The Stargate Conundrum
The US Government’s secret pursuit of the psychic drug

Chapter 2. The US government goes Remote Viewing

During the Iran-Contra fiasco that hit the American political landscape of the Reagan era, resulting in the trial of Oliver North, the American Secretary of Defense initiated a search for “likeminded” projects that had disobeyed the proper chain of command. “Premature” disclosure of these in the media might cause even more embarrassment for President Ronald Reagan. The search stumbled upon the remote viewing project, which was run within the Army. An inspector general was dispatched to investigate and the resulting quagmire meant that the project’s sponsors in Washington officially “lost interest”.
“Officially”, the sponsors lost interest as the project had never delivered serious results and hence it was time to close the books. The infamous “no more money” was scribbled in the side-margin. This official version, however, seems to have been little more than a face-saving operation, where politicians deny any links with potentially embarrassing projects.

The exact scope of the remote viewing project was just one of a number of altered truths. Testimonies from those involved in the Remote Viewing project showed a glaring contradiction with the official scope. Everyone leaving the project stated that anyone could remote view. That no special skills were required. But the project managers did not just hire anyone. They had hired people who showed psychic abilities, either overt or latent. And if latent, an interesting but never asked question was how the government knew what to ask for to find out whether a person was or was not psychic, without showing signs of it. After all, it does not seem to feature on the standard questionnaire recruits into the military fill out.

Remote Viewers underlined that no-one in the project really seemed to know how it worked, but it just did, and they went with the flow. It seemed that somehow, all people were like radios. On leaving the factory, however, the tuners on all radios were not all identical. This would mean that when switched on, all of us would pick up the “normal transmission” zone which we use to move about in everyday reality. However, some would pick up signals at other frequencies. Though the majority of the radios could not pick it up, there seemed to be no reason why our radios (brains) could not be adjusted to pick those other frequencies up too. That would, of course, involve some sort of “retuning” our brain, which is what Puharich had done, either through a mechanical aid (his “psychic machine”) or a psychic drug.
Even though no-one apparently figured out how it all worked, it was apparently not for want of trying. Captain Edgar Mitchell, the Apollo astronaut who walked on the moon and who knew Puharich very well, was the overseer of the project. Mitchell stated: “in the early 1970s, I turned my attention to the larger related questions about the basic nature of this ‘consciousness’ we humans enjoy. The most neglected fields of consciousness studies lay in the realms of the mysterious states of mind that allow for epiphany [intuitive insights] and the psychic events.” Mitchell founded the Institute of Noetic Sciences, but according to Puharich, remained closely involved with the SRI project also. One liaison with SRI was through Brendan O’Regan, a biochemist, who directed Mitchell into the medical field and health issues. O’Regan became vice-president of research of Mitchell’s Institute in 1975, until his death in 1992. Dr. Willis Harman, also working for SRI, became the President of the Institute of Noetic Sciences.

Mitchell started in 1972, when at SRI, Russell Targ and Hal Puthoff were conducting the remote viewing experiments, including those on Uri Geller. In The Way of the Explorer, Mitchell writes that he and Puharich were both “looking for answers to puzzling human phenomena.” Puharich used Mitchell to make sure that SRI was interested in running such experiments. Again, it all seemed very “coincidental”. Mitchell stated how it had been a “sychronicity” that Puharich and Geller entered into his exploration, and Mitchell suggests that the Geller testing was not part of a bigger project… even though SRI was running a remote viewing project at the time, and Targ and Puthoff were the project leaders.
Coincidence? Or design? Mitchell maintains that “the remote-viewing experiments were conducted independently”, even though in the same paragraph Mitchell confirms that Geller “in a room all by himself where he was isolated from receiving any possible information, would describe the setting [of the target of the remote viewing project]. We found he could do just that.” In short, Mitchell stated Geller had nothing to do with the remote viewing, and this seems to have all the appearances of making sure Geller’s shattered credibility did not shatter that of the Remote Viewing project as well.
Whereas Mitchell would maintain his claims of independence, Puharich later had less trepidation, and Geller and Einhorn would later conclude that the entire “Geller testing” was part of a CIA project – the remote viewing project. This was, in essence, what Mitchell was saying: he merely stated it did not start like that, but that Geller in the end was working as part of the remote viewing project. Mitchell stated that “after the Geller work, I was asked to brief the then-director of the CIA, Ambassador George Bush, on our activities and results.” George Bush, who became vice-president in 1980 and was therefore vice-president when the Iran-Contra scandal broke, the George Bush who would become president if Reagan had to resign or was forced to resign, the Bush who did become president in 1988 and whose son would be elected president in 2000. That George Bush was the man who knew all about Geller and his law of physics-defying demonstrations, for Mitchell had personally briefed him. This was not just a bizarre coincidence, for Mitchell and Bush had been long-time friends.

It is clear that Mitchell is therefore fearful of making sweeping statements and underlining the point that in its conception, he was not working for the CIA, merely that his private initiative was later used – if not handed over – to the CIA. A man with no trepidations in linking the CIA with the remote viewing project is Jack Sarfatti, a physicist with a degree from Cornell University. Sarfatti was a friend of Ira Einhorn and moved in the circles that tried to bring about “world change” in the 1970s. Sarfatti identified Harold Chipman, a former CIA station chief, as the middle-man who funded the SRI’s remote viewing project and even the Geller tests. Some other participants on the SRI team were John Hasted of Birbeck College in England; David Bohm, the theoretician of quantum physics, and Nobel Laureate Brian Josephson, “noble” names and innovators indeed.
In 1973, Sarfatti was invited to study Geller and together with a friend, Fred Wolf, he travelled to Europe, to study and lecture. At the same time, Sarfatti became introduced to the French film La Jetée, which formed the inspiration for famous Bruce Willis movie, The Twelve Monkeys, a movie that talks about physical time-travel. Sarfatti had worked for Bohm at Birbeck College –a small world – and he was asked to get the co-operation of the Birbeck College scientists. This request came from Brendan O’Regan, though of the CIA, then working for SRI. It was this that resulted in the Geller tests at Birbeck, in London, in early 1974.

In all, some forty scientists were involved in these “world changing experiments”. Did this team of esteemed scientists find anything? Officially, the answer is no. Except… well, there always is something, isn’t there? Puharich had this to say: “When you’re inside [a Faraday cage], a psychic, for example, has their performance increased by a thousand fold. A Faraday cage shields you from the electromagnetic radio waves, allowing only extremely low frequency (E.L.F.) magnetic waves to get through. I don’t think there’s a psychic warfare research lab that doesn’t make use of them today.” This observation of the Faraday was supported by Mitchell. Mitchell also stated that “the brain waves of two individuals separated and isolated by a Faraday cage could be synchronised […] Somehow there seemed to be some sort of communication occurring between the two that we didn’t know was possible.” In short, this is proof positive of some new phenomenon, which in short proves the case that telepathy – to the extent that our thoughts can in some conditions be picked up by others – exists. Which really means the project did prove “something”… I think. Not? In fact, what is stated was this: once a brain is no longer bathed in electromagnetic radio waves, but isolate it from that “dirt”, the brain becomes “psychic”. That’s quite something, not?

