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Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies
Remote Viewers is a tale of the Pentagon's attempts to develop the perfect tool for psychic spies. These psychic spies, or "remote viewers," were able to infiltrate any target, elude any form of security, and never risk scratch. For twenty years, the government selected civilian and military personnel for psychic ability, trained them, and put them to work, full-time, at taxpayers' expense, against real intelligence targets. The results were so astonishing that the program soon involved more than a dozen separate agencies, including the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Council, the FBI, the National Security Agency, the Secret Service, the Navy, the Army, the Air Force, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Drug Enforcement Agency, the US Customs Service, the US Special Forces Command, and at least one Pentagon drug-interaction task force. Most of this material is still officially classified.
After three years of research, with access to numerous sources in the intelligence community--including the remote viewers themselves--science writer Jim Schnabel reveals for the first time the secret details of the strangest chapter in the history of espionage.
After three years of research, with access to numerous sources in the intelligence community--including the remote viewers themselves--science writer Jim Schnabel reveals for the first time the secret details of the strangest chapter in the history of espionage.
480 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1997
17 people are currently reading
369 people want to read
About the author
Jim Schnabel
12 books4 followersAmerican science writer.
Schnabel has written for Nature, Science, New Scientist, the Washington Post, The Guardian and the Independent.
Subjects of his books include: crop circles, alien abduction en psychic detectives.
Schnabel has written for Nature, Science, New Scientist, the Washington Post, The Guardian and the Independent.
Subjects of his books include: crop circles, alien abduction en psychic detectives.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
November 2, 2013
Big kudos to Jim Schnabel on writing a wet non-fiction read. 441 pages of fact based information makes this the most comprehensive book I’ve ever read on the subject of remote viewing.
I discovered this book in the bibliography for “How the Hippies Saved Physics,” another worthy read taking place around roughly the same time in American history.
I learned a lot about remote viewing, a subject that I have some personal experience with. I learned about the theory and practice; the variety and uses of remove viewing for intelligence gathering and for research purposes. America wasn’t the only country involved in this kind of intelligence. We got into it because Russia and China were delving deeply into it. It was one more Cold War contest.
“Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America’s Psychic Spies” contains firsthand accounts from most of the people who were directly involved with the program. The author himself tests the claims that anyone is capable of remote viewing by receiving basic training from a couple of the different players in the field and has results that further deepen his conviction in the science of remote viewing.
I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the subject. It was a surprisingly enjoyable read.
I discovered this book in the bibliography for “How the Hippies Saved Physics,” another worthy read taking place around roughly the same time in American history.
I learned a lot about remote viewing, a subject that I have some personal experience with. I learned about the theory and practice; the variety and uses of remove viewing for intelligence gathering and for research purposes. America wasn’t the only country involved in this kind of intelligence. We got into it because Russia and China were delving deeply into it. It was one more Cold War contest.
“Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America’s Psychic Spies” contains firsthand accounts from most of the people who were directly involved with the program. The author himself tests the claims that anyone is capable of remote viewing by receiving basic training from a couple of the different players in the field and has results that further deepen his conviction in the science of remote viewing.
I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the subject. It was a surprisingly enjoyable read.
August 26, 2007
excellent book. I knew one of the people it was written about back when I worked at Ft. Meade. Fascinating topic and very well written. I am told that the NSA has renewed this program very recently.
February 2, 2008
This was background on a story I did for the Maui Times about a certain former secret spy. Whew! Who knew such theories existed. Truly mind-blowing.
February 14, 2025
This is the best book I have read on Remote Viewing in the USA. Written by a journalist rather than one of the viewers (like most other books on the subject), the objectivity, breadth, and depth in content make this the perfect first book (and maybe last) to read on the subject.
April 23, 2013
Under code names like "Grill Flame," "Center Lane," Sun Streak," and "Star Gate," the U.S. Government's "Remote Viewers" went on psychic-spying missions around the world... read minds... even looked back in time and into the future. And they enjoyed support at the highest levels...
