Remote Viewing as Intelligence Laundering

In Forbidden Science Dispatches #11, we examine the befuddling history of remote viewing, its ties to Scientology and MKUltra, and how its true intel value may remain occulted or obscured.

Find other Forbidden Science Dispatches in the Table of Discontents.

i.

Remote viewing—psychic attunement to specific coordinates, places, or things—is one of those topics that is inexorably tied to ufology. This connection remains despite the fact that the two research areas have little in common on the surface beyond being common science fiction tropes. This crossover is bound to happen, however, as many of the researchers or participants are the same—all lifelong military scientists or intelligence agents—and substantial portion of UFO lore comes from remote viewing sessions. Paranormal enthusiasts and New Age gurus alike point to military interest in the psychic practice as proof of its efficacy. Once remote viewing is accepted as real, the impressions gained about alien species or secret bases become easier to believe as a necessary extension. Much like its ufological sibling, remote viewing lore expands out into a miniature universe of psi-spy James Bonds and Qs, often reliant on their military credentials to sell books, training, or lectures. But, given the U.S. government’s longstanding interest in the subject—even assertions that remote viewing sometimes works—has proof of the paranormal finally been received? Or are there, as usual, plausible ulterior motives within the intelligence community for perpetuating the idea that remote viewing works?

One of the most interesting first-person accounts of the development of the U.S. government’s remote viewing program can be found throughout the journals of Jacques Vallée. Within, the famed ufologist/computer scientist/venture capitalist recounts friendships with the principal investigators and his own interest in the possibilities of psychic powers. There are many factors that led to Jacques Vallée’s association with the early remote viewing program at the Stanford Research Institute—his interest in UFOs and the paranormal making it appear the next logical step. But realistically, he was neighbors with the group as he managed Stanford University’s information systems and found later involvement with SRI’s Augmentation Research Center.

Vallée witnessed protests by Stanford students and staff against the university for housing computer hardware for various projects connected to the Vietnam War. The complainants themselves were also targeted by many of the IC’s counterintelligence operations like COINTELPRO. In the years before and after the remote viewing program, SRI was a constant ARPA contractor, tasked with some of the more speculative or groundbreaking defense research, being one of the first “nodes” to ARPANET, the precursor to the modern internet.¹ Vallée himself was involved with this pioneering project, along with numerous SRI colleagues.² The willingness of defense agencies to fund explorations into the “weird” and the many colorful hippie-ish characters who were recipients of this funding oftentimes obscures the actual goals or implications of these endeavours. SRI research was rarely woo when implemented overseas despite the bohemian nature of its creators and the publicized promises for peace from many of its projects. Yasha Levine writes that SRI was “involved in everything from chemical weapons research to counterinsurgency work” and that ARPANET was used to catalogue and surveil the people of Southeast Asia with invasive sets of data—somewhat of a forerunner to the later PRISM program of the NSA.³

When it comes to the early remote viewing program, the origins and purposes get similarly obscured by the wild tales of psychic spies, paranormal activity, and comic book superpowers. The situation is not helped by subtle details changing from storyteller to storyteller and the general difficulty of tracking the lineage of any covert program. But with the dual developments of revolutionary scientific military power and the nascent human potential movement, remote viewing presents itself as an interesting combination of these two entities: What if we, human beings, were surveillance satellites all along? The practice could be seen, in this sense, as a human intelligence (HUMINT) node or equivalent to the immense developments in signals (SIGINT) and imagery (IMINT) intelligence technology throughout the era.

I do not personally think that remote viewing works, at least not in the sense that many practitioners and promoters tend to claim. I believe in some forms of intuition, maybe even some precognition, but I do not believe it can be consciously harnessed for military usage or even recorded within a laboratory setting. Ironically, my view is not all that different from the conclusions of many of the remote viewing studies being examined within this article. It’s intangible—a spiritual belief that could not be conclusively proven via studies or experiments, nor does it need to be. Besides, I think that many of these moments of insight can be explained by subconscious cues, or our wonderful brains processing small signals effectively without necessarily knowing why or how it is doing so. But if one were to take the military view of the spiritual, the potential uses become clear: How can this be used for espionage, combat, or psychological warfare? If one can put “eyes” on any place at any time, regardless of countermeasures or cloaking, remote viewing would be a weapon without parallel, even while incredible surveillance technologies were being developed next door.

ARPA’s Samos intelligence satellites. (National Reconnaissance Office/Wikipedia, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:SAMOS_MIssion_CAL21.jpg.)

ii.

Hal Puthoff and Russell Targ were the two researchers first given CIA funding for a remote viewing program at SRI. From the beginning, its connection to the national security state was pronounced. After all, Puthoff and Targ were already employed as scientists at SRI—a frequent defense contractor—prior to working on psychic research. Dr. Armin Krishnan, a security studies professor, keenly notes that “Targ and Puthoff had previously worked in laser technology before they switched to parapsychology,” making some more suspicious minds posit that remote viewing “was little more than a cover story for protecting very advanced biotelemetry technology.”⁴ There is also the possibility that it was serving as cover for advancements in satellite or spy plane imaging. As Krishnan writes: “The use of elaborate and highly public cover stories is not unusual in the intelligence world.”⁵ In his genuinely entertaining book Penetration, remote viewer extraordinaire Ingo Swann makes repeated references to satellite technology that can read not only license plates, but also “a bubble-gum wrapper in a New York City gutter.”⁶ This capability is brought up by him so often in comparison to remote viewing abilities that it might leave the reader a tad suspicious of Swann, a notorious trickster. If the United States government has such impressive surveillance capabilities, why would it need human vessels to do the same work—especially when they tend to be more hit and miss?