That was not the only trick. Another was an “ideascope”. Once again Puharich offers an explanation: “It’s an ordinary strobe light, but very high-powered. You look into this strobe light, a single point source, and you adjust the frequency of the strobe to your own alpha-waves. When that happens, instead of seeing one point, you suddenly see two. It splits. What it does is separate the two halves of the brain functionally. And, what you then see is two circles, one on each point. When you see two circles move together, they form a vesica-pisces. In other words, a fish-like figure with a dark and light space. We’ve tried this out on successful businessmen who never heard of E.S.P., tested them, and they scored greatly! After five or ten experiences, you’re ready for the next stage which involves a video tape with instructions that help you develop concentration levels that lead to out of body experiences at will.” Right. Techniques which can separate the mind from the body… in conditioned environments… which is officially “nothing important”?

Then, there is the occasional world premiere. Puharich: “It took me about 10 years until I was able to measure the energy coming out of Uri’s hands – which is 7 Hz instead of the usual eight. Now we know more about the nature of electron flow which, in matter, causes metal to bend. This is what I am most interested in right now. [..] All the magnetic energy, the magnetism inside any matter can be expelled, which is probably the way UFOs work. It requires no energy once you get it going.” So we have a free source of energy – oh, and a scientific explanation of how the spoon-bending phenomenon may work.
“I have a company called E.L.F. (Extremely Low Frequency) Cocoon Corp. I designed this very sensitive piece of equipment. It gives off an 8 Hz frequency. The watch was a ten-year project. I began to understand that there is a frequency vibration emitted by all these healers. So I developed some unique equipment that could measure this. When healers lay their hands, or energy, on someone, they put out exactly 8 Hz magnetic frequency – the same vibration emitted by crystals. This is universal.” He continues: “I was concerned about the E.L.F. warfare that the Russians had started using in 1976. They’re bombarding everything and everybody. E.L.F. can be real bad for you as it can affect DNA at the right vibration.” Magnetism, involving genetic effects. Interesting. “I spent three years trying to convince the American, British, and Canadian Intelligence communities that the Soviet E.L.F. signal does, indeed, affect the DNA. At first they thought I was smoking some weird stuff but eventually they understood and acknowledged my ideas. So I developed something that would protect the individual from the E.L.F. – The Teslar. I named it after Nicola Tesla, whom I consider one of my most important teachers. The watch also dramatically lowers high blood pressure and prevents jet lag if you fly with it on. I have been battling with the C.I.A. for the past two years [1986-1988] because they have tried everything to suppress this invention. They don’t want anyone to believe that E.L.F. exists and has adverse affects. Of course, now they’re using it in covert warfare with the U.S.S.R.” The amazing thing was that this guy was not a lone nutcase. He was the father of such technology – the man who had given the first such inventions to the CIA. And despite the fact that he was officially retired and working on his own, he somehow could not stop but continue to go to the CIA, and try to convince them of his latest discoveries. And it seems that they continued to listen to him… as he kept coming up with the goods.
On the downside, it was obvious that Puharich still suffer from the same problem: he wanted to take some things out into the field, make some money from it, give something to Mankind, not just to a group of possibly not very interested generals in the government who would read the reports, then archive them. Or use them in some manner that no longer suited Puharich. Puharich in the 1970s was relatively young, but by the late 1980s, he knew everything he did was about leaving a legacy.
So when Puharich tried that make yet another step into the open world, the government came down on him, as we already mentioned. There was the CIA incident with the watch. And some more, as Puharich stated that when his house burnt down, it was no accident, but orchestrated to halt his new enterprises – orchestrated by the US government, that is. Or as Puharich had identified the culprits: the CIA. To anyone on the outside, Puharich would indeed look like a nutcase… but for anyone who knew where he was coming from… it was not at all the case.

Puharich, however, was not the only person to bring such knowledge outside the confines of the intelligence industry. The patriarch of American investigative journalism Jack Anderson, in his column for July 31, 1978, wrote: “For years, ELF research suffered under the cloud of ‘parapsychology’, into which it was lumped with such cockamanie concepts as time-warp machines and intercontinental mind-reading. Unfortunately for the human race, there’s nothing silly about the potential effects of very low-level electromagnetic radiation on the nervous system.” Anderson obviously knew about the Remote Viewing project, but felt it was nonsense, unlike the potential of E.L.F. for electronic warfare on unsuspecting humans.
What Anderson did not seem to realise was that E.L.F. and Remote Viewing shared the same origins. And went hand in hand. But the mind machines at SRI were not run by Puthoff and his team. Those projects were assigned to Dr. Karl Pribram, directory of the Neuropsychology Research Laboratory.
SRI was thus involved with both: ESP and mind control. In both cases, the US government was sponsoring this research. When the scientific assistant to the Secretary of the Navy, Dr. Sam Koslov, received a routine briefing on various research projects, including those from SRI, one slide stated “ELF and mind control”, to which Koslov interrupted, asking what was going on. Koslov made sure that such research was stopped: SRI’s co-operation with the Navy was stopped and he withdrew $35,000 of funding that had been reserved for more remote viewing work. In the end, the Navy assigned $100,000 to the project from another budget. It merely underlines that to the Navy, remote viewing was not a waste of money… and when it was officially stopped, they unofficially diverted funds to make sure it would continue.

Some have argued that the ESP project was merely a cover for the mind control projects. But that simply does not hold. For one, the mind control experiments were uncovered earlier and were trashed out in government enquiries decades before the CIA-backing of the Puthoff projects saw the light of day. If it was a cover, as some claim, well, it was the worst cover ever – one that only seems to make sense in the head of some conspiracy-minded authors who believe everything the government does is inspired by fascist ideas. If anything (though I do not personally ascribe to this possibility), the mind control was a cover for the fact that the US government was dabbling into and with a psychic realm. Because of its early exposure, the mind control experiments definitely did work as a cover for the paranormal research, a cover that was furthermore enhanced by the conspiracy so hell-bent on exposing “the truth”.
In short, what was going on, was research into the mind, and how it could access other dimensions. During this research, some methods and tools were used that could “control the mind” as well, which seem to have been produced and used by both sides of the Iron Curtain during the Cold War. But the central focus was uncovering – and mapping – the psychic abilities of the mind. All the goodies that the military cherished and which are classified as “non-lethal warfare” were, in my opinion, added benefits. After all, in order to make mind-altering devices, you need to know how the mind works. Really works… For it is clear that altering one’s mind is not so easy. Try altering that of your partner, your child or your own if you think I am wrong…

