An alternate explanation of CIA remote viewing programs

[Gashweir]

In reading the runesoup post Very Bad Company, it occurred to me that the CIA may have seen immense value in promoting the idea of remote viewing, completely aside from it's actual viability as an intelligence gathering technique. If you let it out that you have evidence that it works, and you establish a group designed to gather intelligence using the technique, it becomes an excellent cover for the release of information gathered the old fashioned way: by double agents and spies. The thought struck me I when I was reading this:

U.S. Intelligence agencies have become aware that the Russians have built the largest building under a single roof in the world. No one in the agencies, however, knows what is going on inside. The President’s National Security Council staff orders INSCOM to have remote viewers see what they can determine about it. One of INSCOM’s better remote-viewers, Joseph McMoneagle (a consultant with OT VII Hal Puthoff) reports, after his remote viewing of the facility, that a very large, new submarine with 18-20 missile launch tubes and a “large flat area” at the aft end will be launched in 100 days. Two Soviet subs, one with 24 launch tubes, and the other with 20 launch tubes and a large flat aft deck, are sighted 120 days later. These are new Soviet “Typhoon”-class submarines—the largest in the world.

If the CIA in fact had a spy of the ground who had access to this submarine facility, and at the same time had suspicions that US intelligence had been penetrated by moles working for the Soviets, there would be a very pressing need to disguise the source of their information. What better way to disseminate the info and yet guard the source, than to cloak it as the result of "remote viewing"? If the Soviets became aware that the CIA had specific information about the design of a new class of Soviet submarine, information which was a closely guarded secret, and no believable explanation for the source of the information, a mole with access would be one of the obvious conclusions. This would of course would put their source at great risk, mandating a convincing cover story. And of course to make remote viewing a convincing story, you have to have the requisite projects, programs, working groups with actual histories, you can't just say it came from remote viewing if you haven't laid down the appropriate verifiable back story. It also helps that the Soviets seemingly are conducting the same experiments, though of course I wonder if they possibly had the same motives as the CIA's that I am positing here. It would be very funny if both of these intelligence communities were stuck in the same hall of mirrors as we are in trying to determine the truth of ESP and its validity. Perhaps the Soviets started leaking the idea of ESP spying to give cover to the their clandestine humint gathering, and then had the same cover story reflected back to them by the CIA, neither one knowing for sure if it was real, forever wondering if perhaps the enemy had in fact really discovered legitimate ESP based information gathering techniques.

This interpretation does not preclude remote viewing actually working, of course. Remote viewing and the information from spies on the ground could be used to cross-check and confirm each other, as well provide a credible cover story, or even disinformation. Information gathered from remote viewing could be leaked out as having come from a spy where one does not exist, leading to a mole hunt where one does not exist, causing chaos and dissension in the ranks of the enemy. So it could work on many levels.

Has anyone seen this interpretation offered? I personally haven't, but I know that if I could think of it, than someone surely could as well.

[elfismiles]

Thanks for decloaking to post this idea Gashweir.

Very novel idea and I'm surprised I've not heard it expressed before - though perhaps I have and I've since forgotten - an increasingly common phenomenon for me, sadly.

I've certainly heard folks criticize the mil's RV work and have long heard suggestions that it was part of some sort of disinfo campaign but I don't immediately recall it being framed it the way you have. Though, I'm fully prepared to have someone else show me where it has been suggested and suddenly realize that I have in fact read of such an idea before.

Anywho ... it does also vaguely remind me of the Bennewitz / AFOSI affair wherein some believe the Air Force's intel operatives promoted Bennewitz's beliefs in UFOs/Aliens to, among other things, keep the Soviets from learning that we had a mole / agent who had cracked the security for one of their surveillance satellites and part of our game in disinforming Bennewitz was to track WHO was listening to him. At least that's my memory of part of that story.

[Wombaticus Rex]

This blows my fucking mind because I had the same thought on the porcelain throne last night reading a passage in Schnabel's Remove Viewers.

It was in regards to the Iran hostage crisis, specifically the debriefing of Richard Queen, who was told of Keith Harary's "RV impressions" of his conditions and surroundings. Queen was outraged and needed to be calmed down, because he felt the accuracy of this information was proof that there were US intelligence agents among his captors.

And that, frankly, is a much more believable explanation that RV. This is a suspicion I have often harbored about John Alexander and Andrija Puharich in particular -- that their "X Files" reputations were a valuable cover for actual spy rings. It was not until last night that I'd considered the entire history of DoD/CIA funding for RV was such an operational cover, in and of itself.