Sounds like an exciting read, doesn't it? Unfortunately for me the read was 452 pages too long. I always finish what I start... even books. Chapter after chapter only proved to be more of the same repetitive dialogue from the previous chapter. The author, Jim Schnabel did an excellent job in his research and his writing. Time to move on... So many books, so little time.
Sounds like an exciting read, doesn't it? Unfortunately for me the read was 452 pages too long. I always finish what I start... even books. Chapter after chapter only proved to be more of the same repetitive dialogue from the previous chapter. The author, Jim Schnabel did an excellent job in his research and his writing. Time to move on... So many books, so little time.
June 1, 2012
Superb non-fiction that should rock your world. Our intelligence folks have done some crazy shit. This is a serious rock upturned. Read it.
August 1, 2009
This book narrates the history of the U.S. government’s flirtation with remote viewing (a euphemism for clairvoyance) as a technique for gathering intelligence. At one time or another virtually every intelligence-gathering agency in the government has been involved in RV either directly (by funding the work) or indirectly (by using the services). After its inception in the nineteen seventies there were successes and failures, bureaucratic infighting and backbiting, frequent changes of personnel, and cases of flaky remote viewers who got carried away with themselves; funding finally dried up in the early nineties. Whether the program will be revived is anybody’s guess—the issue is more than anything political. (The old bugbear of psi: people are afraid that being associated with something so weird will hurt their careers: they fear “the giggle factor.”)
Several things are clear:
*It’s for Real. There’s no question that some people some of the time can “view” places, events and/or people remotely—in the past (retrocognition) and in the future (precognition) as well as in the present.
*Many People Can Do It. As with any other talent, some folks are particularly adept at remote viewing, but apparently many people can be trained to do it at least fairly well. Talent is probably distributed along the usual bell-shaped curve. The most talented often have the following traits: intuitive, emotionally sensitive, intelligent, easy to hypnotize.
*Different Targets for Different Folks. Even among the most talented RVers, some are better at viewing one class of phenomena than another: for example, some are strong on people, others on places, others on events.
*Everybody Has Bad Days. Like athletes or artists, even the best remote viewers have bad days—days when they’re just not on. The worst have more bad days than good days.
*Many Ways to See the Cat. There are many different techniques for remote viewing; for some a highly structured approach works best, for others a more loosey-goosey approach.
*Signal-to-Noise Problem. The question for intelligence work is whether RV can ever become sufficiently reliable to be truly useful. The problem is separating the signal from the background noise. Since the RVers use their buzzy brains as receivers, it is hard to filter out the noise and even harder to know when it has been filtered it out, unless the information can be corroborated by another source.
*No Clue How It Works. Remote viewing works, but no one has a clue how it works. It defies the conventional laws of physics; presumably it will take some radical new paradigm, such as the “holographic universe,” to explain it.
Now for some randomly-selected examples of RV in action:
*The Vanishing Driver—One of the most talented RVers was asked to track a man in a foreign country, describing his whereabouts every 12 hours or so. In one session the RVer described the man, the car he was driving, the road, the surrounding hills—then drew a blank. “The guy’s going somewhere I can’t go,” he said. “It’s like I was looking at his picture and the picture turned sideways.” The RVer was later informed by the client that, at precisely the moment of viewing, the target had lost control of his car on a winding road in Italy and plunged over a cliff to his death.
*It Moves—Two skeptical guys from the CIA decided to test an RVer before deciding whether to fund an RV program. Not trusting the people at SRI (the think tank doing RV experiments), the CIA men brought their own target and personally locked it in the experiment box. The RVer said, “I see something small, brown, and irregular, sort of like a leaf, or something that resembles it, except that it seems very much alive, like it’s even moving!” The target? A large moth—brownish, leaflike, and alive.