Another elephant in the remote viewing lab is the fact that the practice has its roots in Scientology, with researcher Hal Puthoff and participants Ingo Swann and Pat Price being involved with the church from the late sixties to at least the early 70s.⁷ All three individuals were varying levels of Operating Thetan, the higher stages of spiritual awakening within L. Ron Hubbard’s cosmology. The concept of remote viewing itself is similar to the Church of Scientology’s “exterorization”—a state of being akin to an out-of-body experience (OBE) where the participant can leave their body while still conscious and are capable of examining the world around them. At higher levels, this becomes easier to accomplish, but some members experience it in the earliest auditing stages.⁸

Of course, remote viewing’s genesis coming from two former Scientologists rightfully inspires criticism. Some researchers stop there, immediately writing it off as useless bunk and cult indoctrination. But the possibility remains that it is useful bunk and cult indoctrination, all with a particular purpose. Its utility to Scientology auditors could indicate possible utility to intelligence agencies. After all, while occurring in the latter years of MKUltra, the quest for “brainwashing” had not subsided completely. In Scientology auditing, the trick is partially hypnosis, Hubbard himself allegedly being a skilled hypnotist.⁹ Psychologists Steven A. Hassan and Alan W. Scheflin contend that Scientology uses hypnotism specifically to instill “dependency and obedience in followers.”¹⁰ Although Hassan tends to draw a wide net, his reading of the church’s practices is largely accurate.

Scientology even borrowed its vaunted “E-meter” technology from earlier ideas established by the polygraph and EEGs, also being a sort of lie detector test, which in practice all have the same issues with suggestibility and inaccuracy. Puthoff in particular was laudatory of the E-meter “efficiency” in a notarized letter proudly published by the Church of Scientology.¹¹ “Several scholars looking to dismiss the validity of the E-meter compared it to lie detectors, which also require human operators to interpret the results,” writes engineering historian Allison Marsh.¹² However, not only is an operator required to interpret findings, both polygraphs and E-meters see practitioners influencing or angling towards preferred results—an issue that crops up within criticisms of remote viewing. Indeed, Getting Spooked had examined the career of purported polygraph expert Cleve Backster and noted his earlier interest in the use of hypnotic and narcotic coercion in a military context. Additionally, Ingo Swann was working with Backster in telepathy experiments prior to joining the SRI project when, in 1972, Backster allegedly clued him in to Puthoff and Targ’s project. Swann writes:

Returning to the lab, Cleve pulled out some papers from one of his file cabinets and handed them to me.

“Hal Puthoff,” he said, “is a physicist out in California. He is very interested in tachyons, particles which go faster than the speed of light. You should be in touch with him about this.”

I was scanning the papers when Cleve said: “He has a very prestigious reputation. You two might get along. He's into Scientology, too.”¹³

Backster has a strange covert career in his own right, often involved in strange spy games with the fringier types of the intel community. This includes his tenure with the Shickshinny Knights of Malta, a far-right group made up of active and former intelligence officers (including UFO “whistleblower” Philip J. Corso) who, in one strange scheme, attempted to convince the public that Soviet defector and superspy Mikal Goleniewski was a long-lost Romanov heir.¹⁴ Backster and Swann (despite little direct involvement) were also both considered key “researchers and pioneers” by Mankind Research Unlimited,¹⁵ a group with a keen interest in Soviet parapsychology often suspected of being a CIA front organization.¹⁶ Even before Puthoff and Targ’s remote viewing program began, parapsychological research was awash with intelligence figures, national security concerns, and murky motivations.

The consistent overlap of these subjects within the CIA, Scientology, and parapsychology is concerning, but the continual interest inducing reactions or compliance in a subject is worth noting. Perhaps this tendency explains the remote viewing program’s durability, even when Scientology became a liability for SRI and the CIA. Kenneth A. Kress, an SRI observer from the CIA’s Office of Technical Services, would later write:

The FBI agent proceeded to explain that Pat Price was a member of an organization that was recently raided for documents indicative of illegal activity. The organization was vigorously resisting the government investigation but the raid produced hundreds of files and papers that supported the government's allegations. (…) One such file included debriefings of Pat Price about his CIA remote viewing projects. The debriefings were a detailed record of the intelligence objectives I had given Pat and results that Pat provided to me.¹⁷

Kress speaks here of late 1970s raids on Scientology properties, agents look for federal documents pilfered in Operation Snow White. The directive was L. Ron Hubbard’s attempt “to legally discover and expunge ‘derogatory and false reports’ about himself and Scientology in official records,” that “took an illicit turn when a secret program was written to plant individuals at government agencies, especially in the United States.”¹⁸ In a program with at least three Scientologists on staff—adding more in later incarnations—it is a fair assumption that one of them assisted in leaking the documents or leaked them directly. While Vallée questions the allegations, he does write that the FBI considered Pat Price a suspect.¹⁹ For any other secret program, this would be a death knell, but not so for remote viewing—the research initiated at SRI continued in one form or another until at least 1991. Why would this be if the project did not bring immediately useful intelligence results? A clue might exist in Puthoff’s own praise of Scientology, recounted in a letter sent to the Church while he was still a laser physicist:

Although critics viewing the system (…) from the outside (…) may form the impression that Scientology is just another of many quasi-educational quasi-religious “schemes,” it is in fact a highly sophistical [sic] and highly technological system more characteristic of the best of modern corporate planning and applied technology. (…) After seeing these techniques in operation and experiencing them myself, I am certain that they will be incorporated eventually on a large scale in modern society as the readiness and awareness level develops.²⁰

Was Puthoff speaking on the merits of Scientology to individuals? Or was he referring to its ability to promulgate widely throughout society—creating a hive of efficient workers, salesmen, and assets?

