References:
Psychic Spies – The CIA’s Quest for the Ultimate Intelligence Weapon
The History of Mind Control in America
This chapter explores how physic powers or remote viewing went from “fringe occult research” to “confirmed operational use” by the Military Industrial Intelligence Complex (MIIC).
Because by the early seventies MIIC research – including extensive CIA MK Ultra work – at Stanford University had become so unpopular and drew such violent protest, the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) was established off campus. Stanford effectively carried on the work by privatizing it. In June of 1972 Harold “Hal” Puthoff teamed up with fellow physicist Russell Targ to establish a project that on its face seemed to be wholly inconsistent with all else happening at SRI.
Psychic Ingo Swann did not immediately take “former” CIA man Cleve Backster’s advice to reach out to Puthoff (see, Psychic Spies). According to Swann’s autobiographical account Remote Viewing, the Real Story, Backster told him, “[Puthoff] has a very prestigious reputation. You two might get along. He’s into Scientology too.” Swann wrote, “I looked up at Backster incredulously. Then I simply threw the papers into the air over my head… [and said] ‘Jesus, Cleve. You know what I went through over this thing. I can’t possibly be in touch with ANOTHER Scientologist. The whole world will be sure there is a plot here. This is out of the question.’” Swann never disclosed what Backster “[knew] what I went through” over Scientology. Nor did Backster. Since both have now passed and neither of their archives (which I have examined) shed any light, we can only speculate. Perhaps Swann had suffered insult and injury because of his affiliation with Scientology. And perhaps Backster knew this. After all former Military Industrial Intelligence Complex members Fletcher Prouty (Joint Chiefs) and Victor Marchetti (CIA) disclosed contemporaneously that Backster’s agency was at least partly the cause for the mistreatment of Scientologists (see The Cult of Intelligence).
In either event, Swann stewed on the matter for days. He later mentioned it to his psychic-circle friend Nelda Suplee. She told Swann that to refuse to participate would only compound the felony as it would amount to discrimination against Puthoff because of his religion, the very one Swann was a member of. This led to Swann writing to Puthoff in March 1972 offering his services. During the first week of June, Swann flew to California to be test driven by Puthoff, his SRI partner/physicist Russell Targ, and a number of observing scientists, apparently none of whom were Scientologists.
Puthoff concocted a test of Swann’s skills that he believed could not be ignored if successful. He had Swann attempt to focus his attention through thirty feet of concrete and metal and a projected super-conducting shield, and describe what he saw behind them. Swann drew out a mechanical/electronic device in some detail. The observers were astonished. It was a near perfect rendition of the highly sensitive magnetometer that sat below all of the concrete and signal interference in place to protect it. The magnetometer had been situated so that no known physical disturbance could possibly reach it.
A graduate student who was monitoring the magnetometer mentioned that at the exact moment that Swan was describing what he saw below, there was a disturbance recorded by the magnetometer. Here was not only clairvoyance but also possibly psychokinesis at work. Initially, the observers wrote it off as a coincidental glitch of some sort. Puthoff asked the monitor to watch the measuring device and listen to Swann very closely as he narrated another look at the magnetometer. Again, at the precise moment of Swann’s attention reaching the magnetometer, the device registered a reading. The observing scientists were convinced there was no glitch, no mistake and no means of rigging the test.
Puthoff told Joe Rogan in 2025 that after the experiment, “I then wrote this up and circulated it around to other physicists. And pretty soon the CIA came landing on my doorstep and said, ‘Oh, have we been looking for you.’” Perhaps a coincidence, but he used almost the precise language Backster had used with Swann about CIA interest in New York a few months earlier (see Psychic Spies).
The CIA was so impressed with Ingo Swann’s initial feat that they signed on as primary investor in the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) remote viewing project. The CIA would remain primary sponsor for several years until it passed the baton onto other Military Industrial Intelligence Complex (MIIC) entities such as the Army, Air Force, Navy and Defense Intelligence Agency.
For the next year Puthoff and his partner Russell Targ continued to perform psychic experiments with Swann to the CIA’s increasing curiosity and satisfaction. The two appointed CIA project managers, agent-physicist Ken Kress and agent-medical doctor Kit Green, were initially skeptical. Both were gradually won over by what they observed first-hand. After weeks of performing routine assignments, Swann became bored with determining the contents of envelopes or what was hidden in the next room. Per Puthoff, Swann stated, “if you want to know what is in the envelope, open it.” He wanted greater challenges. That led to months of experiments locating people whose location he had no way of knowing, in many cases great distances away. To describe this clairvoyant activity in more technical-sounding terms, Swann came up with the moniker, remote viewing.
