Spooks, psychics and science

Declassified documents recently released by America's Central Intelligence Agency reveal detailed, fascinating and compelling scientific proof of psychic abilities… Between 1972 and 1995 hundreds of "remote viewing" (RV) experiments took place at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) in America, and later at Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC). The CIA funded them. In July 1995 the CIA declassified documents revealing its research. There had been many claimed leaks about such programmes, with exotic names such as Sunstreak and Star Gate, but this is the first admission by the intelligence community . Russell Targ, a principal researcher recalls: "The purpose of some of these trials was to elucidate the physical and psychological properties of psi abilities, while others were conducted to provide information to our CIA sponsor about current events in far off places. We learned that the accuracy and reliability of remote viewing was not in any way affected by distance, size or electromagnetic shielding, and we discovered that the more exciting or demanding the task, the more likely we were to be successful. Above all, we became utterly convinced of the reality of psi abilities." One of the many assignments Targ and his colleague Hal Puthoff received in the early days was to describe a Soviet research and development laboratory in a particular location in the USSR. The description provided by RV was so outstanding that it assured their funding for several years to come. Targ, as a scientist, was desperate to reveal their experiments to the world, but could not do so because of their high security classification. He eventually won their release under the Freedom of Information Act. In one RV experiment Targ recounts how his viewer, Pat Price, an ex-police commissioner, perfectly described a place where the SRI laboratory director had gone. It had been selected at random from a set of sixty file cards. Price described this area, which was a swimming pool complex, in perfect detail. Then, having done so he told the interviewer that it was a water purification plant! He went on to create some non-existent water storage tanks and put rotating machinery in the pools. It was not until 1995 that Targ learned that in 1913 a municipal waterworks had been built on the site of the present complex. Price's drawing of the area had shown the water tanks just as they were in 1913. This, he says, illustrates an important feature of RV, namely that one must specify the time as well as the place. In 1974 the CIA brought them co-ordinates of a site in the USSR. Price described the layout of the plant and an eight-wheeled crane on tracks. It was so large that it straddled an entire building. Spy satellites later confirmed these and many other details. Price also described a large interior room where people were assembling a 60-foot metal sphere, like sections of an orange peel. They were having trouble welding it because pieces were warping. They were looking, said Price, for a lower-temperature welding material. The sphere-fabricating facility at Semipalatinsk was unknown in the USA, and was discovered three years later. Price had the size of the sphere accurate to within 18 inches. US officials later concluded that these spheres were to capture and store energy generated through nuclear fission. There would indeed have been a technical headache. Some physicists thought there was no way to weld these spheres strongly enough to withstand such pressure, especially since the steel to be welded would be extremely thick. In 1988 an analysis was made of all 154 experiments conducted at SRI. Jessica Utts, of the Division of Statistics in the University of California, says "the statistical results were so overwhelming that results that extreme or more so would only occur about once in every 1020 such instances if chance alone is the explanation." (1020 is 100 billion billion!) She continues, "No one who has examined all the data… has been able to suggest methodological or statistical problems to explain the ever-increasing and consistent results to date." Many successful experiments were also conducted at SAIC. One found that when subjects were being unknowingly observed on video, galvanic skin response increased. (Interestingly, the response was much greater if the subject was observed by a person of the opposite sex!) In another experiment subjects tried to guess one of a set of four images looked at by a viewer. The average "hit" rate was well over 30%, when chance would have given 25%. More spectacular was an SRI experiment to RV the planet Jupiter before the NASA Pioneer 10 flyby. To the annoyance of all, the viewer found a ring around the planet, and wondered if he had viewed Saturn by mistake. Their colleagues in astronomy were similarly unimpressed, until the flyby revealed that an unanticipated ring really did exist!

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