--- THE FIRST CIA-SELECTED COORDINATE REMOTE VIEWING EXPERIMENT --- DATE: 21 July 1973 TIME: 1:00 P.M. PROTOCOL: I am seated in a room with a table and two chairs. Puthoff occupies the other one. We have a selection of pens, pencils, and a stack of standard 8-1/2" x 11" paper. PROCEDURE OF THE EXPERIMENT: At 5:03 someone hands Puthoff a card with the coordinate on it. The room is then locked. "OK," Puthoff says. "Tell me when you are ready." I gather my wits, or try to. At 5:08, I note down my name and time on the first piece of paper, indicating that I'm ready. Puthoff clears his throat, then says: "49 degrees, 20 minutes South... 70 degrees, 14 minutes East." * In my analytical mind I immediately thought that the coordinate must be in the South Atlantic ocean -- which proved not to be the case. But I didn't know exactly what was supposed to happen. Then something transpired which had not happened during the 100 trial experiments. The room around me disappeared. I found myself in a "hazy thing" which I thought was in my mind. But in a moment I figured out that this was not in my head. It was actually a fog bank at the target area. I was above a very big expanse of dark water with enormous swells in it. And then I saw it. "It's an island. Maybe a mountain sticking up through a cloud cover." Being --there-- was so complete that my speaking voice back in the room sounded really far away. (A few years later, we dubbed this phenomenon as "remote viewing bilocation.") "Are you calling this an island?" Puthoff inquired. "Well, yes, but..." and I came back to the room. "Well, there would be a 50-50 chance that it's either water or land. If we say it's an island, then that would be interpreted only as a good guess. That's not really good enough, is it? We have to get beyond chance expectation somehow." Puthoff agreed. He suggested identifying some peculiar characteristics of the island. His suggestion was acceptable -- and needed. We were well aware that critics would say that I had eidetic memory of maps and their coordinates. To counter this, we had agreed in principal that the responses would have to include features which could not be found on maps. "Well," I said, "I thought I saw some buildings there. Why don't I try to describe them?" The archives of this experiment show that a single page of information was produced, the written part in Puthoff's hand. And we were now at 5:22 p.m. "Terrain seems rocky - must be some sort of small plants growing. Birds there. Cloud bank to west. Very cold. I see some bldgs rather mathematically laid-out. One of them's orange. Something like a radar antenna, several discs. "2 white cylinder tanks. Large? Quite large. To the NW small airstrip. Wind is blowing. Must be 2 or 3 trucks in front of bldg. Is there an outhouse? There's not much here. That's all I think for now." I then took the sheet Puthoff had written on and drew a rough sketch of the arrangement of the buildings and airstrip [See Illustration A.] Puthoff noted that I had said that the two white cylindrical thanks were like gas storage tanks. We then ended the experiment at 5:30 p.m. * But I was frowning. "What are the chances of an island in the South Atlantic having a radar thing on them?" I asked. "Or an airstrip? Surely most islands would have one." Puthoff and I agreed that the chances were very good, and that this would again open up the experiment to "guessing" or "chance expectation." "So," I mused, "We're going to have to place the buildings in relation to the whole island. Just saying there are buildings there is not good enough, because how's anyone to tell which island is being referred to? Most islands are relatively similar." And so, there we were -- stumped in the middle of the CIA's first coordinate. Any suggestion of mere chance guessing would scrub SCANATE forever. Anyhow, I was fatigued by this effort, perhaps more because of fear that we wouldn't succeed. We agreed to try again on the next morning. * This introduced an undesirable squiggle into the experiment, for we could be accused of breaking into the single-session response, and could then look at a map and see where the coordinate was. This possibility would admittedly weaken the experiment. However, the "client back east" had already agreed to submit two more coordinates, and that the sum of all three would be used to judge the efficiency of SCANATE. In fact, by the end of August that client had submitted --several-- and other potential clients also submitted some more. All of the coordinates submitted after the first one were increasingly "operational." And all were done in a single session. With the first coordinate, we were simply unprepared about contingencies regarding giving --sufficient-- information to offset logical criticisms. This was the first and the last time we were unprepared. --- The Second Session --- 22 July 1973, 11:50 a.m. The second session was scheduled for 11:30 a.m. But Puthoff and I sat for twenty minutes discussing how to place the buildings correctly on the island. We finally agreed that I should try to get far enough above the island so that I might perceive its overall shape. This seemed simple and sensible enough. So Puthoff once more gave me the coordinate. And