*Soviet Bomber—A Soviet Tupolev bomber crashed in the jungles of Zaire. The CIA wanted to find it before the Soviets did so they could swipe its technology. Thinking they knew roughly where it was, they quickly organized a search party. Meanwhile, an RVer back in the U.S. was asked to locate the missing jet. The viewer saw the tail of the bomber sticking out of a river. But where? Pressed for coordinates, she viewed again and specified them—far from the expected area. The search party found it where she said—in a river with its tail sticking out of the water. President Carter was amazed when informed how they’d found it so fast.
*Swinging Target—SRI experimenters wanted to see how well a viewer would do against a moving target. One of them wrote down three numbers, stuck them in his shirt pocket, and then went up in a glider. The RVer was supposed to “see” the numbers while the glider flew. The glider flew for awhile and then landed. The RVer had written down the correct numbers, all right, but said that every time he had “seen” them he’d started feeling queasy. Some shape seemed to be swinging in front of the numbers—something like an Egyptian ankh. “You mean this?” asked the experimenter, revealing a silver ankh that dangled from a chain around his neck.
*Soviet Spheres—An RVer was asked to “see” what was inside a secret Soviet facility identified by spy satellites. First, before examining the photographs, he identified in great detail a large crane standing outside the facility—this was verified by the photos. Inside, he saw segments of huge cylinders (about 60 feet in diameter), and he saw that the Soviets were having trouble welding these segments together, and were in fact trying to develop a new process to do so. Later, when the Soviets moved the cylinders, the U.S. verified their existence, and also discovered that the Soviets had indeed developed a new flux-welding technique to join the segments. This is one remote viewing that could not possibly have been faked. The RVer had “seen” the massive cylinders before anyone in the United States knew they existed.
The book presents many other striking examples.
But now for RV techniques. The standard “deep” approach was this:
*Trance—The RVer would prepare herself mentally for a session. This usually involved a period of meditation or yoga or simply relaxation in a quiet, soundproof room, sometimes combined with visualization exercises such as locking all of one’s normal cares and concerns in a suitcase and putting the suitcase in a closet. Most RVers thus entered a trance (non-ordinary state of consciousness); some actually became almost somnabulistic, speaking as though in a dream.
*Target—the experimenter, in a monitoring room, would insert into a sealed envelope a photograph or other information about the target to be viewed. The RVer would concentrate on either the envelope itself or a coded number written on it.
*Viewing—The RVer would then say whatever came to mind—usually visual images, kinesthetic sensings, intuitions. The monitor would record these.
*Verification—After the session, which might last an hour or so, the RVer and the monitor would open the envelope and compare the target with what was “seen”. Sometimes experimenters ran multiple sessions and/or multiple RVers against the same target. Often the contents of the envelope were unknown to the experimenter as well as to the RVer.
In a less trancy technique, the RVer would sit at a table with the target envelope, pencils and a pad of paper. He would then write or sketch whatever he saw or sensed, building up impressions into a coherent picture. One prominent RVer (Ingo Swann) developed this into an elaborate, multi-stage technique, the most important element of which was designed to prevent the RVer from jumping to conclusions. Swann had observed that Left-Hemisphere interpretations of the data often interfered with the data themselves, generated by the Right Hemisphere. For example, the visual image of an arc might be quickly interpreted (by the Left Hemisphere) as a dome, and thus shape (and perhaps vitiate) the balance of the viewing, whereas the true image might have been McDonalds’ golden arches. Unfortunately, Swann was dogmatic about his highly structured approach, which worked better for some viewers than for others.
Remote Viewers is a very readable, interesting and credible book. Highly recommended for anyone interested in psi phenomena.
Several things are clear:
*It’s for Real. There’s no question that some people some of the time can “view” places, events and/or people remotely—in the past (retrocognition) and in the future (precognition) as well as in the present.
*Many People Can Do It. As with any other talent, some folks are particularly adept at remote viewing, but apparently many people can be trained to do it at least fairly well. Talent is probably distributed along the usual bell-shaped curve. The most talented often have the following traits: intuitive, emotionally sensitive, intelligent, easy to hypnotize.
