From: RSchatte@aol.com
Date: Mon, 6 Nov 1995 16:48:21 -0500
Message-ID: <951106164820_14404985@mail06.mail.aol.com>
To: vince@hstn.tensor.pgs.com, spowell@access.digex.net, pparri@sat.net,
        yogi@iadfw.net
Subject: Jack Anderson on Remote Viewing 10/30/95

Psychic spies have a home at the CIA

By Jack Anderson and Michael Binstein

WASHINGTON -- More than a decade after we first told the story, the Pentagon
continues  to employ a highly classified team of "psychic spies," who use a
form of extra-sensory  perception to help gather intelligence in foreign
countries.

It was called "Project Grill Flame" when we first reported this strange story
in April 1984.  Since then, the program has fought off several external and
internal threats to its existence,  changing its name to Center Lane and
Sunstreak, among other appellations.

But it continues to exist, albeit in scaled-down form. It's also been moved
from its long- time headquarters at Fort Meade, Md., which gave the unit a
comfortable "hideout" because  it was home to a much larger spy outfit -- the
National Security Agency.

The unit was launched in the early 1970s, when the CIA became concerned about
a  "psychic gap" with the Soviets, who were heavily involved in investigating
pschic  phenomenon. The precursor of the current project, called "remote
viewing," was put  together in part by two respected academics -- Harold
Puthoff, once with the NSA, and  Russell Targ, associated with the Stanford
Research Institute in Menlo Park, Calif. For a  time, in fact, SRI was under
contract to run the program for the CIA.

The group was first called "Project Scanate," which stood for "scan by
coordinate."  Program managers recruited subjects who demonstrated psychic
abilities and placed them  in darkened rooms, where they were given longitude
and latitude coordinates and asked  what they "saw." The CIA and Pentagon
soon found that it could be a useful tool in the  intelligence mix, though
they have never relied on it exclusively for intelligence gathering.

Its successes have won key converts inside and outside the intelligence
community:

-- One remote viewer described an airfield, complete with details --
including a large gantry  and crane at one end of the field. The CIA was
impressed, but critical. There was indeed an  airfield at the given map
coordinates -- the Soviet Union's ultra-secret nuclear testing area at
 Semipalatinsk. But the CIA knew of no gantry or cranes at the site. They
were later  stunned when the next satellite photos revealed both the gantry
and crane, which had  recently been moved there.

-- Another test involved a Soviet Tu-95 "Backfire" bomber, which the CIA knew
had  crashed somewhere in Africa. They were eager to find it before the
Soviets did, so they  could take photographs and perhaps purloin secret gear
from the wreckage. So one of the  remote viewers was asked to locate the
downed bomber, which he allegedly did within  several miles of the actual
wreckage.

-- In yet another instance, a remote-viewer was asked to focus on a KGB
colonel caught  spying and being interrogated in South Africa. He "saw" that
the spy had been smuggling  information using a pocket calculator modified
into a communications device, and that the  South Africa assignment was his
last before returning to Russia. The "suggestion" to  question him on this
was shared with South African intelligence, and it allegedly caused the  spy
to break down and cooperate -- because of its accuracy.

-- Remote-viewers have been employed in most international crisis over the
last two  decades. During the Gulf War, knowledgeable sources told our
associate Dale Van Atta,  remote viewers fingered the secret location of
Iraq's Saddam Hussein, though this was  never verified by conventional means.
The unit's two biggest congressional defenders --  Sen. Claiborne Pell,
D-R.I., and Rep. Charles Rose, D-N.C. -- have long since been  convinced of
the program's effectiveness.

The Achilles heel of the project has been its misses -- which have raised the
ire of many  critics over the years. Remote-viewers have produced as much bad
information as good,  intelligence sources admit. But the program's defenders
say this is no different from the  rest of the CIA, where human spies have
also been known to make major blunders.

"We were always able to survive," one of the remote-viewers told us, "when we
stuck to  what we did best: just a guy (or a woman) sitting in a dark room,
or even a lit room,  focusing on what was happening somewhere else. ... There
was no shaking, no big trance,  no spirit entities speaking in different
voices, nothing hoodoo voodoo. It seems to work  enough times to make it
valuable as a `tip,' if you will, to where the CIA's folks, or our
 satellites, should be looking." Copyright 1995, United Feature Syndicate,
Inc.