And the following workday, you come through with this eloquent thread. Strange days indeed.

[Gashweir]

Wombat: I also find the theory much more convincing than the idea of RV myself, but I have never had what I would consider a paranormal experience. I imagine if I had I would not find the idea of RV so hard to believe.

There is a family story about a "spot on the wall" in our living room that terrified my sister for no apparent reason when she was two years old. Even though my parents couldn't see or "feel" anything, she did not want to look at it, would only kind of peak at it for a second, and did not want to even go in the room, and would not without our parents being resent. This persisted for a few weeks until my Dad and his friend conducted a Subud prayer ceremony, which he recalls as quite a struggle, at which time my sister was no longer afraid of this spot. My Dad recalls her entering the room for the first time after they had prayed, looking anxiously at the spot, and acting surprised and happy. How he was able to get all this from the behavior of a two year old is a question I have, but he was genuine in his belief at least.

I think if I had had that experience I would be more likely to believe in ESP and other like things, as my sister does to this day.

[Wombaticus Rex]

I've had experiences with telepathy on many occasions so I take that for granted. I have also had great success with RV experiments: which is to say, damned interesting results, just enough to maintain interest & curiosity, and never enough to pretend this was a repeatable or controllable phenomenon.

(Of course, I've also met a shit-ton of "psychics" and spiritual adepts who were ravenous egomaniac nightmares to be around, in addition to being demonstrably full of shit. Bullshitting just takes less work, so I tend to keep my Occam's Razor sharp out here in the mind fields.)

In the annals of counterintelligence, some of the most psychotically defended secrets of the past 50 years revolved around imaging technology & satellites. Having seen the outlays devoted to even a failed operation like Yellow Fruit / Watchtower, the money that went into RV was distinctly chump change: a bargain.

A great PBS show that seems relevant: Nova's "Astrospies"

[barracuda]

If you let it out that you have evidence that it works, and you establish a group designed to gather intelligence using the technique, it becomes an excellent cover for the release of information gathered the old fashioned way: by double agents and spies.

My issue with this theory is that the Soviets undoubtably had the same thoughts. And even if they believed the RV press releases, the first move would be to look for meatspace spies. That's simply routine.

Anyway, I'm halfway of the belief that the remote viewing process was simply a clever way for Scientologists to use their auditing techniques (read: blackmail material gathering) on actual intelligence agents.

[operator kos]

Great thread. Just to throw my two cents of synchronicity into the pool, I've been thinking about this quite a bit lately too since I just yesterday finished up the year 1975 in my Deep History Timeline which included such events as the start of Project Stargate and the founding of the Temple of Set. The confluence of X-files events that year has really been blowing my mind. It's one big crazy soup of Ancient Egyptian gods/aliens, cults, psi, and black ops.

1975


President: Gerald Ford (R) [33]

Vice President: Nelson Rockefeller

*Secretary of Defense: Donald Rumsfeld

Secretary of State: Henry Kissinger

*National Security Advisor: Brent Scowcroft

Fed. Chair: Arthur Burns

NSA Director: Lew Allen

FBI Director: Clarence Kelley

CIA Director: William Colby

CIA Deputy Director: Vernon Walters

DIA Director: Daniel Graham

NRO Director: James Plummer

Joint Chiefs Chair: George Brown


The Vietnam War ends with U.S. defeat and withdrawal.


United Technologies Corporation is founded.


Microsoft Corporation is founded.


The Church Committee exposes numerous criminal acts by the CIA, NSA, and FBI. Innumerable documents relating to these crimes and others are shredded before they can be brought to light.


Union leader Jimmy Hoffa goes missing. Although his disappearance is never solved, it is widely believed to be related to his involvement with organized crime.


The CIA carries out Operation IA Feature to intervene in the Angolan Civil War. They support UNITA and the National Liberation Front of Angola against Soviet proxies.


The CIA begins to collaborate with several South American countries in a widespread anti-Communist suppression and terrorism campaign known as Operation Condor.


The CIA and military intelligence begin the Stargate Project to conduct experiments in remote viewing and other psychic phenomenon, mainly through the Stanford Research Institute. Notable participants include Ingo Swann and Harold Puthoff, both top level Scientologists, as well as Andrija Puharich. Puharich is a primary figure in a UFO cult which believes it is in touch with The Nine, a group of aliens once worshiped as gods in Ancient Egypt. Perhaps not coincidentally, a film called Stargate will be released in 1994, a year before the Stargate Project officially ends. The plot of the film centers around aliens who were worshiped as gods in Ancient Egypt.