Part of the project involved the development of a mind-reading computer in 1975, by SRI – of course. This computer could understand the brain waves via EEG associated with specific spoken words, so that it could respond to them even if the words were not verbalised. Today, such technology is commonly available and as part of Frontier Sciences Foundation, we have given a public demonstration of such technology during the Frontier Symposium 2005.
Back in 1979, the machine could move a TV camera in specific directions in response to a person’s thoughts. It was developed by Lawrence Pinneo (psychologist), Daniel Wolf and David Hall (computer scientists). It underlines how far advanced some applications were more than thirty years ago. At the same time, Pribram’s work was also in line with a theory he had been developing: that the brain operated on the principle of a hologram. It tried to explain the fact that when a large portion of the brain is removed, somehow there is no impairment of memory. Memory therefore seemed to be completely present in each part of the brain. Pribram could, however, not take full credit. He had to share the honour with David Bohm. And that David Bohm was exactly one of the people directly involved in the Remote Viewing projects at SRI. So even though they did not officially know how remote viewing worked, they did know that memory in our brain was stored in a holographic manner, in which each part of the whole has the total knowledge of the whole in it.

Another important question: who lay at the origins of the Remote Viewing project? The official answer is: “the Russians did it, so the Americans could not lag behind.” In 1970, Shiela Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder wrote Psychic Discoveries behind the Iron Curtain. The authors had toured the Soviet Union and the East Block countries and alleged that the United States was lagging behind the Soviets in psychic research. The book was a great success and excerpts were broadcast on Voice of America. One of the book’s readers was Hal Puthoff.
In 1972, Puthoff would later claim, he was approached by two CIA men who enquired whether he would be willing to take on such research. Time-Life and author Ronald McRae have stated that the CIA had about six case-officers, belonging to the Office of Strategic Intelligence (OSI), whose job it was to follow research efforts within parapsychology. It’s an awful lot of people for something that is officially classified as “hocus pocus”. They met with Russell Targ, in April 1972, after viewing films of Soviet telekinesis in which objects were moved. That report was passed to the Office of Research and Development (ORD) and their project officer met with Puthoff and Targ. He made a recommendation to the Office of Technical Services, who gave a contract to SRI, in August 1972.
The report also mentions the involvement of Ingo Swann, who had impressed the officers during their visit at SRI. As such, SCANATE was initiated on May 29,1973, with Swann becoming the first remote viewer. As late as 1993, Puthoff, when asked, stated he “could not comment on that”, saying he had signed secrecy oaths with the CIA. Geller was also aware of Puthoff’s silence, as in interviews as late as 1999, he was unaware that Puthoff had finally admitted his role in the CIA project – this following the CIA’s admission of the project’s existence in 1995.

But what if the entire enterprise was home-grown and the Russians were merely used as a good excuse to guarantee that the government would spend money on it – the Cold War was after all on. What if people within the intelligence agencies, in particular the “clique” around Puharich, finally wanted to answer whether the ideas of Allen Dulles’ good friend and world-renowned psychologist Jung were possible or not?

In short, many have seen the origins of the Remote Viewing project in 1972, which is the official line. But in truth, the project had a much older history. Puharich’s career suggests a “prehistory”, however “informal” it may have been. But hard evidence comes from a CIA document, released in 1981 under the Freedom of Information Act. The document is dated January 7, 1952, i.e. shortly before Puharich’s work began – and the CIA embarked on its mind control experiments. The document states that the agency was considering projects involving ESP. “If, as now appears to us as established beyond question, there is in some persons a certain amount of capacity for extrasensory perception (ESP), this fact, and consequent developments leading from it, should have significance for professional intelligence service.” Read that quote again, and then read how it continues: “It now appears that we are ready to consider practical application as a research problem in itself […] The two special projects of investigation that ought to be pushed in the interest of the project under discussion are, first, the search for and development of exceptionally gifted individuals who can approximate perfect success in ESP test performances, and, second, in the statistical concentration of scattered ESP performance, so as to enable an ultimately perfect reliability and application.” The first part of the project was definitely the bailiwick of Puharich, whom in the 1950s worked with renowned psychics. In 1972, he found Geller, who definitely fits the profile of an “exceptionally gifted individual”. Later, Puharich would create a school in his house for children that were specifically gifted in the psychic domain; they were nicknamed “the Geller kids”.
Part two of the project, coming up with a practical application, was where SRI in the 1970s came into the picture again – though before, Puharich had, on his own, come up with many practical applications as well. As mentioned, officially, the success-rate of the Remote Viewing project was never better than twenty percent, though the SRI researchers, like Geller and Pat Price, scored close to a hundred percent. If true, that only twenty percent was successful, the Remote Viewing project is almost unique whereby at the start of the project, success was higher than at the end of the research; knowledge was lost, rather than learned, the more it went along! Though this is indeed a good reason to end the project, it merely shows that the project after some stage was either badly run, or badly managed… it does not detract anything from the reality of telepathy and the initial success.
If, however, the twenty percent hit rate is indeed correct, than it is clear that psychics were no longer what they used to be, or that there was an “X-Factor” involved in the early SRI experiments that augmented their performance, and which subsequently had been lost. Was that X-factor a “psychic drug”?

Not according to Mel Riley. The American remote viewers were aware that their Soviet counterparts had been using techniques such as drugs and electric shocks to enhance their performance. According to Riley, these made them less effective than the American viewers – a statement for which we can only take his word. “This was their downfall. We heard they killed several young people trying this, and it also reduced their remote viewing capability because remote viewing requires alert concentration. When a person is on drugs, their remote viewing capability is diminished.” Though definitely true for some drugs, it is clear that, as early as the Puharich research, this is simply not true for all drugs, and that the government was aware of what drugs were not, and what drugs were, effective. Furthermore, that people were killed as result of this experimentation seems to me to be a major claim… and I would like to see declassified government documents that show how, so many decades ago, the CIA was able to learn that Soviet psychics were dying because “bad drugs” were being administered to them. However, if it is true that the Soviets were using drugs, why were they, seeing that according to the US official line, Remote Viewing worked better without drugs? Good question, no?
Was Riley therefore lying? Another explanation seems more likely. There is evidence to suggest that drugs were involved in the early stage of the research, i.e. 1952. At its reincarnation, in 1972, the effect of drugs on the viewers was known, if only because Puharich was there and the doctor overseeing the remote viewers was an expert on psychedelic drugs. It was during these SRI days that the project had close to 100 percent results. Could it be that when the project moved from SRI to Army Intelligence, the “X-Factor” was never transferred with it? This could explain the dramatic decline in accuracy, which officially was as low as twenty percent, even though it was most likely more than fifty percent, but seems not to have been close to 100 percent, as in the “good old days” of SRI.
The scores suggest that somehow the secret ingredient was not used in Army Intelligence research. Why not? There are a number of possibilities, but Ingo Swann, the very first remote viewer at SRI, may have come up with the answer. He states that there was a “second group” of remote viewers that he trained, a group that did not belong to the known Remote Viewing Army Intelligence project, and which Swann says were much better, more intelligent, and much more covert. Interesting, not? Puharich stated: “There are smokescreens deliberately set up to discredit parapsychology research or keep what they know concealed.” That about sums it up…

