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Book: Remote Viewers

The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies

FieldDetails
TitleRemote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies
AuthorJim Schnabel
Year1997
PublisherDell Publishing (Penguin Random House)
Pages441
CategoryIntelligence History / Consciousness / Remote Viewing
Charter Fit Score9/10
Evidence StrengthSTRONG EVIDENCE

Why This Book Matters to the Charter​

Jim Schnabel's Remote Viewers is one of the most comprehensive journalistic accounts of the U.S. government's two-decade investment in psychic espionage. Written after three years of research with access to numerous sources in the intelligence community -- including the remote viewers themselves -- the book documents how the CIA, DIA, NSA, and over a dozen other agencies recruited, trained, and deployed individuals with psychic abilities against real intelligence targets at taxpayer expense. This directly supports the charter's documentation of suppressed consciousness research and the weaponization of psi abilities by intelligence agencies.

The book is significant because it was written by an outsider -- a science journalist who had previously covered crop circles and UFO abductions -- rather than a program insider. This gives it a different vantage point from the memoirs of participants like McMoneagle or Buchanan. Schnabel conducted extensive interviews with all sides: the scientists who ran the experiments at Stanford Research Institute (SRI), the military remote viewers at Fort Meade, the intelligence officials who tasked the missions, and the skeptics who sought to shut the program down. The result is a balanced, deeply sourced narrative that treats the subject with journalistic rigor.

For the charter's focus on how the deep state manipulates and suppresses consciousness research, this book documents a critical tension: intelligence agencies found remote viewing useful enough to fund for twenty years, yet the program was officially declared to have produced "no discernible benefit" when it was declassified in 1995. Schnabel's account of the political maneuvering, inter-agency rivalries, and bureaucratic infighting that shaped the program's fate reveals how institutional dynamics -- not scientific evidence -- often determined what was classified, funded, or shut down.

Key Claims & Evidence​

  • The U.S. government ran psychic spying programs under code names including Gondola Wish, Grill Flame, Center Lane, Sun Streak, and Star Gate from approximately 1972 to 1995
  • More than a dozen federal agencies utilized remote viewing intelligence, including the CIA, DIA, NSC, FBI, NSA, Secret Service, Navy, Army, Air Force, Joint Chiefs of Staff, DEA, U.S. Customs Service, and U.S. Special Forces Command
  • Ingo Swann developed the coordinate remote viewing (CRV) protocol at SRI that became the standard training methodology for military remote viewers
  • Pat Price, a former police commissioner, produced remote viewing results so accurate that CIA officers initially suspected he was a mole with access to classified satellite imagery
  • The program produced operationally useful intelligence on Soviet military installations, hostage situations, and weapons development
  • Internal politics, personality clashes, and turf wars between agencies significantly affected the program's trajectory and eventual declassification
  • The 1995 AIR evaluation that led to the program's official termination was criticized by insiders as politically motivated and methodologically limited

Charter-Relevant Content​

Suppressed Consciousness Research​

Schnabel documents how legitimate scientific research at SRI, conducted by physicists Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff, was classified and controlled by intelligence agencies once it showed operational potential. Research that began as open scientific inquiry was pulled behind security classifications, preventing peer review, replication, and public scientific debate. This is a textbook case of "classification as concealment" -- using security restrictions to control what the public knows about consciousness capabilities.

Intelligence Agency Involvement​

The book provides detailed accounts of how multiple intelligence agencies tasked remote viewers against real-world targets:

  • Soviet submarine tracking and weapons facility identification
  • Iranian hostage crisis intelligence gathering
  • Locating kidnapped individuals (including Brigadier General James Dozier)
  • Counter-narcotics operations
  • Nuclear weapons proliferation monitoring

The Weaponization of Consciousness​

Schnabel documents the progression from scientific research to intelligence application -- the point at which consciousness research stopped being about understanding human perception and became a tool for statecraft. The book shows how this transition was driven by Cold War competition with the Soviet Union, which was reportedly investing heavily in its own psychic research programs.

