be found on maps. The coordinates were selected by Puthoff and Targ, but all 100 were put into a container and the day's batch was randomly drawn by others, essentially by Mrs. Judy Schmickley, Dr. Cox's secretary.
As to the quality of my responses, we decided to utilize a sliding scale from zero to six.
0. Response does not correspond to coordinate.
1. Response impossible to grade with given maps.
2. Response accurate in one minor detail.
3. Response accurate in two minor details.
4. Response accurate in three or more minor details.
S. Response accurate in one or more major details.
6. Response corresponds with coordinate location.
We could also use the seven (0-6) numbers of the sliding scale ultimately assigned to each coordinate as a kind of statistical indicator of the success-failure of each day's set of ten.
Thus, the best total score for each set of ten could be 60. We figured that we needed to achieve at least a 35-40 score on each set of ten to know if we were in business or not.
My goal as the viewer was to identify the general environment of the targets. If additional correct details were achieved, that would be all for the better. If the scoring was good, then additional and more refined experiments could be designed after completing the initial run of 100.
The first set of ten coordinates was undertaken on 23 April 1973 at 5:10 in the afternoon. The accumulated results at the end of the first five days were not promising, and people began commenting on Swann's coordinate boondoggle. Tempers were heating up.
Set 1: 34
Set 2: 15
Set 3: 37
Set 4: 37
Set 5: 18
_______
Total: 125
Two people (I'll not name them) now felt we were wasting time. But I insisted we do the entire 100 coordinates.
Things began to pick up on the sixth set. And, as well, the responses began to be more detailed and extensive.
Set 6: 45
Set 7: 35
Set 8: 38
Set 9: 41
Set 10: 42
_______
Total: 201
The success rate of the second week was about a 75 percent accuracy increase over the first five days.
But a difficulty had intruded as the responses began to become more detailed. It turned out that the whole of the nation's second largest think-tank, SRI, possessed only the most simplistic, single-page maps of the world. And it was from one such map that all of the coordinates had been taken.
The over-simplification required the omission of a lot of the details that had been occurring in my responses. However, we assumed that this increase of detail plus the increases in the scoring indicated a learning curve of some kind. The perceptual channel seemed to be learning how to utilize the coordinate addresses.
But as to inefficient maps, I was irritated by this lack of preparation and foresight, and especially so regarding Target #2 in the last set of ten coordinates that took place on 3 May 1973.
The coordinate given was 2 degrees South, 34 degrees West.
My response was: "First time sense of speeding over water landing on land. Lake to the west."
The coordinate selected had been taken from a simplistic map indicating that 2 degrees South, 34 degrees West was over the water of Lake Victoria, not over land.
So the correct response was supposed to be "water," not speeding over it and landing on land. Puthoff and Targ therefore ranked this coordinate as a "zero."
But my experience of zooming over water and landing on some kind of land had been so vivid and real that I took exception to the simplistic map being used as feedback. I indicated we had to get a better map to judge by.
So Puthoff and I hopped into his car and sped across town to a large bookstore. Therein we found the "Times Atlas of the World."
And in this, Lake Victoria was more clearly shown. The coordinate was --not-- on water. It was precisely on Ukerewe island in the southwest part of Lake Victoria. The lake's larger body of water was to the west.
Here, then, was an exact remote viewing detail, one which no one involved with the experiment had known of in advance.
The potential intelligence value of the --coordinate-- remote viewing system was now both implicit and explicit regarding using this new system for spying.
The increase of accuracy during the 100 experiments had shown that such a viewing was probably repeatable.
If coordinate remote viewing held up under severe testing, the two formidable problems of utilizing it for spying had been resolved. For we could now get to a distant target merely by utilizing its coordinates as the remote viewing "address."
But now a Really Big Problem arose: how to tell you-know-who -- that anonymous client who had put up its money.
Over objections from all sides, I now took the decision to offer the coordinate system as the repeatable experiment the CIA had initially demanded. Puthoff rolled his big eyes, and everyone got worried.
How, they asked, were they to explain all this to the "scientist on the east coast? No one's going to believe any of it."
"That's your job," I said. "The whole of this is unbelievable, anyway. What more harm can another unbelievable factor do? Ask them to submit some coordinates of their own selection, and to be prepared to judge the results themselves. I suggest that the coordinates be triple-blind so they can't accuse us of benefiting from leaks."
"We shall," I said, "call this experiment SCANATE (scanning by coordinate.) They like sexy words like that."
Physicist Puthoff was exceedingly intelligent and, in my opinion, of genius quality. But both he and Targ suffered somewhat from being locked into conventional parapsychology and physics contexts. Coordinate remote viewing transcended both of those contexts, and had come virtually out of nowhere in only two weeks time. The concept was worse than science fiction.
And there was not a trace of anything that might be used to explain how or --why-- it should work. Both feared that their CIA contacts would laugh them out of town. That would be not only the end (1) of coordinate remote viewing but, (2) the entire project at SRI, and (3) the end of their scientific reputations as well.
Even I felt sorry for them in this unenviable task.
I was not privy as to how SCANATE was presented to the functionaries at the CIA -- for I was only the "psychic subject" and not permitted to interact with the "client." But I believe a number of "scientists" arrived at SRI and were briefed behind closed doors during the first three weeks of July 1973.
In the end, that the Agency agreed to submit coordinates must be attributed to the genius of Puthoff -- and a very great honor to me.
Finally, Puthoff came into the small office I been assigned. "OK," Puthoff said, "you got your way. The first coordinate will be telephoned to us at 5:00 p.m. on July 21. You and I are to be locked in a room with only pen and paper. The door will be guarded. Then it's up to you."
"Well, it's about time," I replied. "You know that this project is over on the last of August, and then I'm outtahere." In reality, I was scared shitless.
The Controlled Remote Viewing Home Page is a service of