*Different Targets for Different Folks. Even among the most talented RVers, some are better at viewing one class of phenomena than another: for example, some are strong on people, others on places, others on events.
*Everybody Has Bad Days. Like athletes or artists, even the best remote viewers have bad days—days when they’re just not on. The worst have more bad days than good days.
*Many Ways to See the Cat. There are many different techniques for remote viewing; for some a highly structured approach works best, for others a more loosey-goosey approach.
*Signal-to-Noise Problem. The question for intelligence work is whether RV can ever become sufficiently reliable to be truly useful. The problem is separating the signal from the background noise. Since the RVers use their buzzy brains as receivers, it is hard to filter out the noise and even harder to know when it has been filtered it out, unless the information can be corroborated by another source.
*No Clue How It Works. Remote viewing works, but no one has a clue how it works. It defies the conventional laws of physics; presumably it will take some radical new paradigm, such as the “holographic universe,” to explain it.
Now for some randomly-selected examples of RV in action:
*The Vanishing Driver—One of the most talented RVers was asked to track a man in a foreign country, describing his whereabouts every 12 hours or so. In one session the RVer described the man, the car he was driving, the road, the surrounding hills—then drew a blank. “The guy’s going somewhere I can’t go,” he said. “It’s like I was looking at his picture and the picture turned sideways.” The RVer was later informed by the client that, at precisely the moment of viewing, the target had lost control of his car on a winding road in Italy and plunged over a cliff to his death.
*It Moves—Two skeptical guys from the CIA decided to test an RVer before deciding whether to fund an RV program. Not trusting the people at SRI (the think tank doing RV experiments), the CIA men brought their own target and personally locked it in the experiment box. The RVer said, “I see something small, brown, and irregular, sort of like a leaf, or something that resembles it, except that it seems very much alive, like it’s even moving!” The target? A large moth—brownish, leaflike, and alive.
*Soviet Bomber—A Soviet Tupolev bomber crashed in the jungles of Zaire. The CIA wanted to find it before the Soviets did so they could swipe its technology. Thinking they knew roughly where it was, they quickly organized a search party. Meanwhile, an RVer back in the U.S. was asked to locate the missing jet. The viewer saw the tail of the bomber sticking out of a river. But where? Pressed for coordinates, she viewed again and specified them—far from the expected area. The search party found it where she said—in a river with its tail sticking out of the water. President Carter was amazed when informed how they’d found it so fast.
*Swinging Target—SRI experimenters wanted to see how well a viewer would do against a moving target. One of them wrote down three numbers, stuck them in his shirt pocket, and then went up in a glider. The RVer was supposed to “see” the numbers while the glider flew. The glider flew for awhile and then landed. The RVer had written down the correct numbers, all right, but said that every time he had “seen” them he’d started feeling queasy. Some shape seemed to be swinging in front of the numbers—something like an Egyptian ankh. “You mean this?” asked the experimenter, revealing a silver ankh that dangled from a chain around his neck.
*Soviet Spheres—An RVer was asked to “see” what was inside a secret Soviet facility identified by spy satellites. First, before examining the photographs, he identified in great detail a large crane standing outside the facility—this was verified by the photos. Inside, he saw segments of huge cylinders (about 60 feet in diameter), and he saw that the Soviets were having trouble welding these segments together, and were in fact trying to develop a new process to do so. Later, when the Soviets moved the cylinders, the U.S. verified their existence, and also discovered that the Soviets had indeed developed a new flux-welding technique to join the segments. This is one remote viewing that could not possibly have been faked. The RVer had “seen” the massive cylinders before anyone in the United States knew they existed.
The book presents many other striking examples.
But now for RV techniques. The standard “deep” approach was this:
*Trance—The RVer would prepare herself mentally for a session. This usually involved a period of meditation or yoga or simply relaxation in a quiet, soundproof room, sometimes combined with visualization exercises such as locking all of one’s normal cares and concerns in a suitcase and putting the suitcase in a closet. Most RVers thus entered a trance (non-ordinary state of consciousness); some actually became almost somnabulistic, speaking as though in a dream.