Zoom! there I was... presumably back at the island. But now there was no island to be seen! "Shit!" I said. "All I can see is one huge bank of fog and mist. I can't see the island at all." Puthoff and I were both sweating by now. I'm sure he had visions of losing his credibility with the client. And I'm sure, although he never said so, that I was using this as an excuse to cop out -- exactly as everyone else would think. He would have to report to the client that the viewer could not identify the target because it was covered with fog. What a joke regarding the remote viewing faculties (which were expected to be miraculous)! Again we were stumped. But, if I remember correctly, we now both broke out laughing, so much that we got tears in our eyes over a situation that had become increasingly ridiculous. But now I managed to remember reading about Tibetan mystics who could --move-- while out of body. And, after all, remote viewing --is-- a form of traveling clairvoyance. Something like this now had to be attempted, or we were doomed. "Jesus," I said. "If we're going to save our asses here, I guess we have to go into the fog bank, find the buildings and the shoreline and then I'll move slowly along it through the fog and sketch the contours I come across." We laughed even harder. Anyhow, Puthoff gave the coordinates again, the first and last one I ever worked with while giggling. We presumed that the coordinates referred to where the buildings were on the island. Zoom, I got there and silently descended through the fog. And there were the buildings... murky, yet visible through the fog. Now, for reasons that seemed logical enough, we assumed that I would sketch the island's contours on a piece of paper, and that would be that. But now appeared a particular phenomenon which none of us had suspected, but which in the future was to prove an utter gold mine for espionage. We later called it "tracking" -- which meant slowly tracing the contours of something whether one understood what it was or not. I took a fresh piece of paper, and within the bilocation phenomenon proceeded to move slowly around the island's coast. The intent was to track its protrusions, indentations, curves, juttings, and so forth, all the while narrating what I was encountering. * Yet --another-- unsuspected problem now arose. My "tracking" was kind of like automatic drawing -- and soon my tracking line had reached the edge of the sheet of paper. Puthoff leapt out of his chair and placed a second piece of paper so that I could continue. In the end, we had eight sheets of paper that needed to be Scotch-taped together so as to reveal all of the island contours as sketched by me. As I was moving slowly around the island, I finally realized why it smelled so bad. It's rocks were covered with bird shit, massive amounts of it. But finally I got the shoreline back to its starting point. Now we had an eight-page map. I then sketched in the positions of the airstrip and buildings. While I had tracked the shoreline, I had been talking. Again Puthoff had taken notes of what I had said: "It's not completely dark there, sort of orangish light. If I look to west, hills - to north flatlands & I think airstrip & ocean in distance - to east rolling bumpy grasslands with humps. To south is - can't see anything to south. "I move north to coastline. I follow it around, That's point A (begins to draw map.) Point B, rocks sticking up out of ocean breakers on them. Little cluster of buildings with wharf that's point C - boats, "Jutty of land sticking out (D). F (sic) is sand basin, river coming thru - lots of birds. E brush or small trees. This is fun (laughs.) First time I've ever done this - Almost a straight coastline, cuts in rocks (D2?) and beach. "Then curves back. I see to northwest mountain rising, snow on top. 0 is irregular. R is a high cliff. I'm on a promontory. "J is big breakers. K in a bay. L is area I drew yesterday - (airstrip drawn). "That'll do for today (1213 (time)]. M may be a lighthouse. I lacked courage around point G." "Well," I said, "let's end here. If my contours don't fit with the island, then I guess I can leave for New York tomorrow." When we exited the locked room, there were a number of people waiting for us. Among them was a stranger I'd seen before but never had been introduced to. Puthoff had the sheets in his hand, and he, the stranger, and Targ rushed off somewhere. I knew then that the coordinates had not been telephoned, but transported by an agent from you know where. I waited in my little office alone for nearly an hour. This was to be almost the hardest hour of my life, even though there were other very hard hours to come in the future at DIA headquarters, and in the Pentagon. * Finally, I heard Puthoff and Targ coming down the hall. Both their faces were flushed. Puthoff silently laid out the Scotch-taped map on my desk and then produced another map, this one of the target island. My map didn't have many of the subtle contours of the island, and it was a little misshapen. But it was obviously a good rough sketch of the island's major contours -- the very tiny Kerguelen, in the South Indian Ocean (not the South Atlantic) out in the middle of a watery deep-blue nowhere. Kerguelen