Let us now go back in time, before Puharich and 1952. In the middle of the Second World War, in September 1942, OSS director and Army Maj. Gen. William “Wild Bill” Donovan thus begins his search for an effective “truth serum” to be used on POWs and captured spies. Beginning with a budget of $5,000 and the blessing of President Franklin Roosevelt, he enlists the aid of a few prominent physicians and psychiatrists like George Estabrooks and Harry Murray, as well as former Prohibition agent and notorious Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN) director Harry Anslinger.
America at the time is not alone in this search for the serum; the enemy, in Germany, is experimenting with various hallucinogenic drugs. These are mainly performed at the Dachau concentration camp, directed by Dr. Hubertus Strughold, who would later be honoured as “the father of aviation medicine”. His research is followed with great interest in the USA, especially after an October 1945 Navy technical mission to Dachau reports in detail on Strughold’s work. So great is their interest, in fact, that when the OSS and its successor, the CIA, import 800 German scientists of various specialties under the auspices of the infamous “Project Paperclip” during 1945-55, it makes sure to include Dr. Strughold.
Dr. Strughold’s “medical experiments”, for which his subordinates were tried and convicted as war criminals at Nuremburg, were nothing more than a series of bizarre and unspeakably brutal tortures. Even so, he learned a lot about human behaviour and a natural alkaloid in the peyote cactus called mescaline. Intriguingly, the Navy tested mescaline as part of its 1947-53 Project CHATTER… and we are back to Puharich and the search for a psychic drug.

The remote viewing projects seem to have been largely ethical and clean. But the same cannot be said of other projects, such as MK-ULTRA… which seemed to be more in line with the “ideology” of Strughold’s Nazi Germany. MK-ULTRA was set up in 1949 by Richard Helms under the direction of Allen Dulles as Project ARTICHOKE, named after one of Dulles’s favourite foods. It was renamed BLUEBIRD two years later and was termed MK-ULTRA in 1953, to finally become MK-SEARCH in 1965 until its “official termination” eight years later. MK-ULTRA was directly responsible for the availability of LSD, phencyclidine (PCP or “angel dust”), dimethyltryptamine (DMT), dimethoxyphenylethylamine (STP) and other powerful synthetic psychoactive drugs… on the streets of America.
Whereas the remote viewing projects seemed to be about mapping the other-dimensional aspects of the mind, MK-ULTRA was more about robotising the mind. On April 10, 1953, in a speech at Princeton University, CIA director Allen Dulles thus warned that the human mind was a “malleable tool”, and that the “brain perversion techniques” of the [Communist] Reds were “so subtle and so abhorrent” that “the brain becomes a phonograph playing a disc put on its spindle by an outside genius over which it has no control.” This meant, in short, that the CIA was working on both sides of the spectrum of the mind: on the one hand, they were able to offer total liberation, a paradigm shift; on the other hand, they could all turn us into robots. And most likely, it was as simple as switching one button on a “mind machine” from one side to the other.
To quote one commentator: “Propaganda, in its simplest form, is condemning one’s opponent publicly for doing what one is already doing privately.” Thus, three days after warning assembled Princetonians of the disturbing ramifications of these techniques, Dulles directed MK-ULTRA researchers to perfect them. Dr. Sidney Gottlieb headed up the operation as director of the Chemical Division of the Technical Services Staff and, via a front organization called “The Society For Human Ecology”, distributed $25 million in drug research grants to Harvard, Stanford, UC Berkeley and other institutions. In short, the slight whiff of marihuana that some still perceive to hang around Berkeley campus was his doing…

By the end of the 1950s, the CIA was funding just about every qualified LSD researcher and psychologist it could find, through such contractors as the Society for the Study of Human Ecology, the Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation, and the Geschichter Fund for Medical Research.
At first, Dulles would have scanned who out there could run the project. Better to start with a promising person than from scratch. At first, perhaps Dulles would like to run it outside of the government. He must have known that there was at first a grey area. Was it promising or not? And how to deal with the fact that scientists who should be facing charges of crimes against humanity were involved? Was there going to be any distinction possible between the crimes of the Nazi enemy… and the future crimes of the US government?
Exploration and innovation always seems easier outside the confines of strict government budgets – if only because they create a false sense of reassurance, often resulting in not delivering on the scope of the project. So start outside, see whether it has promise and if the promise is there, reel it in. Perhaps by first reeling in the project manager, and later the entire project. Like Andrija Puharich and later like the Remote Viewing project. If Dulles had acted like this, it would have been nothing more brilliant than basic project management skills. Companies like Sony have done so in the past with many of their innovative technologies. Employ some brilliant geeks, lock them up in a laboratory and let them experiment and play. Occasionally, they will come up with some new developments, which can be incorporated in already existing technology. If you are very lucky, you come up with an entirely new piece of technology.

There was more than a decade between Puharich’s Round Table’s experiments and the start of the Remote Viewing project at SRI in 1972. We have already shown some parallels, some continuations, but there is one golden nugget we have withheld until now: Dr. Sidney Gottlieb. He was, as mentioned, the supervisor of the MK-ULTRA programs. In 1953, he did this in co-operation with the Army Chemical Center, when and where Puharich was stationed there too. It was there that Gottlieb oversaw the LSD program – the creation of a “psychic drug”. In 1972, Gottlieb was still holding that position and as such gave Hal Puthoff the funding for the Remote Viewing Project. And as soon as Puthoff had started his experiments at SRI, who turned up at SRI – officially coincidentally? Puharich, with a new psychic: Uri Geller. But that’s not the good part: Gottlieb was also the assigned doctor who had to monitor these psychics. Now why would an expert in drugs worry himself with looking after the health of remote viewers, whose health monitoring was officially nothing more than just an health & safety issue: as it was officially research and development, medical oversight had to occur. But this would normally and logically – if there was no nothing else going on than remote viewers “concentrating” – be assigned to a non-descript, low-level doctor. Not the godfather of LSD… that famous psychic drug.