*Target—the experimenter, in a monitoring room, would insert into a sealed envelope a photograph or other information about the target to be viewed. The RVer would concentrate on either the envelope itself or a coded number written on it.
*Viewing—The RVer would then say whatever came to mind—usually visual images, kinesthetic sensings, intuitions. The monitor would record these.
*Verification—After the session, which might last an hour or so, the RVer and the monitor would open the envelope and compare the target with what was “seen”. Sometimes experimenters ran multiple sessions and/or multiple RVers against the same target. Often the contents of the envelope were unknown to the experimenter as well as to the RVer.
In a less trancy technique, the RVer would sit at a table with the target envelope, pencils and a pad of paper. He would then write or sketch whatever he saw or sensed, building up impressions into a coherent picture. One prominent RVer (Ingo Swann) developed this into an elaborate, multi-stage technique, the most important element of which was designed to prevent the RVer from jumping to conclusions. Swann had observed that Left-Hemisphere interpretations of the data often interfered with the data themselves, generated by the Right Hemisphere. For example, the visual image of an arc might be quickly interpreted (by the Left Hemisphere) as a dome, and thus shape (and perhaps vitiate) the balance of the viewing, whereas the true image might have been McDonalds’ golden arches. Unfortunately, Swann was dogmatic about his highly structured approach, which worked better for some viewers than for others.
Remote Viewers is a very readable, interesting and credible book. Highly recommended for anyone interested in psi phenomena.
July 10, 2017
What an interesting read. Loved this book. Amazing when people say there is no such thing as ESP. This book along with his documentary were wonderful glimpse into the USA's secret ESP spy program of the remote viewers! Most of the characters have gone on to write their own books, a couple of characters seemed to have veered off the deep end, but not unusual considering what they were doing.
October 23, 2023
An excellent overview of the subject. In fact, I'd even call it a must-read for anyone interested in the subject, up there with McMoneagle's Memoirs and Jacobsen's Phenomenon.
October 25, 2011
In the late 1970s through the 1980s the UNITED STATES MILITARY experimented with possible applications for the use of weaponized telepathy. "Remote viewing" as it is called, is the practice of lulling one's self in to a trance and expanding one's consciousness towards a "target site". The images of the remote viewer are recorded as key words and automatic writing. More often than was impossible the results of these sessions were proven to be accurate (to a degree; human error) and even HELPFUL to operations conducted by the US Military in finding lost resources (a stolen tank, a downed helicopter). When the Republicans wrestled control away from the Democrats in Congress the task force (right word?) Grill Flame was deemed to have no useful military applications and a drain on resources. AS FAR AS WE KNOW, the military arm of psychic warfare was shut down in the late 1980s, early 1990s.
How anyone could read that paragraph and not instantly be sucked in to affairs of the psychic realm is beyond me.
Many of these psi-operatives still exist (and were even the inspiration for the movie MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS) and you can begin your own research in to the monetization of higher consciousness right here, http://www.whale.to/b/grillflame.html
How anyone could read that paragraph and not instantly be sucked in to affairs of the psychic realm is beyond me.
Many of these psi-operatives still exist (and were even the inspiration for the movie MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS) and you can begin your own research in to the monetization of higher consciousness right here, http://www.whale.to/b/grillflame.html
January 7, 2016
This is a pretty interesting and entertaining novel. The author was objective for the most part which often isn't the case with subjects as controversial as this. Along with recollections of psychic "successes" are anecdotes of amusing and embarrassing misfires.
stalled
November 3, 2009Engaging, but don't have time to fully dive into the copy I got from ILL. Will have to find it used.
February 19, 2019
One of the best and most rigorously sourced journalistic books on the US government’s remote viewing program. At the time this was published, most of the operational records were still classified. More have been declassified, making remote viewing the single most heavily scientifically verified on multiple levels of all “paranormal” activity or anomalous cognition.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews