Remote Viewing: The CIA's Twenty-Year Bet
Of everything in this course, this is the one with the strangest paper trail: a US government intelligence agency spent roughly two decades and around $20 million funding exactly the kind of thing this course is about, then commissioned two independent experts to review it — who read the same data and reached genuinely different conclusions.
Where It Comes From
In 1972, physicist Harold Puthoff began classified parapsychology research at Stanford Research Institute (SRI); Russell Targ joined him shortly after. Together they coined the term "remote viewing." The basic protocol: a viewer, isolated from the target, tries to describe a location or object being visited in real time by another team member, while independent judges — not told which description belongs to which target — try to blind-match transcripts to the correct target among several decoys. SRI research subject Ingo Swann is credited with shaping a more formalized version of the protocol later used in military training.
The CIA's sponsorship ran under several successive names — SCANATE, Grill Flame, Center Lane, Sun Streak, and finally Star Gate — from 1972 until 1995: roughly two decades, and roughly $20 million, though sources only ever round these figures rather than giving one exact total. The program was publicly declassified in 1995 and shut down that same year.
What The Evaluators Actually Concluded
Before shutting it down, the CIA commissioned the American Institutes for Research (AIR) to review the accumulated data. Two named reviewers examined the same underlying studies and reached different readings:
Jessica Utts, a statistician, concluded: "Using the standards applied to any other area of science, it is concluded that psychic functioning has been well established," and that "the statistical results of the studies examined are far beyond what is expected by chance."
Ray Hyman, a psychologist, was more cautious. He conceded the results weren't simply the product of the methodological flaws that had plagued earlier parapsychology research — but wrote that "it is unclear whether the observed effects can unambiguously be attributed to the paranormal ability of the remote viewers as opposed to characteristics of the judges or of the target," and called Utts' "proven" framing premature given the lack of independent replication and no plausible mechanism.
What both reviewers agreed on, regardless of the statistical dispute, is the line that actually decided the program's fate: "Continued use of remote viewing in intelligence gathering operations is not warranted." Whatever was or wasn't happening statistically, it had no demonstrated operational value.
Separately, skeptics David Marks and Richard Kammann argued the original SRI transcripts contained inadvertent cues that let judges match them to targets without any paranormal component at all — the same "not as blind as claimed" critique that comes up across this entire field. No remote viewer has yet passed a rigorously controlled open challenge, such as the JREF's Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge.
WHY THIS MATTERS FOR US
This is the same core lesson as the telepathy chapter, from an entirely different, much better-funded angle: even a two-decade, government-funded research program couldn't settle whether the underlying statistics reflect something real, once blinding and independent replication are taken seriously. That's worth remembering before treating any single striking session as proof of anything.
Try It Yourself
A simple honest version: one person hides a simple drawn image out of sight. A second person, with no contact, tries to sketch what they think it is. A third person, who never saw the original, then tries to match the sketch to the real image among three decoys — without being told which one is real. Run it enough times to see whether the match rate beats a plain guess.
References & Resources
Utts, J. & Hyman, R. (1995). Reviews submitted to the American Institutes for Research evaluation of the CIA's Star Gate program — the primary source for both quoted positions above.
Marks, D. & Kammann, R. Critique of SRI's original remote-viewing transcripts and judging protocol.