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PSI OPERATIONAL CAPABILITY
Introduction
Since the DoD became involved with supporting psi research in 19^, a large num-
ber of attempts have been made to apply remote viewing to solve intelligence problems.
The DIA has regularly tasked SRI to gather information on real events that were of intel-
ligence interest.
The Army has had an “operational unit”
at Fort Meade since
.
They received many requests for intelligence information and responded to many and
varied customers.
All of this has been done without any attention being placed on the
problem of how do you go from a research program to an operational capability?
Until
this
is investigated, we should not expect huge successes on operational tasks. A prime
example of the difficulty you encounter
is that many of the operational tasks required
search remote viewing (where
is the object) while
all of the research was on site remote
viewing (what
is at this location)
The purpose of this paper
is to look at the problems of going from an R&D
program to operations and to suggest solutions to the problems.
In addition a structure
for doing operational remote viewing will be included in this paper.
Pitfalls
The principle pitfall of doing operational remote viewing the way
it
is currently done
is that we present a facade of a capability that we do not have. We are then judged, by
the customer, on this basis.
Never
is
it explained that we are responding due to the ur-
gence of the situation (Beirut hostages) and that we are not claiming to have a proven,
in
place operational capability.
In addition when we attempt to apply psi abilities there
is often not enough research
to support our efforts.
For instance, the Army puts their remote viewers through a train-
ing program and then calls them operational remote viewers.
However, they have no
^conrr
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evidence that the training program accomplishes what
it claims.
They also train their
operational viewers, in-house.
They provide this training without conducting any research
on the numerous and varied aspects of psi ability or training techniques.
Existing Problems
At present there are two groups who do operational remote viewing.
They will be
discussed individually as their problems are unique.
The
first group
is a rather diffuse unit.
It consists of a variety of people who are
associated with SRI.
It includes consultants, sub-contractors and people with good per-
formance records in remote viewing.
The problems are that they are widely scattered
(coast to coast), they may not be available,
it requires time to assemble them (time
is
often very critical) and there
is no facility in which to work.
So what happens
is we
scurry around, pull in whoever we can as fast as we can and present the problem.
If
maps or documents are needed, they may or may not be available.
In addition, funds to
mount an operational effort must be taken from other tasks.
In summary, this group
is
not a group standing by to do operational remote viewing and SRI is not set up to ac-
quire intelligence information.
This
is
all thrown together using whatever resources are
available whenever a problem arises.
This
is certainly admirable on the part of both SRI
and the various remote viewers but
it
is not the best way to acquire accurate data through
application of remote viewing.
The second operational group
is the unit at Ft. Meade.
It consists of Army person-
nel who were selected and trained to do remote viewing.
Their problems are that no
selection criteria were available and they were submitted to an unevaluated training
program which was completed by only one member who has now left the unit.
Whereas
the SRI group
is managed by scientists with extensive experience in understanding and
researching psi phenomena, the Army group has no one associated with
it who has any
understanding of psi phenomena or experience in researching or utilizing remote viewing.
Since they are unaware of what can or cannot be done they over sell their capability and
attempt any problem presented to them by customers.
They also have no method by
which to evaluate what they have done and therefore are not in a position to direct ap-
plications research.
While they have mounds of data
it has not been synthesized in a
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WORKING PAPERS
manner that can depict their success or failure in the mission they are charter to per-
form.
Essentially what you have
is a group of amateurs, led by another amateur and
being trained by yet another amateur.
Success in any science
is rarely achieved by an
amateur, hence
it
is not surprising that the results produced by their group have not been
astounding.
In Place
To have a successful operational unit several research problems must be solved.
First, you must be able to select a few individuals from a large population who possess an
aptitude for performing psi tasks.
After being selected they must be trained to sharpen
their abilities in a tested and proved training program.
Then, a way of extracting infor-
mation from the remote viewer and a way of presenting the data to an analyst must be
developed. A method of evaluating and storing data also must be researched before an
operational capability exist.
Until now the term remote viewing has included several skills.
The one receiving
the greatest amount of research time
is coordinate remote viewing and this form of
remote viewing
is well understood.
However, there exists a number of ways to target a
remote viewer, beacons, photographs, abstract,
etc.
Much remains to be known about
these alternate ways of targeting a remote viewer.
Also, as mentioned previously, the
search form of remote viewing
is just now beginning to be understood.
To summarize, we now receive a task,
give
it to whatever remote viewers are avail-
able and then hand the data to whichever viewers are available, then hand the viewers
data to the analysts and consider the job done. A system
I would propose would require
a series of decisions be made on the basis of research findings.
A flow chart for operational remote viewing
is included in Figure
1.
The most
criti-
cal element
is whether a requirement
is accepted.
Remote viewing has in the past been
touted as the answer to any and every problem.
It
is not true.
There are many
problems where much better methods exist.
There are also areas where we know that
remote viewing has
little hope of succeeding.
These need to be recognized and not at-
tempted.
Another important decision
is which remote viewers should be given a par-
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