A group of Arizona loggers encounter a UFO in the woods. One of them, named Travis Walton, approaches and is struck by a beam of light, knocking him to the ground. Believing he had been killed, his friends flee. When they return later to search for him, he is missing. A major police search begins, and the loggers are polygraphed about the event. All who completed the test passed. Several days later Walton reappeared in a nearby town, dazed and bedraggled, mumbling about beings with terrifying eyes.


Air Force security personnel spot an unidentified craft in the secured airspace over the nuclear weapons depot at Wurtsmith Air Force Base in Michigan. An incoming tanker plane is ordered to pursue the vehicle, but it vanishes.


Michael Aquino, a lieutenant colonel in military intelligence and ex-Church of Satan member, founds the Temple of Set.


Fraternitas Rosicruciana Antiqua member and Aleister Crowley disciple Marcelo Motta founds the Society Ordo Templi Orientis in Brazil. He will become involved in, and lose, legal battles with Grady McMurtry's OTO in America.


Charles Manson follower Lynette Fromme attempts to assassinate President Ford. 17 days later Sara Moore makes an attempt on the president's life as well. Moore was said to be obsessed with Patty Hearst (of SLA fame), but also worked as an FBI informant.


A shootout at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota leaves two FBI agents and one American Indian Movement member dead. AIM activist Leonard Peltier will later be convicted of participating in the shootout. Many consider his trial to have been highly biased.


American Indian Movement activist Anna Aquash is murdered. Two other AIM activists are eventually convicted for the murder under the premise that they thought she was an FBI informant, or that she simply knew too much about the Pine Ridge shootout.

[Wombaticus Rex]

You would love Francis Wheen's "Strange Days Indeed: The 1970's As Golden Age of Paranoia" one of the most entertaining history books I've ever found.

[operator kos]

You would love Francis Wheen's "Strange Days Indeed: The 1970's As Golden Age of Paranoia" one of the most entertaining history books I've ever found.

Just Amazoned it, and it does look amusing. Does it come with an actual understanding of deep politics, though, or is it just a more superficial poke at the weirdness emanating from the depths?

[Wombaticus Rex]

A mix of both - when he's covering the UK (Wheen's home turf) and Asia, he is quite frank and cynical, but his treatment of the US is just a surface romp. He falls into the trap of fetishizing Watergate as a Hugely Important Event, followed by the other inevitable trap of buying Bob Woodward's narratives at face value. JFK conspiracy theories are given a more generous treatment but ultimately dismissed as, naturally, paranoia.

His chapter on RAW & PKD was particularly cringe-worthy stuff, these hippies and their drugs. (I was surprised that RV did not come up in that particular chapter, too.)

Still, Wheen's focus on the subject of paranoia and his keen eye for details resulted in about 12 pages of notes, for me. He caught a ton of amazing details.

[justdrew]

this story actually has some holes.

U.S. Intelligence agencies have become aware that the Russians have built the largest building under a single roof in the world. No one in the agencies, however, knows what is going on inside. The President’s National Security Council staff orders INSCOM to have remote viewers see what they can determine about it. One of INSCOM’s better remote-viewers, Joseph McMoneagle (a consultant with OT VII Hal Puthoff) reports, after his remote viewing of the facility, that a very large, new submarine with 18-20 missile launch tubes and a “large flat area” at the aft end will be launched in 100 days. Two Soviet subs, one with 24 launch tubes, and the other with 20 launch tubes and a large flat aft deck, are sighted 120 days later. These are new Soviet “Typhoon”-class submarines—the largest in the world.

The subs were built at Sevmash in Severodvinsk (Severnoye Mashinostroitelnoye Predpriyatie (Северное Машиностроительное Предприятие), i.e. "Northern Machine-Building Enterprise")

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sevmash

Which had existed since 1940. It was expanded in the mid-70s to build the 941 Akula subs (typhoon is nato reporting name). I seriously doubt there was any doubt about what they were building, an answer to our own Ohio class subs. I suppose ship or sub? might have been a question. But it would be known soon, since MAD and treaties, etc assured that both sides would know the general capabilities of the other. The USSR would have no reason to keep the 941s secret once the design was committed to production. In fact, look how secret it was kept... in 1981...