Russell Targ and Hal Puthoff outside of the Stanford Research Institute during the remote viewing program. (“Stanford Research Institute.” PSI Unit: Remote Viewing. https://psi-unit.com/en/glossar/stanford-research-institute/.)

iii.

To examine further the question of why a Scientology-friendly program was allowed to continue at SRI, we must return to yet another dispatch, where Getting Spooked looked at the history of former CIA analyst Christopher “Kit” Green. Throughout the 1990s and onward, rumors swirled of Green’s involvement in programs within or adjacent to the MKUltra project. These mere rumors turned out to be partially substantiated: Green worked in the realm of chemical warfare and biological weapons,²¹ claimed to run the CIA’s polygraph unit,²² showed an interest in Soviet mind control advancements,²³ and even admitted acquaintance with “poisoner in chief” Sidney Gottlieb and infamous MKUltra contactor Louis Jolyon “Jolly” West.²⁴ (According to Jim Schnabel, West would later serve on the Medical Oversight Board for the remote viewing project at Science Applications International Corp. which took on the STARGATE program as a contractor in its later iterations.²⁵) Each of these credentials points to Green being—if not MKUltra-connected directly—at least a contributor to some projects that spun off from or continued MKUltra research. Within the remote viewing program, Green served the additional role of CIA contract monitor who examined the progress of Puthoff and Targ’s project and reported back to the higher ups at the CIA.²⁶ The person who administered that contract pushes remote viewing closer to the sketchier side of CIA research than many are likely to assume.

Indeed, remote viewing does not simply skate perilously close to MKUltra activity, according to journalist Sharon Weinberger, some of Puthoff and Targ’s earliest funding came directly from the coffers of Sidney Gottlieb, the bugbear of every mind control researcher. “The Stanford Research Institute in the early 1970s harbored a dark secret that would have shocked even the student protesters outraged by its military research,” Weinberger writes. “Among its many classified research projects was a contract supported by the CIA’s Office of Technical Service, a division headed by Sidney Gottlieb, perhaps the most notorious scientist ever to work for the spy agency.”²⁷ Gottlieb and the CIA were purportedly anxious to get a psychic spy unit going, spurred on by the revelations within Ostrander and Schroeder’s 1970 book, Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain, which detailed “the Soviet Union’s and other Eastern bloc countries’ enthusiasm for psychic phenomena of all sorts.” According to Weinberger, “the idea that the Soviets were investing money in parapsychology quickly became a self-reinforcing justification for the Americans to do the same.”²⁸ This immediately fell under the larger umbrella of MKUltra-adjacent research, where the CIA and Gottlieb pursued more “out there” and questionable explorations into behavioral manipulation, human potential, and intel gathering. Puthoff and Targ’s program fit right in: Other Subprojects prior to the SRI remote viewing experiments also looked into psychic capabilities, such as 136 which involved “an $8,579.00 grant to an unwitting investigator in 1961 for an experimental analysis of extrasensory perception.”²⁹

Interrogation and torture techniques are often seen as the main overarching goals of the MKUltra program and its various offshoots. This is an understandable notion, as the legacy of MKUltra research is seen most prominently in the modern day with enhanced interrogation techniques in the War on Terror.³⁰ One alleged remote viewer, contemporary UFO personality Lue Elizondo, claimed to have used his psychic abilities to torture Guantanamo Bay detainees via the astral plane.³¹ However, MKUltra also had a consistent desire to create moldable subjects for espionage or couriers—not solely of the blatant Manchurian Candidate variety. This often involved broader attempts at psychological manipulation and, in an era where countless new religious movements were having great success, cults with remarkable control over their members were likely gazed upon with an envious eye.

Prior to Operation Snow White shaking up the growing acceptance of New Age religious movements, Scientology was growing at an astonishing rate. As of 1972, the church had reached an estimated 4 million members globally.³² Countless hippie communes and spiritual organizations gained membership in the free-wheeling late 60s—Jacques Vallée encounters many in volumes 1, 2, and 3 of his journals—and enrollment was only partially curbed by some bad press from the Tate-Labianca murders. Another prominent spiritual movement contemporary to remote viewing and Scientology was A Course in Miracles, or ACIM for short, now most often recognized as the cultic text that presidential candidate Marianne Williamson lives her life by. Not unlike the remote viewing program, it also had its roots in the MKUltra program.

A Course in Miracles was a work channeled by Helen Schucman and edited by William Thetford. It claims to be direct messages from the big guy upstairs—Jesus Christ himself—recounted in pages upon pages of Christian theology recontextualized to fit into a more New Age or theosophical viewpoint. Differentiating itself from the Bible, ACIM is more of a self-help book, aimed at reorienting the mind of the reader. This tendency is complicated by the fact that both Thetford, the biggest promoter of Schucman’s spiritual methods, had connections to MKUltra Subproject 130, whose stated goal was “to study the interpretative value of assessment concepts derived from the Wechsler upon hospitalized patients with varying patterns of symptoms.”³³ Thetford was a “witting” collaborator in this project, meaning he was aware of where his funding was coming from. Subproject 130 saw Thetford using the personality and intelligence research of psychologist David Weschler to study individuals suffering from conversion disorder, ulcers, or migraines in an attempt develop a theory of behavioral classification and prediction. In hindsight, Thetford being involved in personality typing and behavior prediction before having an active role in a New Age religious movement is a scenario that smacks of shiftiness. As is usually the case with MKUltra and mind control research, Thetford’s association with the program is seen by the conspiratorial as a demonically inspired attempt to create controllable, biological robots.

