History of remote viewing

The named work starts in the early 1970s at Stanford Research Institute. U.S. intelligence later ran it under several project names. In 1995 the archive was pulled together, reviewed, and largely opened.

After declassification, the fight that lasted was not curiosity. It was whether the output could be used. A record a second reader can use is still the scarce part.

SRI, then a name

Physicists Harold Puthoff and Russell Targ ran early studies at Stanford Research Institute, later SRI International. Ingo Swann was a central viewer and later the designer of a teachable method. The phrase “remote viewing” was used to mark a controlled, taskable protocol, not parlor ESP.

In 1974 Targ and Puthoff published “Information transmission under conditions of sensory shielding” in Nature. That paper did not end the argument. It put the protocol in a journal people could not ignore.

Early tasking often used geographic coordinates. One CIA-related effort was called SCANATE, “scan by coordinate.” Handles later became encrypted IDs so the viewer could stay blind even if the numbers looked like a place.

The U.S. programs had more than one name

The public now meets this history as “Star Gate.” That was one late name. A 2006 CIA FOIA letter says the Agency uses Star Gate as a rubric for a series of CIA and U.S. military remote-viewing projects, now defunct, and that CIA does not fund remote viewing research.

The same letter lists related names in the declassified collection: STAR GATE, GRILL FLAME, CENTER LANE, SUN STREAK, STUNT PILOT, PHOENIX, and SCANATE. The collection CIA described in 2004 ran 11,985 documents, 89,901 pages.

Inside the units, methods were not identical. Some work used a relaxed, near-sleep posture later called Extended Remote Viewing. Other work used Ingo Swann’s staged, paper-on-the-table method, Coordinate then Controlled Remote Viewing. Both streams show up in the later archive.

1995: a review, then an archive

In June 1995 CIA’s Office of Research and Development contracted the American Institutes for Research to evaluate the research and the intelligence-gathering use. The report is dated 29 September 1995. Jessica Utts and Ray Hyman wrote opposing expert reviews. AIR staff tried to pull a program conclusion.

AIR reported a statistically significant laboratory effect: hits more often than chance. It also reported that operational product was too vague and inconsistent for actionable intelligence, and that in the cases they reviewed the information had not been used to guide operations. Their recommendation was not to continue remote viewing as an intelligence collection method.

That split is the public record. Lab sessions had a target pool, blindness, and judging. Operational tasking often did not. GOAT RV is built for the first kind of work: a sealed still, a lock, then look.

What the archive is for

The documents are not a vibe. They are session packets, tasking, contracts, and arguments. You can read them in the CIA FOIA Reading Room and in the National Security Archive’s copy of the AIR report.

Public practice after 1995 took those methods into classrooms, associations, and apps. GOAT RV is a practice desk in that line: letter IDs instead of coordinates, stills as feedback, no score, no AI judge.

Sources

CIA FOIA letter, 16 March 2006 (doc 0001299750) — Star Gate collection size, project names, programs defunct.
CIA FOIA Reading Room, STARGATE collection — declassified session and program files.
Mumford, Rose, Goslin, AIR evaluation, 29 September 1995 — laboratory vs operational conclusions.
Targ, R., & Puthoff, H. (1974). Information transmission under conditions of sensory shielding. Nature 252, 602–607.