If the painter wishes to see enchanting beauties, he has the power to produce them. If he wishes to see monstrosities, whether terrifying, or ludicrous and laughable, or pitiful, he has the power and authority to create them. Indeed, whatever exists in the universe, whether in essence, in act, or in the imagination, the painter has first in his mind and then in his hands." LEONARDO DA VINCI R E M O T E * V I E W I N G THE REAL STORY * The Discoveries The Political and Technical History The Rise and the Fall The Saga and the Soap Opera The Strange Circumstances * AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR by Ingo Swann (c) Copyright, Ingo Swann, 1996 All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Presented in Serialized form in the United States in the Internet and World Wide Web by the American Prophecy Project. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA The American Prophecy Project Swann, Ingo ISSN 1050-0537 DEDICATION This book is especially dedicated to those of the next century soon to be upon us, and who will at last open up and develop the superpowers of the human bio-mind. But it is also profoundly dedicated to those very many of the past who, in small and big ways, helped consolidate and open that particular doorway into the superpowers, that doorway called "remote viewing." But this book is also, and perhaps principally, dedicated to that astonishing timeless phenomenon called human memory -- but which perhaps might be called our species collective bio-mind memory, and in which the superpowers perpetually dwell. FORTHCOMING ADDITIONS Dr. H. E. Puthoff, former director of the Psychoenergetics Project at Stanford Research Institute, has agreed to provide an Introduction for this book. Major General Edmund R. Thompson, U.S.A. (Ret.), former Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence, U.S. Army 1977-1981, has agreed to provide a Foreword. The Introduction and Foreword will be introduced into the book when they are received. At some point ahead, as the serialization extends, a Table of Contents will be inserted. The production of this book is a rather momentous effort, and the effort to produce it has to be time- shared with the author's other necessary activities. And so it is anticipated that the Internet presentation of the Real Story will take over a year. AUTHOR'S PREFACE I had never planned to write this book. In the past there were compelling reasons not to do so. In any event, I thought someone else would eventually take a deep, serious interest and do THE book on remote viewing. Because the story of remote viewing is a substantial one from a number of viewpoints, I had anticipated that such a book would be a scholarly one, and would clarify all of the issues involved and render them understandable for historical purposes. * Most of the issues involved are straightforward ones when seen in their own contexts and times -- and which times began in 1971, after which the issues remained more or less straight-forward until about 1988. This was the seventeen-year period during which the elements of controlled remote viewing (CRV) were gradually separated out from a somewhat ambiguous morass of parapsychological phenomena, then refined until it was an entity of and within itself, complete with a novel nomenclature appropriate to it. * In its refined and developed state, its chief characteristics were twofold: - its gradual increase in scope, precision and accuracy; and - its closeness more to general human potential rather than to special things seen as psychic or parapsychological. When remote viewing was understood, even in its natural state in individuals, it was no longer ambiguous, but seen as a precise set of existing faculties against which the ambiguous term "psychic" was no longer useful. * After 1988, though, the year I retired from active research, what might be called the decomposition of remote viewing began to set in. Conceptual distortions began to occur, with the tendency to return the formerly strategic characteristics back into the ambiguous morass of parapsychological and psychic phenomena. * After about 1990, the decomposition proceeded at a rapid rate -- one reason being that the term "remote viewing" went public and was seized upon by many as a scientifically dignified replacement term for "psychic." Thereafter, just about anything could be called "remote viewing," just about anyone could call themselves a "psychic remote viewer" -- and ambiguity had once again been achieved. Back to square one, as it were. * Another reason for the decomposition was that the demand for precision and accuracy in which the intelligence community had invested its efforts was, in the public domain, not really necessary. As we will see later in the text, it was to be the scope and increase of accuracy which identified the original formats of remote viewing, and especially controlled remote viewing, and which accounted for the long duration of the intelligence community's effort. The authenticating of such high-stage accuracy could only be determined by adequate and long-term testing, record keeping, and equally long-term oversight processes and committees. * There do exist extremely gifted natural remote viewers, of course. It happened that I was one of them, and I know of four others. But in general the raw (so to speak) forms of remote viewing do not produce the high-stage accuracy absolutely mandatory for intelligence purposes -- and this was the case even regarding my own natural aptitudes at the start-up of the discovery and development phase. * In any event, there are a few things that cannot be ambiguous -- and remote viewing proficiency and accuracy are two of them. And so when, in the went-public stage, latter-day formats of "remote viewing" began detaching from TESTED, DEMONSTRATED and CONFIRMED proficiency and accuracy, the decomposition of remote viewing proceeded apace. * But even so, those latter-day formats served to bring about two essential and constructive effects. They served to bring the concepts of remote viewing to larger public attention. As to the second constructive effect, I, at least, am of the opinion that any work regarding remote viewing is better than none at all -- for all of it helps to shift the direction of human awareness toward the real existence of the superpowers of the human bio-mind. In the end, the absolute need for demonstrated and tested accuracy of any format of remote viewing will win the day. Remote viewing formats not up to this will disappear. * Nonetheless, the decomposition period entered many distortions into the public situation. And so it is part of the factual history of remote viewing to meet up with the details of this decomposition -- as we will do much later in the book under the general heading of "The Fall of Remote Viewing." * I suppose that most of the distortions might have been avoided, at least in an historical perspective, if someone as an insider had earlier produced a substantial book regarding the how and why of remote viewing. The public would then have had something by which to judge things. I was the most logical person to do this -- for although very many were strategically involved in remote viewing I was intimately familiar with the entire history of remote viewing. * However, the real story of remote viewing has always been encumbered with the secrecy which gradually surrounded it after 1972. The secrecy initially involved attempts to protect the identities of certain government agencies which involved themselves with remote viewing and with what was referred to as the Psi Warfare Gap during the Cold War era. * The secrecy was never really very good. * Various major media waves of the 1970s and early 1980s rather forthrightly exposed the players in such places as THE WASHINGTON POST and TIME magazine, etc. The arch-digger of secretive information, Jack Anderson, often appeared to be given deliberate and quite accurate leaks which he joyfully exposed in his syndicated columns. Many supposed that the leaks were engineered to frighten the Soviets and the KGB of the Cold War era with the fact that the United States was indeed developing competent "psychic spies." * In any event, if secrecy means totally black projects maintained completely invisible, the research and development of remote viewing and who sponsored it never enjoyed anything of the kind. Yet, the pall of secrecy overhung the real story of remote viewing, at least as far as its insiders were concerned, and so none of them wished to step forward. * As any secrecy specialist knows, secrecy can have unpredictable outcomes and clay feet. In the case of remote viewing, with the real story of it unavailable, the media and the public had nothing to judge against when latter-day distortions of its decomposition blazoned forth with media attention. It would then be natural to make the mistake of assuming that the distortions were factually representative not only of remote viewing itself, but of what the sponsors originally funded for research and development. * The concepts and story of remote viewing are now twenty-five years old. But that story is not just the story of remote viewing. It is also and more importantly so, the real story which has involved hundreds of people who worked to research and develop the concepts in good faith and because they were told that it was important for the security of the nation to do so. In their living memory, some of those were reasonably familiar with the whole story, others with important parts of it. It's surprising how many of those people are dead by now. And, after a while more, all those who possess the important living memory will also become absent.