The truth is perhaps less sensational but no less concerning. While it would take ages to unpack all the teachings of ACIM, at the forefront are uneasy similarities to the madness some MKUltra projects sought to produce: Schucman heard the voice of the “Son of God” and began writing what was dictated to her. ACIM is unique enough to even inspire criticism from within the New Age movement. Timothy Conway of Enlightened Spirituality writes: “Given (…) ACIM's overt aim, especially in the Workbook, to have its students ‘unlearn’ everything they think they know and be subject to the ACIM's ‘re-education,’ Thetford's major role in the editing of ACIM and his prior and later involvement with CIA mind-control work is NOT reassuring.”³⁴ Schucman herself had some “fear that the book would create a cult” and oscillated in her opinion of its success. When it became wildly successful and did create what many would consider a cult, she professed to hating ACIM, even “regularly disavowed its teachings” in later life.³⁵ Catholic priest Benedict Groeschel felt that Schucman’s channeled writings were a mixture of Christian ideas and Christian Science “filtered through some profound psychological problems and processes” and encouraged by witting MKUltra researcher William Thetford.³⁶

According to the journals of Jaques Vallée, in March 1973, when the CIA was thought to have pulled funding from Puthoff and Targ’s remote viewing program, the Agency allegedly continued to support it under the guise of NASA. If this allegation is true and the CIA continued funding MKUltra-adjacent programs after the program was supposedly halted in January 1973 with records destroyed, it’s an admission with strange implications. “Wink, wink,” Vallée writes.³⁷ But in addition to this more covert funding, they received further help from a philanthropist named Judy Skutch. As is the case with most paranormal philanthropists, Skutch was not an impartial source, instead being the “Co-Founder and President of the Foundation for Inner Peace, which is the scribe-authorized publisher of A Course in Miracles.”³⁸ Her husband, Colonel William W. Whitson, was also involved with the Foundation for Inner Peace while being active with the United States DoD and several defense contractors for decades.³⁹ He wrote extensively about military and economic policy in China and would later pen a book entitled Myths and Misinformation: William Newton Thetford and the CIA which attempts to downplay Thetford’s involvement in MKUltra. Even when not ostensibly receiving funding from the CIA or MKUltra maven Gottlieb, Puthoff and Targ’s remote viewing project is somehow supported—in merry-go-round type fashion—by a New Age organization with ancestral ties to the Agency.

The SRI program, then, had uncomfortably close relationships with two new religious movements, both often accused of having cultlike tendencies. Yet the remote viewing program was allowed to continue, largely unimpeded, maybe because of the cultlike atmosphere it immersed its participants in. If the SRI project’s MKUltra origins are taken seriously, an interest in parapsychology is not out of the ordinary. Gordon Thomas writes that Sidney Gottlieb had a genuine fascination with the occult, in Project MKOFTEN seeking to “harness the forces of darkness and challenge the concept that the inner reaches of the mind are beyond reach.”⁴⁰ Recontextualized like this, the SRI studies appear more as a CIA project that breeds a reliance on a set (read: religious) system and allows for surreptitious influence of its subjects. That just may have been the golden goose. After all, OFTEN also sought “to create a new kind of psycho-civilized human being,” mind control on a larger scale to reorient different facets of society.⁴¹

In 2004, Vallée received a message from contact Ron Brinkley, reexamining Ingo Swann’s dealings with the mysterious “Axelrod,” a government contact who gives him a variety of psychic assignments. On one memorable day, Axelrod even takes Swann on an excursion to have a UFO sighting in the “Far North,” wherever that might be. Vallée winds up agreeing with Brinkley’s contention that: “Ingo’s description of his trip with Axelrod to ‘the Far North’ doesn’t match the reality of the Far North at all. The episode with Axelrod was a theatrical production to inculcate a belief system in Ingo.”⁴² The specific belief system is not expanded upon, but given remote viewing’s insistence on New Age-tinged spirituality, potentially intended teach obedience or reliance on the project leaders, one could surmise that Swann was, in a sense, recruited to be an asset. Swann might even sense as much. In Penetration, while examining Axelrod’s mysterious twin assistants, he thinks: “The word ‘entrainment’ came to mind, a word used to describe people who have been subjected to some mind-managing so that they begin to think, act, and even (…) look alike.”⁴³ Swann’s story is pretty far out there, but one wonders if he hadn’t been slightly “entrained” himself.

Info sheet for MKUltra Subproject 130, on which William Thetford was a “witting” collaborator. (MKUltra Briefing Book, estimated 1 January 1976 release date. https://archive.org/details/MKULTRABriefingBookListOfSubprojectsWithBriefDescriptionsJanuary1976.)

iv.