So what happened between 1972 and its final demise? The Remote Viewing program was sponsored by the CIA between 1972 and 1976. In 1976, George Bush entered the office of DCI and his friendship with Mitchell secured the survival of the project. But Ford lost the 1976 election to Jimmy Carter and Admiral Stansfield Turner moved into the position of DCI. Turner was uninterested in psychic events. In 1977, he remarked that they had tried to develop Pat Price as a remote viewer “but he died in 1975 and we haven’t heard from him since”. Expectedly, oversight was given to another branch, and Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM) were the no doubt unlucky recipients. The unit was the idea of Major General Ed Thompson and he decided that personnel would be trained at SRI and would work in Detachment G, based at Fort Meade, in Maryland. Project names went from GRILL FLAME, CENTER LANE, SUN STREAK (randomly assigned) to STAR GATE, not randomly assigned by a computer, unless order suddenly reigned over randomness, which should not de facto be seen as an impossibility.
The Army employed an operational unit of soldiers, officially classifying the project as research. Though it would officially remain a research project, the project was in practice operational. This meant that at the time of the Iran-Contra scandal, when archives and offices were searched for documents that did not fit within what had been approved and what not, massive amounts of operational documents resulting from RV sessions to aid intelligence gathering were destroyed.
In 1988, the project was placed under civilian control. In the end, two women seemed to run the department, Angela and Robin, nicknamed “the witches”. It was Swann who had said that the DIA unit was only masking a more secret unit working elsewhere in the government. These two women were obviously assigned to make sure that “officially”, the project could be stopped, whenever it was required. Robin had been a clerk in the DIA, whose mother had claimed to be a “channeler”. Interested in tarot, they officially claimed to be able to remote view, though their ability was doubted by all involved. Their main aptitude seemed to be to rapidly concoct stories of their exploits, never committing any of them on paper, though maintaining the profile that they were legitimately doing research. In the end, the end of the project was signed off by the CIA’s review panel, but it was clear that Angela and Robin had nailed the coffin on the project. I doubt this was their mission; those who had assigned these two women to the project, knew the outcome… and so did everyone else.

By 1995, several former participants were in the private sector offering their services. According to Jim Marrs, even before Angela and Robin’s arrival on the scene, there were rumours that a unit had been taken into an even higher level of secrecy and continued to perform their sessions. This coincides with the statements from Ingo Swann, who claims that he had personally trained those people. Swann said that he had trained 28 remote viewers by the end of 1986. They were in two groups, each unaware of the other’s existence. “I can’t really talk about this second group”, said Swann. “They were kept completely separate from [the psi spies]. I don’t even know where they went. They were much more ‘black’ and much more covert. I don’t think I ever had their right names. But they were smart as hell.” Morehouse would speculate this team were part of the Navy SEALS or Delta Force.
Thus, when the project was “officially” cancelled, it was merely one visible arm that had been cut, ending one episode of a saga that for more than forty years had been an official secret… but anyone who believes it is the total truth, is unfortunately all too naïve.

The truth of how the “remote viewing” project would be leaked and ridiculed, was also clear: by linking it to little grey aliens – extra-terrestrials. At one point, I typed in remoteviewing.com on my web browser, and arrived at a site operated by “Psi Tech”. The company was apparently operated by two individuals, Jonina Dourif, President and Dane Spotts, CEO.
Their goal was “to evolve human consciousness through the development and training of mind technologies. We assert that all people are born with natural psychic or sixth sense abilities, however, in most, it lies dormant.” This is almost word perfect what Puharich had said several decades before. The website added: “By training our cutting edge Technical Remote Viewing® skills, this innate PSI ability or “PSI muscle” as we like to call it, becomes activated. Awakening this dormant capability in the human race is PSI TECH’s goal. Once human beings have installed this learned skill, not only will it expand an individual’s potential but when enough people become activated, it will shift consciousness on a global scale.” They had a newsletter, which coincidentally was named “The Matrix”. Oh, and of course, the company’s goal was the creation of a paradigm shift, identical in scope to the one Puharich had been planning to execute two decades earlier.

Just like Puharich had wanted to take parts of the project to the private sector, so had Psi Tech, it seemed. “PSI TECH had its beginnings in the covert world of military intelligence. The company was created in 1989 by a few renegade officers in a top secret military intelligence unit who risked their careers to transfer this classified technology into the private sector. Those individuals knew that when the Defense Intelligence Agency’s Remote Viewing Operational Unit lost its funding that this ground breaking technology would be lost forever.”
At the same time, they stated that they were there to prepare the ground for others having to leave this project, making sure they had a career outside of the military. Nothing essentially wrong with that.
Any service provider needs to market its capabilities, thus we can read: “In late 1991, during the Gulf War, PSI TECH provided intelligence on Saddam Hussein to the National Security Council, and located Iraq’s hidden biological warfare stockpiles for the United Nations. These endeavors earned PSI TECH the attention of the world press. Currently, PSI TECH’s clients range from the leaders of Fortune 500 corporations, to academics in science, medicine and law, as well as select individuals from the private sector who undergo the firm’s specialized training. Since 1993, when Jonina Dourif began teaching and employing these incredible skills in the private sector, PSI TECH has perfected remote viewing methods and training techniques, and developed the TRV® Video Training Course, a method by which anyone can successfully learn this skill in the privacy of their own home.” It seemed that with the government project finished, the government had asked the same Remote Viewers, now in their private sector role, for help. And some of the former classified technology was finally freely available.

So far, nothing wrong. But in 1995, I chanced upon a lecture by Major Ed Dames, who stated he was at the birth of PSI TECH. Jonina Dourif was, in fact, his wife, and the ex-wife of actor Brad Dourif. Dames was thus amongst the first to commercialise the remote viewing initiative. He was also the first to move the remote viewing promotion into the extra-terrestrial realm. The same realm where Puharich had moved it into two decades ago. So, here we had it: both Puharich and Psi Tech stated they wanted to create a paradigm shift, by showing to the world the powers of the mind. But from the word go, there was talk of little extra-terrestrial beings. What – if any – relationship they had with the fact that we could all remote view and access another dimension… was never made clear.
Instead, what we got was this: Dames claimed that human abductees were ferried to Mars for use as slave labour, by evil extra-terrestrial creatures. He made various claims about UFOs, extra-terrestrials, etc., and got invited to international conferences, including Germany, where I saw him lecture in 1995. Dames’ mission, or interest, depending on which side of the mirror you were looking at him, was to promote Remote Viewing as a tool that had unravelled the mysteries of the world. Like Puharich, he was overshooting at best.
Dames’ allies included General Albert Stubblebine, the retired director of Army Intelligence (INSCOM), a co-founder of Psi-Tech. Another co-founder was David Morehouse. Dames and Morehouse were both at the beginning of the waterfall of books that would soon engulf the remote viewing project. In short, here were three people, two freely using their military title, to talk about the remote viewing project, but equally arguing for an extra-terrestrial presence on Earth. Was this true… or disinformation? For even though they spoke freely about remote viewing and thus preparing the public for the revelation that such a project had existed, they were also confirming something else: that the general public, once they heard that people like Dames had been channelling ET, would agree with the government’s official statement that the project had been a waste of time. Only some hardened core of believers, who believed ET was real and the government was hiding the truth, would think otherwise. In 1995, that was a minority opinion…

Texas-based author Jim Marrs’s primary interest was the Kennedy assassination. For years, if not decades, he reported on new developments as to whether a lone assassin had killed the President of the United States, or whether it was a larger conspiracy. Then, he wrote a book, Crossfire, and the film rights were sold to Oliver Stone, who used the book for his 1993 movie JFK. I was familiar with Jim Marrs since 1989 and therefore followed his career quite closely. Shifting his focus away from Kennedy, he found a new interest; this was remote viewing, at the time hardly heard of. When Marrs took it up, the story of the government’s involvement with RV was unknown and only a handful of people had stated they were former remote viewers. Two of these were Dames and Morehouse, both of whom were approached as witnesses for a book Marrs was planning to write. Marrs received an advance of $100,000, which implied the book was going to receive a major, nationwide launch.
To start quoting Marrs: “The inclusion of Morehouse’s experiences upset Dames, who apparently had come to view the book as his own personal biography, despite the fact that all concerned had initially agreed that it would be about remote viewing and the military unit rather than about any individual.” Marrs states it was Dames and Dames only who set about a series of actions that resulted in the book not being published. “Dames, who by this time was claiming to be in contact with alien ‘grays’, sent a letter via an attorney to Harmony [the publisher] disavowing the book, even though he had previously signed an unprecedented release statement based on my completed manuscript.” Just a man who was upset about Morehouse’s involvement? “Some observers saw a darker purpose behind Dames’ actions.”
Marrs agrees with those unspecified observers, as he states that “this darker purpose seemed to have been confirmed by subsequent events. First, the book’s editor was suddenly offered a job outside New York City and left the project. Interestingly, some months after the book was cancelled, he returned to his old job. The senior legal counsel, who had approved publication of the book following a lengthy and thorough legal review, was suddenly no longer there.” True, these things happen… The matter was then given to an independent law company, who decided against publication, because of Dames’ threats. Marrs: “I was assured that the only reason for the cancellation was the possibility of legal actions by Dames […] Everyone involved with the book came to believe that the cancellation had been ordered by someone with great authority, perhaps within the government.”
Publishing companies are familiar with threats of lawsuits and unless a serious error has occurred somewhere – often an oversight – publication is never halted, unless some pressure is applied somewhere to stop it. At the time, Marrs was a well-known and respected author, who was able and willing to delete all references to Dames, without changing any of the impact or message of the book. Marrs writes how in mid-1995 “following the abrupt and unusual cancellation of a major book on the subject [his own], the CIA first admitted its role in psychic research.” Strange coincidence, or planned? Was Marrs’ book the final straw that broke the CIA’s back and made them decide to finally go public?
Let us note that the book was cancelled in late July 1995 and that on August 27, the story of the Remote Viewing project appeared in a London newspaper. The article was written by a young American journalist, Jim Schnabel, who, according to Marrs had “earlier that year had received a copy of my manuscript from Dames.” I had personally failed to speak to Schnabel in July 1995, as he was scheduled to appear at a conference in Fribourg, Switzerland. But within the hour of his arrival, he had to return to the United States, because of a family crisis (and yes, I believe it was indeed a family crisis, not a CIA handler forcing him to report in person to Washington!)

In the end, Marrs decided to rewrite the book and published it under the title Psi Spies, in 2000. This was how it was advertised by its publisher: “Originally titled The Enigma Files, Marrs’ new book detailed the activities of the U.S Army and CIA in training soldiers and spies in the use of psychic abilities. The publisher received advance orders for The Enigma Files from around the world. Meanwhile, the U.S. government agencies publicly issued denials that such programs ever existed. As the release date neared, Marrs’ editor mysteriously disappeared, apparently relocated to somewhere outside of the United States. What followed was an attempt by his new editor to coerce Jim to rewrite the book in a FICTIONAL setting, a request that Marrs flatly refused to honor. This ended the publishing deal, thus delaying the book’s publishing indefinitely. […] Interestingly, the CIA ultimately admitted to funding psychic research later in Congressional hearings, although they downplayed the importance of the program. Uhh, right.”

Indeed, following the newspaper article, in early September 1995, the CIA was reviewing the project. The CIA’s choice fell on the American Institutes of Research (AIR) in Washington, DC, an organisation that in the 1970s had been identified as having been involved in a series of behaviour modification experiments conducted in prisons, mental hospitals and campuses from 1950 to 1971. Hardly an untainted or objective reviewer there, but instead an organisation firmly in the pocket of the CIA and thus fully steerable by the CIA into any direction it wanted it to go. The reviewers were Ray Hyman and Jessica Utts. These themselves were not “neutral”. Hyman was a well-known member of CSICOP, the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, and thus a well-known sceptic of such material. The result was stunningly what everyone expected: on September 29, 1995, the reviewers proposed that the project had to be stopped and that it had been a waste of time and money.
This despite the fact that the project, throughout its existence, was overseen both by scientific and governmental control, and that based on their results, funding had to be approved each year. It was not a run-away project that was not overseen, as popular perception – created by Hyman and Utts’ conclusions – would have it. Swann: “Any suggestion that the program operated loosely, or with a lack of control, is pure bunk.” I can only agree….

With the project now officially closed, the story of the “remote viewers” broke in America in early October 1995, in a supermarket tabloid. Marrs states that “this tabloid treatment, obviously leaked by government sources, was a ‘kiss of death’ to anyone in the mainstream media taking the subject seriously.” Thus, the mission was complete: the project was officially over, damage control had been exercised, had been successful, with the American public at large not reacting to the revelation. Though the cat was out of the bag as to the fact the government had been researching “remote viewing”, it was felt that the cat was homeless; Remote Viewing was not working, not interesting, and hence should be stopped. A waste of money. Let’s talk about something else, shall we?
Not just yet… ABC covered the CIA admission on Nightline, Washington and New York newspapers wrote about it, dismissively, following the line the government had proclaimed, but the information did not cascade down – or reach newspapers on the West coast. The Washington Post wrote that the project was “a trio of citizens with suspected paranormal powers who were located at a Maryland military base”. At a news conference on November 28, 1995, the project’s existence was finally officially confirmed. Or how the official confirmation of a project’s existence is made several decades after the project started. In short, it was a whitewash: “We did not tell you about this project for several decades, but now we finally told you. Nothing happened. Just some money wasted. Oops. Sorry.”

One observer stated that Ingo Swann had stated how he “was told by a government official as early as 1973, that even if it could be proved that remote viewing worked, the program would be officially discredited in the long run”. Why? The reason seems to be in part the American social climate itself, where there is a divide between in general arch-conservative religious people, people who performed book-burnings of Harry Potter and Stephen King as late as December 2001, believing they are the work of the devil. It is clear that Remote Viewing and the phenomena linked to it are clear and occurred within a scientific framework, with not only objects apparently moving by themselves, but also people. In a religious setting, such phenomena are labelled as “possessed by the devil”. Even if the CIA would seriously want to uphold the highest standard of truth, could we truly expect it to tell a majority of the American people that psychic abilities are real? That there are other dimensions? Worse of all, no doubt, that much of the content of various religions is just nonsense?