Nuclear submarine cruiser Project 941, built in 1981, entered the Guinness World Records as the world's biggest submarine at the time

So that wasn't all that useful a score it seems to me.

but yeah, this could totally have functioned as a way to insert "intelligence" the providence of which could not be known. aka, "fake"

What are the chances some Remote Viewers might just have had something to do with convincing a select few about the dangers of WMDs in Iraq?

ps - some nice interior shots of a 941 sub...
http://ru-submarine.livejournal.com/17486.html

[8bitagent]

Oldie but goodie, for anyone who saw the documentary or movie or read the book The Men Who Stare At Goats

At one point in his probe of the military's spoon-benders, author Jon Ronson asked Stuart Heller, the friend of Marilyn Ferguson and Jim Channon, if he could name one soldier who was "the living embodiment" of the First Earth Battalion. Without a second thought, Heller replied: "Bert Rodriguez." "Bert's one of the most spiritual guys I've ever met," Heller told Ronson. "No. Spiritual is the wrong word. He's occultic. He's like a walking embodiment of death. He can stop you at a distance. He can influence physical events just with his mind. If he catches your attention he can stop you without touching you."

As Jon Ronson reported, "In April 2001, Bert Rodriguez took on a new student. His name was Ziad Jarrah. Ziad just turned up at the US 1 Fitness Center one day and said he had heard that Bert was good. Why Ziad chose Bert, of all the martial arts instructors scattered around the Florida shoreline, is a matter of speculation. Maybe Bert's uniquely occultic reputation preceded him, or perhaps it was Bert's military connections. Plus, Bert had once taught the head of security for a Saudi prince. Maybe that was it."

Ziad Jarrah presented himself as a Lebanese businessman, who traveled a great deal and wanted to protect himself. "I liked Ziad a lot," Rodriguez later told Ronson. "He was very humble, very quiet. He was in good shape. Very diligent." Rodriguez taught Jarrah "the choke hold and the kamikaze spirit. You need a code you'd die for, a do-or-die desire." Rodriguez added, "Ziad was like Luke Skywalker. You know when Luke walks the invisible path? You have to believe it's there. And if you do believe it it is there. Yeah, Ziad believed it. He was like Luke Skywalker."

Rodriguez trained Ziad Jarrah for six months, and gave him copies of several knife-fighting books he had written. Jarrah shared them with a friend, Marwan al-Shehhi, who boarded with him at the Panther Motel and Apartments in Deerfield Beach, Fla.

On Sept. 11, 2001, Ziad Jarrah took control of United Airlines flight 93, and crashed it in a field in Pennsylvania. Marwan al-Shehhi commandeered United Airlines flight 175 and crashed it into the South Tower of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan.

Isn't that nice? From one of the head psi army research guys to the moves that would kill eight airline pilots.

Of course the Remote Viewing and 9/11 connection doesn't end there! Dr Courtney Brown, the self proclaimed world's biggest remote viewing proponent(and who has worked under FBI remote viewers) went on the Art Bell conspiracy radio show in 1996 and claimed a UFO was in the comet of Hale Bopp. This kicked off the death cult part of Heaven's Gate, who rented out a mansion in a San Diego suburb from Sam Koutchesfahani to kill themselves. Sam Koutchesfahani was friends with FBI informant Abdusattar Sheikh(the guy who was living with and renting two 9/11 hijackers a house in San Diego) The 9/11 commission also briefly mentions Sam Koutchesfahani as possibly having met these two hijackers and himself bringing in Islamist students under false visas.

[operator kos]

8bit: I remember when I first learned about that group of connections, and I was trying to explain it to a coworker and just got a look like I was a crazy person, which made me laugh. It really is too bizarre to be believed. Hell, even politicians dressing up in robes and dancing around in front of Moloch is too much like a bad 80's Hollywood horror film for most people to contemplate seriously.

[8bitagent]

8bit: I remember when I first learned about that group of connections, and I was trying to explain it to a coworker and just got a look like I was a crazy person, which made me laugh. It really is too bizarre to be believed. Hell, even politicians dressing up in robes and dancing around in front of Moloch is too much like a bad 80's Hollywood horror film for most people to contemplate seriously.

Heh, yeah the Bohemian Grove thing in the early 2000's sounded like this ominous thing...and maybe Paul Bonacci was telling the truth, but compared to really weird shit I've read about over in Europe
stuff like BoGrove and SnB Yale just seem kind of dorky.

I admit, a lot of the oddball stuff I talk about with regard to 9/11 or deep political events in general could and most likely are random synchronicities. It's just weird how small the universe is within that soup.
(like the first victims of the anthrax attacks had rented a condo a few months earlier to three of the hijackers and the husband had been at the Florida flight school when Atta and al Shehi were there)

[Wombaticus Rex]

Schnabel, p. 272:

The FBI also seemed open to the idea of psychic information gathering. In early 1981, a psychic named Noreen Renier lectured at the Bureau's training center at Quantico, Virginia, and predicted -- accurately, it turns out -- that someone would attempt to assassinate President Reagan in the spring. The FBI later set up a network of references linking interested local police departments to psychics who might be able to help them with difficult cases.