Key Figures Documented​

The book provides detailed biographical and operational accounts of:

  • Ingo Swann -- Artist and psychic who developed coordinate remote viewing protocols at SRI
  • Pat Price -- Former police commissioner whose remote viewing accuracy stunned CIA analysts; died suddenly in 1975 under circumstances some found suspicious
  • Harold Puthoff -- SRI physicist who co-directed the remote viewing research program
  • Russell Targ -- SRI physicist and co-director of the program
  • Joe McMoneagle -- Remote Viewer 001, the Army's most decorated psychic spy
  • Lyn Buchanan -- Military remote viewer and CRV trainer at Fort Meade
  • Ed Dames -- Military remote viewer who later became a controversial public figure
  • Mel Riley -- One of the original military remote viewers
  • Skip Atwater -- Operations officer who recruited and managed remote viewers for Army intelligence

Program Termination and Cover-Up​

The book documents the political process by which the program was declassified and terminated in 1995. The American Institutes for Research (AIR) evaluation, commissioned by the CIA, concluded the program had no intelligence value -- a conclusion that contradicted the assessments of multiple agencies that had used remote viewing intelligence for years. Schnabel's account suggests the evaluation was designed to reach a predetermined conclusion, with evaluators given limited access to operational files and successful cases.

Key Quotes​

"For twenty years, the government selected civilian and military personnel for psychic ability, trained them, and put them to work, full-time, at taxpayers' expense, against real intelligence targets." -- Jim Schnabel, Remote Viewers, 1997

"The results were so astonishing that the program soon involved more than a dozen separate agencies, including the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Council, the FBI, the National Security Agency, the Secret Service, the Navy, the Army, the Air Force, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Drug Enforcement Agency, the US Customs Service, the US Special Forces Command, and at least one Pentagon drug-interaction task force." -- Jim Schnabel, Remote Viewers, 1997

The Counterargument​

Critics of the book and the remote viewing program raise several objections:

  • Confirmation bias -- Skeptics argue that intelligence analysts selectively remembered hits and forgot misses, creating an inflated impression of remote viewing accuracy
  • The AIR evaluation -- The official 1995 evaluation found that remote viewing had not produced actionable intelligence, though program insiders dispute the evaluation's methodology and scope
  • Author credibility questions -- Some in the remote viewing community have questioned whether Schnabel, who previously wrote skeptically about UFO abductions in Dark White (1994), approached the subject with genuine objectivity or with an agenda to subtly undermine it
  • Cold reading and sensory leakage -- Skeptical psychologists have argued that apparent remote viewing successes can be explained by cold reading techniques, inadvertent sensory cues, and statistical cherry-picking
  • Pseudoscience classification -- Mainstream scientific organizations generally classify remote viewing as pseudoscience, arguing that no controlled, replicable experiments have demonstrated the phenomenon under rigorous conditions

Connection to Other Project Entries​

  • Joe McMoneagle -- Remote Viewer 001, extensively profiled in Schnabel's book; his memoir The Stargate Chronicles provides the insider perspective
  • Non-Local Psi / Information Field -- The thesis that consciousness is a non-local information field, which remote viewing evidence supports
  • Gateway / Consciousness Simulator -- Robert Monroe's Hemi-Sync technology was used to train some remote viewers
  • Robert Monroe -- Monroe Institute provided training support to the military remote viewing program
  • Tom Campbell -- Physicist who participated in early Monroe Institute consciousness research
  • Stephan Schwartz -- Remote viewing researcher who conducted independent archaeological remote viewing projects
  • Courtney Brown -- Remote viewing researcher who studied under military-trained viewers
  • Dean Radin -- Psi researcher whose meta-analyses provide statistical evidence for remote viewing
  • Book: The Seventh Sense -- Lyn Buchanan's insider account of the same program
  • Book: The Stargate Chronicles -- McMoneagle's firsthand memoir
  • Book: Mind-Reach -- Targ and Puthoff's original scientific account of SRI experiments

Other Coverage Worth Reading​

Sources​

This information was compiled by Claude AI research.