Rather than have the news break in what would have been a best-selling book, by the author of Crossfire, a major national bestseller and, as mentioned, the basis for the movie JFK just two years before, “the forces that are” decided to stop that publication. Once successful, it went public, leaking it via tabloids, then have it deemed “worthless” by a review panel, before stating officially the project existed. All of this in less than six months.
Now who was responsible for this? Marrs fingered Dames. Dames, the man who had gone public about his involvement with Remote Viewing before, but had always suggested that what he had been doing was looking for ET. Dames who in 1995 stepped up the pace and stated he had been contacted by aliens. By October 1995, when I heard Dames lecture in Germany, he was talking about extraterrestrial civilisations on Mars, as well as Martians on Earth. In 1995, his claims had become far more outlandish than what anyone else had said. It was the year when he saw a draft of Marrs’ book. A draft he then gave to Schnabel, a young journalist making a reputation for himself after he had published his first book, Round in Circles, which was an expose of the going-ons of crop circle researchers. Schnabel had looked at their community and their research and found it severely lacking in many things. Schnabel was known for his tabloid treatment of people – and was it any coincidence that Dames gave him Marrs’ manuscript? Was Dames hoping that Schnabel would publicly ridicule Remote Viewing? Though Schnabel was in the end rational in his exposé, for all intents and purposes, having the story break by Schnabel was enough to paint the picture… a darker shade of grey.
Marrs also states that Morehouse “suffered greatly for his part in exposing the RV story. Charged with taking a typewriter without permission and adultery with another soldier’s wife”, Morehouse was court-marshalled and admitted to a psychiatric ward within Walter Reed Medical Center. “On the occasions when I visited him there”, Marrs wrote, “he was so heavily drugged that he could barely lift his head.” Why Morehouse required drug treatment is completely a mystery – except perhaps to discredit him – and his later accuracy in recollecting events. Charges were dropped against Morehouse when he agreed to resign and take a less than honourable discharge, losing all benefits and his credibility. In fact, it was this loss of credibility that was obvious in the manner Schnabel wrote about the entire “Marrs book incident”, where Schnabel suggested Morehouse was less than trustworthy. Nevertheless, Marrs felt Morehouse was trustworthy, and so did another person: Uri Geller. Geller believed that Morehouse was a key individual in unravelling the story of the Remote Viewing project. Geller perhaps also saw a close personal parallel between his own treatment some decades before and Morehouse’s ordeals.
What about Dames? Marrs observed that Dames had initiated the exposure of the psi spies, but suffered no retaliation “and, in fact, maintained control over the private company that he and Morehouse had created.” So the only one better off from all of this was Dames, who in October 1995 was parading around German UFO conferences with his partner, lecturing and teaching courses on Remote Viewing, giving off that typical Hollywood-Beverly Hills demeanour. In 1997, Dames and Courtney Brown, that other professor who would make a ridicule of the Remote Viewing technique, were claiming that Hale-Bopp was accompanied by a spaceship – a claim one UFO-cult in the United States apparently believed, committing mass suicide. No-one ever raised a finger to the two…

As mentioned, the official CIA report was issued on September 29, 1995. The report suggested that funding had to be withdrawn as it was no longer justified. Though I previously hinted that the CIA denied the existence of a “psychic phenomenon”, that is not actually the case. The actual position was different. In fact, the report admits psychic phenomena exist. “A statistically significant effect has been observed in the recent laboratory experiences of remote viewing”. That’s good, but it gets worse from here on: “to say a phenomenon has been demonstrated, we must know the reasons for its existence.” So even though it was agreed Remote Viewing worked, funding could not be continued as no-one seemed to know “how” it worked. This is a very ambiguous situation. They did not deny the phenomenon, merely saying they did not know how the phenomenon worked. Is this truly a reason to stop something that had obvious benefits and practical applications? This was a military operation, not a scientific research study.
Thompson stated that the reason why he started the project, and the Army continued it for 19 years, was that “We didn’t know how to explain it, but we weren’t so much interested in explaining it as in determining whether there was any practical use to it.” For 19 years the government had officially not been interested to know how it worked, just that it worked. But when they wanted to stop the project, their own lack of commitment to understand the dynamics was suddenly held against them? These contradictions always suddenly appear when the project has to be axed for reasons other than the truth.
As always, there is then suddenly the CIA spokesperson putting out the official company position suggesting the project was nefarious from its inception – twenty years earlier. He stated how it was “always considered speculative and controversial – [it] was determined to be unpromising.” And everyone seemed to swallow it – and Remote Viewing had its bad reputation. To add insult to injury, all ex-employees then started to scream how the project had been doing nothing but try and remote view ET and the Face on Mars – even though the review by AIR or the CIA had not mentioned anything about such sessions. Whitewash? Oversight? Or, perhaps most logically, had the US government not bothered with such matters?

Most remarkable is how at odds the conclusion of this review was when we compare it to the report of the 1981 Congressional Research Service. They concluded that “recent experiments in remote viewing and other studies in parapsychology suggest that there exists an ‘interconnectiveness’ of the human mind with other minds and with matter. This interconnectiveness would appear to be functional in nature and amplified by intent and emotion.” The report concluded with suggestions of possible applications for health care, investigative work, and “the ability of the human mind to obtain information as an important factor in successful decision making by executives.” Did no-one ever act upon this? And if not, why? If so, how? Where?
Perhaps the answer to a lot of questions lies in the figure of Hyman, the man who was given the dagger and asked to perform the execution. As early as 1972, he was on a mission to stop Remote Viewing experiments being carried out at SRI with government funding. It was because of his actions that the CIA got involved and secretly provided the funds. In a reversal of fortune, the CIA used him in 1995 to again discredit the project – this time they wanted him to succeed. One can only wonder, however, whether the CIA or other factions of the government did not perform the same disappearance act as two decades earlier.

Since 1995, Remote Viewing has slowly disappeared from the radar… When no weapons of mass destruction were found in 2003, or 2004, or 2005, there was not a hint of using “remote viewers” to try and find them. Even George Bush, it seems, was not that desperate to find them… Then again, if there weren’t any, then even psychics could not find them. But neither were they used, or even rumoured to be used, to search for Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein… if anyone of course was truly interested in capturing these individuals.
Still, this silence was not the result of “forgetfulness”. It was the result of one book that would shatter the public credibility of Remote Viewing forever. The “honour” goes to Dr Courtney Brown, of the FarSight Institute. His profile did not fit in with the rest of the authors reporting on Remote Viewer, as he was not a former Remote Viewer, though he did claim to be involved. His book outshone the popularity of all others, and in essence ended all hopes for the genuine “defectors” to write mass market books. For Brown’s allegations centred on extra-terrestrial civilisations visiting Earth. Sounds familiar? What follows probably isn’t. Brown claimed that the aliens were responsible for a man-made structure on Mars, the so-called “Face on Mars”. This was just the top layer of a cake with several more “imaginative” claims. All of this “knowledge” was received via remote viewing. There were only two options: either Brown was seriously “New Age” or someone who had to put the cork back into the bottle. Could Brown be a disinformation agent?

