Project SCANATE: The CIA and the Birth of Remote Viewing

In 1972, during the height of the Cold War, the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) embarked on a project that would last for over 20 years and be run by a number of high-level governmental organizations, including the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) and the United States Army. The project was the investigation of parapsychological abilities and the potential of using such abilities in intelligence gathering operations.

Although this was the first time that the CIA would fund any sort of true investigation into psychic abilities, the Agency had been interested in the subject in the past. During Word War II there were rumors of Nazi Germany developing such capabilities. In 1961 the Chief of the Office of Technical Services (OTS) within the Agency contacted Stephen I. Abrams, the head of the Parapsychological Laboratory at Oxford University in England on the question of ESP (Extra-sensory perception). Abrams sent back a report that ESP appeared to exist but could be neither understood or controlled.

After this report little investigation into the world of the psychic was undertaken by the CIA. In the 1970’s, however, interest in the subject was given new life by Drs. Harold Puthoff and Russell Targ of the Stanford Research Institute (SRI). They expressed knowledge of Soviet investigations into psychic abilities, including video of a man who could move inanimate objects with his mind. This caught the attention of the CIA and a working relationship between the Agency and SRI in the investigation of psychic abilities began.

Ingo Swann and Remote Viewing

Although SRI would investigate a number of psychic phenomena under the CIA funded project, its central core was the process of remote viewing. Remote viewing involves the process of a subject moving away from its body and observing places and objects distantly removed from the viewer.

A common term among fans of the psychic today, remote viewing was practically unheard of in 1972. In fact, the term was coined by a well-known psychic and artist, Ingo Swann, while working with a project at the American Society of Psychical Research (ASPR) in New York in 1971.