Thursday, April 03, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

Psychic warfare

By George Knapp

The last time the U.S. military was trying to paint a bullseye on Saddam Hussein's surly mug, during the Gulf War, intelligence officials quietly turned to a secret panel of "psychics" for information about his whereabouts. History suggests the psychic spies weren't successful in helping to pinpoint the Iraqi dictator--he is still alive, after all, or was until recently--but the fact that the Pentagon would rely on psychics at all during wartime suggests people in high places give some credence to the potential power of mental abilities.

"Is it real? The answer is yes. Does it work 100 percent of the time? The answer is no," says Col. John Alexander, a retired Army intelligence officer now living in Las Vegas. "We've had some spectacular hits and some spectacular misses."

Alexander should know. He was involved in the Army's psychic research program dating to the early '80s, and he co-authored The Warrior's Edge, a book about government research into psychokinesis and "remote viewing." Overall, the U.S. government spent nearly 30 years and tens of millions of dollars trying to unlock psychic secrets, spurred in part by the perception that America was well behind the Soviets in psychic research.

"We used remote viewers to try and locate Saddam during Desert Storm," Alexander says. "The problem for 'the unit' was that Saddam moved around so much, staying in a different place every night, slipping around Baghdad in Winnebagos or whatever. And there is a time lag involved, so even though remote viewers might find out where Saddam was hiding at a given moment, he would likely be gone by the time we targeted that location with cruise missiles."

According to published reports, remote viewers had more success during Desert Storm in helping to locate hidden Scud missiles, as well as stashes of chemical and biological weapons. The same psychic technique had been used years earlier in U.S. attempts to bomb Libyan dictator Muammar Khadafy, who narrowly escaped being blown to bits. Remote viewers have also successfully tracked Russian submarines, kept tabs on Soviet nuclear missiles and leaders, were right on the money in locating the American hostages in Iran, and have achieved other successes, many of which remain classified.

"A Soviet spy plane filled with sensitive electronics crashed in South Africa, and no one knew exactly where it was," Alexander recalls. "Using remote viewing, we were able to narrow it down and put a search team within 100 meters of the crash. We ended up beating the Russians to their own plane."

Essentially, remote viewing is the projection of human consciousness through space and time, allowing for access to information that may be unavailable by any other means. Some remote viewers claim to be able to travel into the past or future, and can traverse vast distances and penetrate any walls or defenses. A few have claimed accuracy rates of 80 percent or higher.

The first serious studies of the technique were conducted in secrecy in the '70s. Discreet contractors such as Stanford Research Institute and Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC) found that the ability is real and that, with training, remote viewers can accomplish what would seem impossible. Based on the Stanford Research Institute studies, the Army started its own remote viewing program, and in the years since RV teams have assisted the FBI, DEA, DOE and numerous other alphabet agencies, with varying degrees of success.

In the mid-'90s, the CIA's interest in remote viewing became public knowledge. The agency responded by distancing itself from a technique it had funded for 20 years, suggesting to congressional budget overseers and the public that remote viewing really wasn't very reliable. In the face of a publicity furor, the Army ended its program.

"There was an embarrassment factor within the CIA , and this was damage control," says remote viewer Angela Thompson Smith. "But if you talk to key players in the field, they'll tell you the program had been declining for years. Management didn't want to manage it, and people were leaving to enter the private sector, writing books and starting up companies."

Thompson Smith learned remote viewing from a disciple of Ingo Swann, the gifted psychic who is most responsible for the development of RV. She's written a book about the technique, Remote Perceptions, and recently opened a school for remote viewing in Boulder City. Students are taught the basics in Smith's home office, then quickly get started giving it a try.

Ed Taupin, a local writer and software engineer, took the class. His first RV target was New York's Central Park, although the target information wasn't revealed to him until after the experiment. Beforehand, the only information he was given was a series of random numbers and symbols, representing the coordinates of the target.

"By the second session, I was amazed. I felt I was at Central Park and was able to describe it right down to the tiniest details," Taupuin says. "Now, my wife and I practice our abilities by picking an address out of the phone book, then seeing if we can accurately describe what the place looks like. We remote view the place, then go over and take pictures of it to see if we got it right. My wife has been so accurate that she was able to correctly identify a word that was written on one building."

Thompson Smith, who earned her doctorate in psychology, says the scientists who've studied remote viewing think it works by tapping into something akin to a gigantic universal database. She contends that everyone has the ability to remote view to some extent but says it requires training and practice. She notes that several commercial RV operations have opened around the country, along with perhaps two dozens schools, including her own.

Col. Alexander agrees that everyone has some ability to remote view, but he cautions against blanket acceptance of the claims of some RV practitioners. "The skills are universal, " Alexander says. "But it's kind of like photography. Everyone can take pictures, but not everyone is photographer."

Remote viewing instructor Angela Smith Thompson can be reached at 293-2696 or CATALYST@peoplepc.com. Interested folks can also check out the website of the International Remote Viewing Association.