Many critics of remote viewing are quick to point to its lack of scientific validation, surmising that it is an example of government waste or ineptitude. Others point to the program being a parallel ramping up of unnecessary spending by the United States and Soviet Union, each fooling the other with the notion substantial discoveries had been made in parapsychology. But there are more direct criticisms of SRI’s remote viewing program that are of particular interest to the idea that the psychic subjects are being prompted or subtly queued towards “hits” as opposed to genuine insight. Upon reviewing the conclusions of Puthoff and Targ, psychologists David Marks and Richard Kamman state: “Until remote viewing can be confirmed in conditions which prevent sensory cueing(,) the conclusions of Targ and Puthoff remain an unsubstantiated hypothesis. Our own experiments on remote viewing under cue-free conditions have consistently failed to replicate the effect.”⁴⁴

While I am less interested in the precise mechanics of surreptitious influencing by CIA personnel, it should be noted that similar practices are all too common even in the present day. Take the recent success of Ky Dickens’ podcast The Telepathy Tapes, for instance. Individuals in this project are using facilitated communication, a practice well-established as pseudoscience, to conclude that non-verbal autistic children are telepaths “tapping into another dimension.”⁴⁵ Back in reality, there is an unfortunate truth: The messages are caused by unconscious cues “in a Ouija-like phenomenon” where “the non-speaking person is being manipulated” by ever-hopeful carers.⁴⁶ These cues are subtle enough that casual observers will not pick up on them at all—the untrained will think something fantastical is taking place before them. In facilitated communication, most if not all practitioners believe wholeheartedly in the practice. The same could be said of remote viewing—making it a perfect vessel for intel relays, effectively “laundering” the intelligence before it reaches its intended destination.

Similar subtle sleight-of-hand-type hijinks were assumed to be utilized by Uri Geller when pulling off psychic feats in a shielded room, even something as consequential as flicking on a nuclear device.⁴⁷ Getting Spooked writer Reid often points to Project Alpha, an experiment conducted by magician and debunker James Randi that demonstrated that many of Geller’s wins were simply illusions and misdirection—skilled magicians were more than capable of pulling the wool over the eyes of credentialed scientists or trained observers.⁴⁸ I do not have unconditional love for Randi, but Project Alpha reveals an important feature of psychic spying within the IC: The dirty tricks department could also be the magic tricks department—and magic tricks can, at times, be dirty. As long as participants and researchers wanted to believe, if Project Alpha was accurate, both parties could convince the other of psychic activity taking place, either through cues, illusions, or other forms of subtle influence. The remote viewing program, more akin to a New Age study group than a typical government program, was the perfect environment for shenanigans of this type. Such a group would not necessarily be an environment devoid of usefulness.

Researcher Martin Cannon was told a theory from a pseudonymized contact in-the-know that essentially followed this line of thinking. “If an antagonistic power became convinced that the United States commanded a small army of supremely-talented psychic spies, our intelligence agencies would have more freedom to use data relayed by ‘agents-in-place,’” writes Cannon. As an additional benefit to this system: “The best way to convince the Russians (or any other foe) that we possess a battalion of nigh-omniscient remote viewers would be to spend serious money on a legitimate, long-term investigation.”⁴⁹ Cannon also emphasizes the possibility that the remote viewers are unaware that they’re being subtly influenced, conceivably through the use of induced auditory hallucinations or even dental implants with radio receivers—a concept devised by Andrija Puharich which some skeptics thought might explain Uri Geller’s “hits.”⁵⁰ Any of these technologies or methods, some more likely than others, could be theoretically employed to influence remote viewers in certain directions without their knowledge.

Utilizing methods like these—or even a method as simple as indirect cues from administrators—would enable the Agency to have a dual intelligence advantage. The Soviet Union would assume that psychic research was ongoing and continue to fund the money pit behind the Iron Curtain and, perhaps more ingeniously, this system would enable the CIA to pass along crucial intelligence coming from secret agents or one of the many revolutionary advancements in reconnaissance technology. As Cannon writes, this method could conceivably resolve the Coventry conundrum or at least sidestep it, i.e., acting on intelligence received when you don’t want your adversary to know you have it.⁵¹ The program’s roots in Scientology and MKUltra may hold a clue as to if this theory holds water: Important to this system is subtle control exerted by the higher ups—often spiritual in nature because of what remote viewing is borrowing from Scientology and Theosophical philosophies. The remote viewers must never question where they are getting the information from. The basis for their “readings” can never be from hints and prods from human beings, it must be from an etheric source locked deep within human consciousness.

Likewise, the militarized New Age aspects of the remote viewing program became more pronounced as the project pushed onward into the 80s and very early 90s. Other former Scientologists had a hand in the proceedings, such as Edwin C. May, who was hired as a consultant in 1975 and remained until the program’s end.⁵² By this point, SRI’s initial project had overlapped and cross-pollinated with parapsychology studies headed by other high-ranking Army officers, including Major General Albert Stubblebine and his “psychic headhunter” Lieutenant Skip Atwater. New age ideas spread throughout the military, with Lieutenant Colonel Jim Channon’s First Earth Battalion making waves, a program which sought to create “Jedi warriors” in the Army’s Special Forces.⁵³ All these whacky initiatives are looked back on as a worthless farce, a waste of money that resulted in no substantial gains.

In The Men Who Stare at Goats, the classic tome examining the military’s interest in psychic warfare, author Jon Ronson is keen enough to note parallels between MKUltra, the psychic spy program, and the horrific presence of blacksite torture camps. These entities share a direct lineage and have global implications, all while figures like Lieutenant Colonel John B. Alexander—who crops up in several of the programs examined here—decry the public’s reaction to Project MKUltra but not the many horrors it unleashed upon the world. When Ronson asked if there was a modern-day MKUltra program, Alexander “crossly” replied:

Nobody who lived through all those congressional hearings, that media reaction, (…) would ever involve themselves in something like that again. (…) Sure, you’ve got kids in intelligence who’ve read all about MK-ULTRA and think, ‘Gee. That’s sounds cool. Why don’t we try that out?’ But you’d never get a reactivation at command level.”

Ronson is quick to note that it was “a bunch of young enthusiasts in military intelligence thinking ‘that sounds cool’” which allowed MKUltra and related programs to “spring to life” in the first place.⁵⁴ He hypothesizes that the psychic spy program is continuing, conceivably training mercenaries. While this is a possibility, one should not discount the value already gained in concealing intelligence work or in giving personnel a sense of spiritual duty via soft coercive control worthy of a late 60s new religious movement. Besides, the whacky veneer may, in fact, serve as cover for the very real military advantages of such programs and the long-term consequences of feeding soldiers a steady diet of New Age philosophies.

Left to right, SRI psi researchers Hal Puthoff and Russell Targ with CIA analyst & contract monitor Christopher “Kit” Green and remote viewer Pat Price. (Castoro, Rocco. “A Psychic Spy.” VICE. 30 September 2008. https://www.vice.com/en/article/psychic-spy-139-v15n10/.)

v.

One of the more prominent examples of a strategically important remote viewing success came from the lips of President Jimmy Carter in 1995 speech at Emory University, later retold in a 2005 GQ profile. In this interview, he stated:

We had a plane go down in the Central African Republic—a twin engine plane, small plane. And we couldn't find it. And so we oriented satellites that were going around the earth every ninety minutes to fly over that spot where we thought it might be and take photographs. We couldn't find it. So the director of the CIA came and told me that he had contacted a woman in California that claimed to have supernatural capabilities. And she went in a trance, and she wrote down latitudes and longitudes, and we sent our satellite over that latitude and longitude, and there was the plane.⁵⁵

While Carter is likely just relaying what he was told, Martin Cannon is quick to note how often this story is altered, details added or removed, or implications shifting. The plane changes based on who is telling the story, either an American or Russian plane, and the gender of the remote viewer—in reality Airman Rosemary Smith—also switches.⁵⁶ Cannon zeroes in on a passage in Jacques Vallée’s diaries where the aforementioned Kit Green informs him that the remote viewing program’s stellar “hit” was later sabotaged for unknown reasons, someone telling the commanding general that the psychic received the relevant information the night before by sleeping with the crash retrieval project’s leader.⁵⁷ The lack of a consistent narrative reeks of intelligence games, running laps around the more obvious likelihood: The location of the plane was received through advanced satellite imaging, reconnaissance craft, or the assistance of a confidential informant or spy. Remote viewing, helpful as ever in an intelligence context, pushes this possibility to the wayside.

Unsurprisingly, remote viewer Joe McMoneagle and researcher Edwin C. May found that “hits” were less common in laboratory settings, but when important real-world situations arose—missing persons, problems with global implications, etc.—a “hit” was much more likely. McMoneagle and May assume “that the ill-defined concepts of intention, attention, and expectation” have an outsized influence on the chances of success.⁵⁸ If the reader accepts (or humors) the notions presented in this article, the more likely explanation becomes clear: Real-world situations have real-world intelligence that can more easily be picked up on from subtle cues or other means. With a healthy coating of seeming spiritual enlightenment, encouraged and nurtured by every individual involved in the program, the successes can be chalked up to mystical advancement and the remote viewer is never the wiser.

Throughout MKUltra and its search for control of the human mind, a major pipe dream was the advent of spies who do not know that they are spies. Whether Manchurian Candidate, Acoustic Kitty, or one of the many bird species wrangled by the CIA to be espionage tools, none of them quite worked out as hoped.⁵⁹ Remote viewing, on the other hand—bolstered by a closed-off organizational structure resembling a religious group—may have been able to create the next best thing: Intel couriers who are unaware that they are intel couriers, nodes in an intelligence network who “clean” information as it is slyly slipped to them. There is no need to protect sources when the ostensible source is thin air and spiritual practice.

Even in the event that this is not the true value of remote viewing, the history of the program reveals its alternate possible utility: As a psycho-civilized-peaceful-warrior indoctrination program. Nearly every remote viewer who has been involved with U.S. government investigations into parapsychology has come out a true believer, eager to spread the gospel as soon as they are able. The various tomes, pamphlets, and interviews produced by these psychic spies indicate a tendency toward self-help or spiritual attainment, unveiling further some of the program’s inspirations and progenitors. Remote viewing has never been able to escape the New Age/MKUltra soup that it was born in. Perhaps it was never intended to—the programs may have worked exactly as envisioned.

At bare minimum, remote viewing illustrates the ample reasons to be suspicious of military-industrial endeavors into the fringe, especially when considering that many possibilities counter to the official line can be true at one time. Whether or not the science is sound, one can rest assured that if something benefits the continuation of military research, shapes public perception, and offers cover for intelligence networks, those programs will march onward into the future. Already conducted in a quiet and secretive manner, the remote viewing program and all of its psychic spy progeny offer the illusion of harmless, hippie-dippie programs in a defense establishment with countless darker, more pressing projects. But if one attempts to peak behind the curtain, there are hints that that same darkness permeated the psychic spy program from the beginning—its goals perhaps not as altruistic or peaceful as often implied. The research was, at its core, Cold Warfare intended to offer strategic advantages. Some off label usage would not be out of the ordinary, especially in an atmosphere of military science pushing boundaries.

As defense budgets continue ballooning, many suspect secret programs like the SRI project continue forward, more moving into the private sector with each passing year. Remote viewing, in addition to UFOs, successfully averts attention away from other questionable military and intelligence activity worthy of scrutiny, also migrating to the private sector. The “esoteric techniques (…) exported to Abu Ghraib,” Guantanamo Bay, and other U.S. military blacksites are among the many examples examined by journalist Jon Ronson, but there are more discovered with each passing day.⁶⁰ Maybe, as has been true since the dawn of standing armies, coercive control was the goal all along. It could be time for a refresh. After all, back in UFO land, rumors persist of a continuing remote viewing program, with adversarial roles filled by equivalent Chinese and Russian psychic spy units, just as Soviet psychic research compelled the United States into action in the 60s and 70s.⁶¹ What’s old is forever new again. If only there was another MKUltra to provide funding.

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1. Weinberger, Sharon. The Imagineers of War: The Untold Story of DARPA, the Pentagon Agency That Changed the World. New York: Vintage Books, 2017. Page 219.

2. Tattoli, Chantel. “Jacques Vallée Still Doesn’t Know What UFOs Are.” WIRED. 10 February 2022. https://archive.is/20250220211545/https://www.wired.com/story/jacques-vallee-still-doesnt-know-what-ufos-are/#selection-449.0-449.47.

3. Levine, Yasha. Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet. New York: Icon Books, 2018. Page 68-69.

4. Krishnan, Armin. Military Neuroscience and the Coming Age of Neurowarfare. New York: Routledge, 2017. Page 44.

5. Ibid.

6. Swann, Ingo. Penetration Special Edition: The Question of Extraterrestrial & Human Telepathy. Swann-Ryder Productions, LLC, 2019. Page 134.

7. Kripal, Jeffrey J. “Secret Lives of the Superpowers: The Remote Viewing Literature and the Imaginal.” Handbook on Spiritualism and Channeling (ed. Cathy Gutierrez). Leiden: Brill, 2015. Page 430. https://dlib.scu.ac.ir/bitstream/Hannan/331696/2/9004263772.pdf.

8. Westbrook, Donald A. Among the Scientologists: History, Theology, and Praxis. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. Page 22.

9. Ibid., page 60.

10. Hassan, Steven A. and Alan W. Scheflin. “Understanding the Dark Side of Hypnosis as a Form of Undue Influence Exerted in Authoritarian Cults and Online Contexts: Implications for Practice, Policy, and Education.” The Routledge International Handbook of Clinical Hypnosis (ed. Julie H. Linden, Giuseppe De Benedittis, Laurence I. Sugarman, and Katalin Varga). New York: Routledge, 2024. Page 760.

11. Gardner, Martin. Did Adam and Eve Have Navels?: Debunking Pseudoscience. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2000. Page 63.

12. Marsh, Allison. “Why L. Ron Hubbard Patented His E-Meter.” IEEE Spectrum. 31 March 2024. https://spectrum.ieee.org/e-meter-history.

13. Swann, Ingo. Remote Viewing: The Real Story. Self-published, 1997. Ebook. Page 303. https://archive.org/details/IngoSwannmemoir/page/n1/mode/2up.

14. Coogan, Kevin. The Spy Who Would Be Tsar: The Mystery of Michal Goleniewski and the Far-Right Underground. New York: Routledge, 2022. Page 325.

15. Schleicher, Carl. “Memorandum for the Record.” 1 November 1972. Cleve Backster papers, University of West Georgia Special Collections. Box 2, Identifier: I3. https://aspace-uwg.galileo.usg.edu/repositories/2/archival_objects/53908.

16. Krishnan, Armin. Military Neuroscience and the Coming Age of Neurowarfare. New York: Routledge, 2017. Page 43.

17. Kress, Kenneth A. “Parapsychology in Intelligence: A Personal Review and Conclusions.” Journal of Scientific Exploration 13, no. 1. 1999. Page 83-84. Reprinted here: https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/NSA-RDP96X00790R000100010031-3.pdf.

18. Westbrook, Donald A. Among the Scientologists: History, Theology, and Praxis. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. Page 160.

19. Vallée, Jacques. Forbidden Science 2: California Hermetica – The Journals of Jacques Vallée, 1970-1979. San Antonio: Anomalist Books, 2008. Page 392.

20. Gardner, Martin. Did Adam and Eve Have Navels?: Debunking Pseudoscience. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2000. Page 61-62.

21. Seagrave, Sterling. Yellow Rain: A Journey through the Terror of Chemical Warfare. New York: M. Evans and Company, 1981. Page 169.

22. Green, Christopher Canfield. “Curriculum Vitae.” 20 November 2007. https://web.archive.org/web/20200305111006/https://www.johnclarkson.com.au/images/downloads/DrGreen_Article.pdf.

23. “DOD, Intel Agencies Look at Russian Mind Control Technology, Claims FBI Considered Testing on Koresh.” Defense Electronics. 1 July 1993. https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00792R000600150001-5.pdf.

24. Springer. “The FACTS... NOTHING changed NOTHING altered...” 28 November 2006. Comment on the online forum post “Is ATS and UFOlogy a playground for Government mind control researchers?” Above Top Secret. https://web.archive.org/web/20181214061550/https://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread235196/pg3#pid2648370.

25. Schnabel, Jim. Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America’s Psychic Spies. New York: Dell, 1997. Page 391.

26. Targ, Russell. “What Do We Know about Psi? The First Decade of Remote-Viewing Research and Operations at Stanford Research Institute.” Journal of Scientific Exploration 33, no. 4. 2019. Page 573. https://scispace.com/pdf/what-do-we-know-about-psi-the-first-decade-of-remote-viewing-42m4cti21j.pdf.

27. Weinberger, Sharon. The Imagineers of War: The Untold Story of DARPA, the Pentagon Agency That Changed the World. New York: Vintage Books, 2017. Page 222.