Apparently by sheer coincidence, while exploring this avenue of research, UFO-researcher Tom Rouse wrote about his interest in the history and theory of American Psychological Warfare since 1940. He wrote: “Classical PW derived from the academic disciplines of mass communications, social psychology and survey research and crystallized as its own discipline during WWII.” In the UFO-field, several authors had run into the subject area, wrote the book, then had run away. It was like walking into a room, throwing a hand-grenade, leaving before the explosion and leaving everyone in the room stunned as to what was happening.
One of these was one Philip Corso, allegedly a high-profile member of the US Military, who, at the very end of his life, decided to share his knowledge on the true events surrounding the crash of an extraterrestrial spacecraft near Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947. Rouse had discovered that Corso had ties to the Psychological Warfare department, specifically to its chief, C.D. Jackson. The source of this link was Burton Hersch, in his book The Old Boys: The American Elite and the Origins of the CIA: “On C.D. Jackson’s staff at the Operations Coordinating Board, responsibility for salvaging the guard battalions fell now to the hotspur Colonel Philip Corso – who until 1955 had liased closely with Nelson Rockefeller, for some months Eisenhower’s Special Assistant for Cold War Strategy. Rockefeller’s Open Skies Policy had functioned in large part as an eleventh-hour smoke screen to suffocate the promising disarmament talks of the period.” In short, Corso had been partially responsible for stalling world peace.
Other points that Tom Rouse picked up was that “Corso was personally acquainted with Frank Wisner, legendary CIA organizer and operator”, as well as being “personally acquainted with Nelson Rockefeller, who served as director of the Psychological Strategy Board under Eisenhower, replacing C.D. Jackson.” C.D. Jackson was best known for his top executive position at the Time-Life-Fortune magazines, but during World War II, he was deputy chief of the Psychological Warfare Division at S.H.A.E.F. for Eisenhower. Before that, he was deputy chief for the Office of War Information. Rouse added: “C.D. Jackson was among the most powerful psychological warriors of his time. He knew how to organize, on a large scale, mass communications and employ social psychology and survey research to promote ideas and propaganda to influence public opinion and behavior.” In short, C.D. Jackson was also an expert on paradigm shifts… how to fabricate them, and how to defuse them…
This was Corso’s boss, friend and apparently mentor. Rouse concluded: “If […] Corso was acquainted with the practitioners of PW at the highest levels, then we might conclude that he had knowledge of basic PW methods and operations. And this is where I speculate: If Corso had sophisticated knowledge of PW methods, how might he have employed them in the publication of his book: The Day After Roswell? Is it possible that the book could have been some kind of eleventh-hour smokescreen?”

Corso’s book on Roswell may seem far from the Remote Viewing subject, were it not for the likes of Ed Dames – who equally soon disappeared from the public forums after 1995 as he had arrived on them. On Corso, Rouse concluded: “I suspect that perhaps Corso’s integrity was sacrificed for a larger purpose, and that he complied, for whatever personal reason he may have had. I ask myself: why would a person of position and accomplishment be willing to sacrifice his personal integrity by indulging in seemingly fantastic, bizarre and incredible accounts of a topic as difficult as ufology?” For your information, since the publication of Corso’s book, all of his claims have since been discredited…

Rouse and I shared the same brainwave when the subject turned to Courtney Brown: “I had this same question a few years back when Courtney Brown, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Political Science at Emory University published Cosmic Voyage: A Scientific Discovery of Extraterrestrial Visiting Earth. Why would Dr. Brown risk an academic career, in a field like political science, to publish what is, in my opinion, one of the more outlandish and wild hypotheses in a field that is replete with them? What could he possibly hope to gain in a few royalties that could offset damage to his career? Fortunately, Dr. Brown provides the answer on page 257 of his book: ‘I should remind the readers at the outset that I am a professor of political science. One of the specialties within the discipline is public opinion and mass behavior, which directly relates to governmental concerns regarding the subject of ETs and UFOs.’” We are well warned about this when he writes about how there are Martians living, surviving, on Earth, in a secret location – though he of course knows where. “There are Martians on Earth, but one must think clearly about the implications of this before ringing the alarm bell. These Martians are desperate. Apparently they have very crude living quarters on Mars. They cannot live on the surface. Their children have no future on their homeworld. Their home is destroyed; it is a planet of dust.” We can only wonder when the next TV marathon whereby the public will donate money for the poor conditions is going to occur. But, wait…
The subtitle of the book was “A scientific discovery of extraterrestrials visiting Earth.” The science used was “scientific remote viewing”. The opening words of the book were: “This is a book about two extraterrestrial civilizations that either already have or soon will have an important evolutionary impact on human life on Earth. This is not a book about scientific remote viewing. Nonetheless, since scientific remote viewing has been used to obtain the data […] it is necessary to briefly outline the history.” Even if it is totally coincidental, it is a standard debunking technique: link the subject to be discredited with outlandish claims, and the subject itself will become discredited. Mud sticks. Remember Geller and The Nine?
Rouse concluded: “He published a book, (mass communications) with an interest in ‘mass behavior’ (social psychology) and measures the effect ‘public opinion’ (survey research). When Dr. Brown published his book, he was employing the classical methods of Psychological Warfare. He didn’t write his book to persuade anyone of his outlandish assertions, he just wanted to gauge the reaction, possibly as a front for someone else, or some agency.” Remember: Rouse wrote that, not I…

Another researcher who investigated the Remote Viewing “revelation” was Michael Miley. He learned that Joe McMoneagle, who was definitely a remote viewer, had stated that Dames had never commanded an RV unit. He had furthermore only ever been a monitor, never an official remote viewer himself. Miley also concluded that the stories of ET and Mars that Dames and Brown aired were not resulting from the remote viewers themselves, but originated with the monitor, i.e. people like Dames. Miley also underlined that Brown never had any formal training, and that Brown never practised on “real targets” but immediately went for the outlandish targets, such as Mars and Martians. Miley concluded: “What I found was a couple of space cowboys, drunk in the heart of the temple, destroying the covenant.” Miley agreed they were tarnishing the image of something that had been “carefully developed over 24 years by a group of dedicated people”. Someone had been peeing in the RV soup – it is to each our own to conclude for what reason they did so. How could I possibly comment?

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