The CIA’s continuing support was significant given the fact Puthoff said that initially, “The CIA was very concerned and had one goal in mind; to prove it was nonsense.” (3rd Eye Spies)
There was also an early sabotage attempt by none other than the founder of MK Ultra, Sidney Gottlieb (see Jolly West Pt 1 and Jolly West Pt 2). According to Targ, when several irrefutable results were reported to headquarters, Gottlieb summoned Puthoff and Targ to Washington D.C. After the SRI team briefed Gottlieb, he had only one suggestion, administering LSD to the remote viewers. They declined, explaining that remote viewing required peak awareness and concentration. Shortly after Gottlieb retired his Technical Services Department was dissolved with the alleged shuttering of the MK Ultra Program. Note, that remote viewing continued under auspices of CIA and several military branches for over twenty years is exhibit ONE in support of the fact CIA mind research had only begun when it claimed it had been retired. While Gottlieb disappeared, interest at the CIA did not. Kit Green said, “We had thirty analysists, not scientists, in CIA, and maybe six or seven scientists in CIA talking about the initial dozen or so results of these anecdotal situations.” While they mainly doubted the SRI results, Green said, “We’d get polygraphed once in a while. And it became clear we weren’t lying.”
Second Scientology Psychic
About a year into the CIA/SRI contract another accomplished psychic (and outspoken Scientologist) was added to the SRI/CIA team. Pat Price had reportedly solved a number of crimes psychically when he served as Police Commissioner for the city of Burbank, California. According to Puthoff and Targ’s book Mind Reach, Price just happened to catch wind of the project and volunteered. (Mind Reach: Scientists look at Psychic Abilities, Puthoff/Targ, 1977). As we will later demonstrate, this was but one of many fictions planted in order to deny Scientology as the source of the remote viewing/clairvoyant powers being validated.
To the astonishment of all participants, Price’s psychic feats soon outshined even Swann. Russell Targ said of Price, “He was the most psychic man in the world.” (TES, ibid) One of Price’s remote viewings was so remarkable that it both nearly caused the psychic program’s early cancellation but also ultimately led to its long survival.
In late May 1973, Kit Green randomly chose a CIA agent at Langley, Virgina. Green asked this agent to come up with a set of latitude/longitude coordinates for a location that only he was familiar with. The agent gave the map coordinates to a location in the remote woods of West Virginia. He did not inform Green what was at the location.
First, Swann made a viewing and reported his findings. He described a compound consisting of a fenced-in group of buildings in a remote location. He drew up the compound including a large central building, antennas, a gigantic electronic reception disc, an accordion door to a garage where jeeps were parked. He said it seemed like a secret military installation. The drawing was very detailed. When Green showed it to the agent who had given the coordinates, the agent informed Green that the alleged psychic wasn’t so psychic; that he had provided Green with the coordinates to a small log cabin he had recently built. When Green reported this disappointment to Russell Targ, the latter replied, “that’s too bad, the other guy (Pat Price) reported the same thing.”
Without reference to Swann’s results, Price had independently corroborated Swann. However, Price went further. He viewed not only the ground level, but three stories deep into the earth beneath the main building. He reported seeing into a file cabinet with the label “Operation Pool Cue.” Folders inside were labelled Cueball, 14 ball, 4 ball, 8 ball, Rackup. Since the two psychics confirmed one another’s findings, Green drove out to the coordinates to see for himself. He located the cabin the CIA agent had described. But, he also found a dirt road 100 meters away. He drove down the road around a bend and over a hill and just a short distance away he found a fenced in military-looking complex closely resembling the drawings of both SRI psychics.
When Green reported what he had found he said, “within 24 to 48 hours I had security officers in my office at headquarters; and they were grim-faced and they were upset.” He was informed that “those guys out in California” had not just correctly viewed code names, the names themselves were “classified, top-secret.” Price’s details were a step too far as far as CIA headquarters were concerned. Puthoff said, “we were descended upon by all the law enforcement in the United States.” Targ said, “We had government agencies from NSA and CIA” come to find out why some CIA agents directed some “psychics to spy on the NSA.”
Green would learn that it was the most secret facility in the United States, a National Security Agency (NSA) listening post for intercepting Soviet satellite information.
Why Price’s naming the contents of hidden, classified file cabinets was so alarming to the MIIC was more recently made clear by Puthoff. He told Joe Rogan that from the outset what most concerned the CIA: “As far as the CIA was concerned, they were most interested in this ability to see through shielding. And they said, ‘does that mean that if we have all kinds of documents in a super conducting safe, the Russians might be able to reach in and see them? That is what they were most worried about.” Targ had previously seemed to confirm that the CIA was more concerned with keeping its own secrets hidden than anything else.
After several months of investigation all SRI participants were cleared of any fraud or wrongdoing in what became known as “the NSA break-in.” But the effects of the viewing were long term. According to Targ, “The Army, CIA, DIA. They all had remote viewing programs eventually. But it all began with the NSA break-in.” It was that event that extinguished all doubt about the ability of humans to transcend the body and even space/time to view virtually anything, anywhere.
As a result of the NSA break-in and several other Pat Price feats, he was eventually promoted from SRI/CIA research to CIA Operations. The agency knew it had a secret weapon the Soviets could only dream of, so they proceeded to put him to work. Before long the move resulted in an intriguing mystery that remains unsolved until today.
Moving On Up a Little Higher 