So much of Schnabel's book has been heavy with numinous meaning since that Iran passage first got me thinking down this path, but that one really stood out. Probably because that incident involved a fairly ham-fisted conspiracy and given the timeline, it's interesting to ask what circles Noreen Renier was traveling in at that point.

This Houston Chronicle hagiography indicates she has had success in recent years with a TV show called "Psychic Detectives," which sounds drivel-tastic.

Q: How did you get started?

A: I began accidentally in my 30s. I was working in advertising and PR at a Hyatt Regency in Florida. A group wanted to hold a psychic conference there, but I thought it was weird and was against it. I was a skeptic myself then. But then I met this Indian woman who was involved in it and she seemed OK. She wound up teaching me how to meditate, and things took off from there.

...

Q: Have you had your abilities scientifically tested?

A: I was skeptical about what happened to me. So I wrote a letter to Dr. William Roll at the Psychical Research Foundation (then associated with Duke University). He invited me up and that began seven years of testing.

Q: What did he find?

A: He put electrodes on my brain and watched the brain waves and then had me do psychic things, measure how well I did. It showed I was using a different part of my brain for the psychic stuff. He couldn't tell me how I did it. But I realized I wasn't crazy.

LKJ from Cassiopiea has done a forum thread on Renier which has a lot of links onboard. Possibly pivotal detail:

Supervisory Special Agent Robert K. Ressler was present when Noreen made her prediction. To this day he insists that Noreen made her prediction with clarity and without ambiguity. He has seen the video tape of Noreen’s predictions many times.

Also:

After her prediction came to pass, Secret Service Agents interviewed Ms Renier as a possible suspect and collaborator with the would be assassin Hinkley.

In a later post, LKJ quotes Posner article that has been 404'd by AOL redesigns, but offers much more detail on the prediction in question. As it turns out, this was a running theme for Renier in 1981.

Renier is perhaps best known for three predictions relating to the 1981 assassination attempt on President Reagan. The first was on November 5, 1980, during her radio program on WXAM (Charlottesville, Va.). These were Renier's words (Chap. 11): "I'm feeling problems in [Reagan's] chest. If it's not a natural problem, perhaps it will come from outside." Reagan was the oldest elected President, and lung cancer or a heart attack, to name two, would have also been considered "hits." According to p. 84 of The Blue Sense, singled out by Renier for its "kind words about me," two years earlier she had a presidential trifecta disaster, having predicted that President Carter would be assassinated on the White House lawn (#1) after his reelection (#2), and that Vice President Mondale would commit suicide (#3).

Her second Reagan prediction appeared in the March 10, 1981, National Examiner tabloid (referred to in the book simply as "a Canadian publication"), saying Reagan would be shot in the left upper chest but not killed. This was right-on, but does it prove "psi"? Was it merely as lucky a guess as her Carter/Mondales were unlucky? Was it even accurately presented and attributed? It was accompanied by other predictions that did not come to pass, and which Renier denied authorship of per a transcript from the 1986 libel trial: "The newspaper put in three or four jazzy ones without my -- I didn't do three or four of those predictions."

The third Reagan reading was her crowning achievement. According to Robert Ressler's libel trial deposition, during a January 1981 lecture at the FBI Academy in Quantico, "She said she felt that Reagan was having a heart attack in the future . . . some sort of chest pains . . . and then clarified . . . it is a gunshot . . . she was patting her left side . . . and that he would not die." But Ressler's contemporaneous description to co-worker Richard Ault, another FBI Supervisory Special Agent, left him nonplussed. I quoted Ault in my Psychic Sleuths chapter: "The way [Ressler] described her prediction . . . it didn't really sound uncannily accurate. [It] sounded pretty general." Alt had missed Renier on that occasion, but had been present on at least two others. Though readers of Chap. 11 will be blown away by her descriptions of dazzling readings during her other lectures, Ault had told me, "At no time during any of her lectures . . . was I impressed."

A skeptic site run by Gary Posner offers up a horribly written but fact filled rant. Scroll past the 2 Minutes Hate until the font get smaller -- there is literally no actual content in that long opening screed.

Renier still speaks for IRVA events.

I apologize if anyone got an actual thesis or narrative out of this random labyrinth of citations: there is no there, there.