28. Ibid., 224.

29. Ross, Colin A. The C.I.A. Doctors: Human Rights Violations by American Psychiatrists. Richardson: Manitou Communications, 2006. Page 70. https://irp.cdn-website.com/6b820530/files/uploaded/The_C.I.A._Doctors-Human_Rights-9d3b3cb9.pdf.

30. Kaye, Jeffrey S. “CIA Advocated Editing Interrogation Tapes to Falsely Document ‘Confessions.’” Hidden Histories. 25 November 2024. Link.

31. “The Lue Elizondo Documentary (Pentagon UFO Investigator Tells All).” YouTube, uploaded by Jesse Michels, 10 October 2024. Link.

32. Briggs, Ken. “Scientology: Religion, Philosophy, Business, Force?” The Greensboro Record. 29 January 1972. https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-greensboro-record/181013997/.

33. Central Intelligence Agency. “MKULTRA DOC_0000017389.” Released MKUltra documentation. https://archive.org/details/DOC_0000017389.

34. Conway, Timothy. “A Brief Critical Analysis of A Course in Miracles, ACIM.” Enlightened Spirituality. 2007. https://www.enlightened-spirituality.org/ACIM_critique.html.

35. Sullivan, Randall. The Miracle Detective: An Investigative Reporter Sets Out to Examine How the Catholic Church Investigates Holy Visions and Discovers His Own Faith. New York: Grove Press, 2004. Page 429.

36. Ibid., page 430.

37. Vallée, Jacques. Forbidden Science 2: California Hermetica – The Journals of Jacques Vallée, 1970-1979. San Antonio: Anomalist Books, 2008. Page 186-187.

38. “Judith Skutch Whitson Memorial.” Foundation for Inner Peace. 19 October 2021. https://acim.org/memorials/.

39. “William W. Whitson: Memorial.” Foundation for Inner Peace. 12 February 2018. https://acim.org/william-w-whitson-memorial/.

40. Thomas, Gordon. Secrets & Lies: A History of CIA Mind Control & Germ Warfare. London: JR Books, 2008. Page 295.

41. Ibid.

42. Vallée, Jacques. Forbidden Science 5: Pacific Heights – The Journals of Jacques Vallée, 2000-2009. Charlottesville: Anomalist Books, 2023. Page 217-218.

43. Swann, Ingo. Penetration Special Edition: The Question of Extraterrestrial & Human Telepathy. Swann-Ryder Productions, LLC, 2019. Page 29.

44. Hansel, C.E.M. ESP and Parapsychology: A Critical Reevaluation. Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1980. Page 293.

45. Farrier, David. “Telepathic Children Do Not Exist: The Telepathy Tapes podcast surpassed Joe Rogan on the charts. And it's full of shit.” Webworm. 30 January 2025. https://www.webworm.co/telepathytapes/.

46. Busby, Mattha. “The Problem With the ‘Magical Children’ of the Telepathy Tapes.” VICE. 20 March 2025. https://www.vice.com/en/article/telepathy-tapes-podcast-autism/.

47. Schnabel, Jim. Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America’s Psychic Spies. New York: Dell, 1997. Page 162-163.

48. Hilts, Philip J. “Magicians Score a Hit On Scientific Researchers.” The Washington Post. 1 March 1983. http://web.archive.org/web/20170828071905/https://www.washingtonpost.com/web/20170828071905/https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1983/03/01/magicians-score-a-hit-on-scientific-researchers/1f374c34-4979-4dba-a2e5-48bea6bda5f6/?utm_term=.56dee6fb823a.

49. Cannon, Martin. “Remote Viewing.” Provided to author.

50. Hansel, C.E.M. ESP and Parapsychology: A Critical Reevaluation. Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1980. Page 285.

51. Cannon, Martin. “Remote Viewing.” Provided to author.

52. Mörck, Nemo C. “Third Eye Spies: Learn Remote Viewing from the Masters, by Russell Targ.” Society for Psychical Research. 20 July 2025. https://www.spr.ac.uk/node/19285.

53. Ronson, Jon. The Men Who Stare at Goats. London: Picador, 2004. Page 14.

54. Ibid., page 261-262.

55. Hylton, Wil S. “The Gospel According to Jimmy.” GQ. 5 December 2005. https://www.gq.com/story/jimmy-carter-ted-kennedy-ufo-republicans.

56. Cannon, Martin. “Remote Viewing.” Provided to author.

57. Vallée, Jacques. Forbidden Science 4: The Spring Hill Chronicles – The Journals of Jacques Vallée, 1990-1999. San Antonio: Anomalist Books, 2019. Page 91-92.

58. McMoneagle, Joseph W. and Edwin C. May. “The Possible Role of Intention, Attention and Expectation in Remote Viewing.” The Parapsychological Association, Inc. 47^th Annual Convention: Proceedings of Presented Papers. Vienna University, 5-8 August 2004. Page 399. https://parapsych.org/uploaded_files/pdfs/00/00/00/00/77/2004_pa_convention_proceedings_of_presented_papers.pdf.

59. Eschner, Kat. “The CIA Experimented On Animals in the 1960s Too. Just Ask ‘Acoustic Kitty.’” Smithsonian Magazine. 8 August 2017. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/cia-experimented-animals-1960s-too-just-ask-acoustic-kitty-180964313/.

60. Ronson, Jon. The Men Who Stare at Goats. London: Picador, 2004. Page 187.

61. “Ross Coulthart Q&A: Witnesses named for UAP hearing, rumors of psyop against Ross | Reality Check.” YouTube, uploaded by NewsNation, 7 September 2025. Link.