is about 1,300 miles north of Antarctica. [My map and one of Kerguelen is attached as Illustrations B and C.] "And," Puthoff said, "it is covered with bird shit, too. It's on a bird migration route, and most of them stop there to breed. It's smells acid-like if you're downwind." * Although neither Puthoff nor I had very high hopes for this experiment because of its one irregularity, the client immediately agreed to provide two more coordinates as fast as possible. We asked only that they be more easy to check out. The next coordinate was to be the stunning and infamous "West Virginia Site" that made remote viewing history and ultimately achieved wide media treatment -- as did Project SCANATE. The details of the West Virginia experiment will be the topic of the third report in this series of nine. * It was to be nearly six years before I saw a topographical map of Kerguelen, and which included the buildings and other manmade features. I had missed some of them, but was told that the major building was orange and there were a number of outhouses whose locations needed to be moved every once in a while. --- An Interesting Repercussion --- The Kerguelen experiment was not classified, and so its details leaked out through the intelligence community. About a week after the experiment, Puthoff got a telephone call from the east coast. Kerguelen was a French possession, and the French and the Soviets had some kind of joint research project there -- alleged to be a "weather research" effort which they said was "sensitive." Why a weather research project should also be sensitive was suggestive and amusing. Anyhow, it was being talked around that the French and Soviets had unofficially protested to the State Department regarding --psychic spying-- on their sensitive island. After the laughing died down, this was tentatively assessed as the French and/or the Soviets somehow taking seriously, of all things, the --real-- possibility of psychic espionage -- or else they wouldn't have complained at all, would they? In 1973 I had not yet been made privy to select classified documents regarding Soviet psychotronics research and was not to see any of them until about 1975. --- Coda --- The term "remote viewing" was informally used at the ASPR only to designate a particular type of experimental format. However the --concept-- of remote viewing as --distant-seeing-- is a very old one. My idea in 1971 for the long-distance weather experiments was modeled after two earlier sources: (1) From the work of the French researcher, Rene Warcollier (1881-1062), who, during the 1920s, had performed successful long-distance perceptual experiments between Paris and New York during the 1920s; [See "Mind to Mind," Rene Warcollier, Creative Age Press, NY 1946] (2) From the lesser-known work of the British researcher, J. Hettinger [See "Exploring the Ultra-perceptive Faculty," Rider & Co., London, 1941.] In 1971, I did not know of another extremely impressive set of long-distance experiments conducted on a daily basis between the famous psychic, Mr. Harold Sherman in New York, and the famous explorer, Sir Hubert Wilkins in the Arctic. [See "Thoughts Through Space," Creative Age Press, NY 1942]. This important book came out during WW II and therefore never gained the attention it deserved, and was thereafter completely ignored by American parapsychologists. During 1975, Puthoff and Targ recovered some vivid examples of what apparently were the first out-bound beacon experiments, from the early psychical research literature. Theme took place between two British ladies, one in Australia and one in England -- with impressive results commensurate with experiments undertaken at SRI. The earliest known mention of the human distant-seeing faculty is found in ancient India and Tibet. It is one of the sidhis. (See "The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali" and other Vedic Sources.) --- Reminder --- There can be seven more notable remote viewing experiments in this series, one of which will feature CIA members who, as subjects themselves, undertook initial experiments in remote viewing. But it is now logical to request confirmation whether and how many readers on the Net want to see the remainder of the seven experiments. If only a few do, then putting them in the Internet is not really worth the effort, is it? For example, it has taken six days to construct this report, and which contains enough information for any sensible person to grasp the fundamental elements of remote viewing plus -- why the interest in it for intelligence-gathering purposes. Those who wish to support our species superpower faculties cannot do so if they remain the silent majority. Otherwise the skeptics, a noisy bunch, will continue to win the day as they have in the past. "Reality has very little to do with truth; there is no necessary connection between the two. Truth may be as unreal as fiction." Edith Hamilton Illustrations A, B and C regarding the Kerguelen Island experiment now follow for those Net readers with have the capability to view them. (End) __________________________________________________________________ ** Copyright 1996 by Ingo Swann. 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