But, it also became more than that.
I discovered, in digging through my past, nuggets of understanding for an entire process in my development. Being psychic, and especially a remote viewer, is a long-term growth process. The "gifts" someone is endowed with are derived from the essence of the soil—the person—in which the elements have been planted. It involves the kinds of fertilizer—or lack thereof—that encourage growth or stunts its process at critical points in development. It points to survival at a basic or possibly subliminal level as a necessary ingredient, and points out the very clear necessity that a person submit at times, not to logic, not to reasonable expectation, but to something even more primal that comes from somewhere deep within.
The journey hasn't been an easy one, as should be evident from the content herein. Certainly the path was never clearly marked. No signs said that my inner voice was more correct one minute than the next, and sometimes the feedback did not arrive before the next decision point. At times I wasn't even sure I was still on the path I had chosen. Even so, this journey has occupied my every moment for nearly two and a half decades, and, unconsciously, since birth.
I have now written it down to the best of my recall, in the hope that it may prove of value to those who follow. I've walked this jungle. Others on their own paths are facing the same kinds of threats and confusion in the tangled undergrowth one finds beneath a triple canopy of trees. Even in daylight, shadows shift, and it's difficult to spot the mines. I related my own experiences, the way my own mind has developed, birthed out of my experiences and exposure to the paranormal. It is the way that seems to work for me. I fervently hope that it will be of value to others.
Had I been asked if I was psychic, or thought that I could perform under the rigors of remote viewing, prior to the latter part of 1978, I would have said no. Like most humans, I believed, in spite of many experiences, that I was "normal," which dictates that psychic functioning does not occur. Can not occur. It's automatically thought to be a violation of reality, or how we understand reality to work. And if you can't be psychic, you most certainly can't do remote viewing.
But if that's true, then how was I hooked? Where and when did the conversion of a no-nonsense, fairly hardened career soldier take place?
Is it possible I was psychic all along? That I was supposed to be a remote viewer? Or did I learn how to be psychic? Did it occur over a long period of time, one change stacked atop another, or was it akin to being electrocuted—suddenly struck—as though by lightning?
And, as if these questions weren't hard enough, more suggest themselves.
Aren't some things a military remote viewer may be required to do morally objectionable? Can someone be psychic, be a remote viewer, when the very actions in which they participate are offensive or, at best, amoral?
Should we assume that someone who demonstrates a higherthan-expected level of functioning as a psychic and remote viewer represents what is "best" within the human race—that somehow such a person represents what we should strive for in human growth and understanding?
Should we place such people on a pedestal?
Should we always expect more from someone like that?
On the other hand, does admitting that one is psychic and a remote viewer demonstrate mental instability or self-delusion? Are some psychics crazy and some sane? Does one walk a fine line between the two, as though in a gray haze, somewhere between those who appear rational but maybe aren't and those who are solid through and through?
As a psychic and remote viewer, how do you know when you are slipping from sanity into insanity? Who do you go to to find out whether you are deluding yourself? Do you seek out another psychic? A friend? A scientist?
Are all scientists open-minded? Can't a scientist be deluded as well?
In the end, as in the beginning, we are left with questions.
Appendix A
Parapsychology in Intelligence: A Personal Review and Conclusions
Winter Issue-1977, Studies in Intelligence, an internal newsletter published within the Central Intelligence Agency. By Kenneth A. Kress, Ph.D., a senior analyst charged with reviewing the paranormal effort taking place at SRI-International on behalf of the CIA in the early 1970s, using psychics as spies against the Soviet Union.
Parapsychology in Intelligence
A PERSONAL REVIEW AND CONCLUSIONS
—Dr. Kenneth A. Kress
The Central Intelligence Agency has investigated the controversial phenomenon called parapsychology as it relates to intelligence collection. The author was involved with many aspects of the last of such investigations. This paper summarizes selected highlights of the experiences of the author and others. The intent is not historical completeness. Files are available for those interested in details. Instead the intent is to record some certainly interesting and possibly useful data and opinions. This record is likely to be of future benefit to those who will be required to evaluate intelligence-related aspects of parapsychology.
The Agency took the initiative by sponsoring serious parapsychological research, but circumstances, biases, and fear of ridicule prevented CIA from completing a scientific investigation of parapsychology and its relevance to national security. During this research period, CIA was buffeted with investigations concerning illegalities and improprieties of all sorts. This situation, perhaps properly so, raised the sensitivity of CIA's involvement in unusual activities. The "Proxmire Effect," where the fear that certain Government research contracts would be claimed to be ill-founded and held up for scorn, was another factor precluding CIA from sensitive areas of research.
Also, there tend to be two types of reactions to parapsychology: positive or negative, with little in between. Parapsychological data, almost by definition, are elusive and unexplained. Add a history replete with proven frauds and many people instantly reject the subject, saying, in effect, "I would not believe this stuff even if it were true." Others, who must have had personal "conversion" experiences, tend to be equally convinced that one unexplained success establishes a phenomenon. These prejudices make it difficult to evaluate parapsychology carefully and scientifically.
Tantalizing but incomplete data have been generated by CIA-sponsored research. These data show, among other things, that on occasion unexplained results of genuine intelligence significance occur. This is not to say that parapsychology is a proven intelligence tool; it is to say that the evaluation is not yet complete and more research is needed.
Attention is confined to psychokinetics and remote viewing. Psychokinetics is the purported ability of a person to interact with a machine or other object by unexplained means. Remote viewing is akin to clairvoyance in that a person claims to sense information about a site or person removed from a known sensory link.
Anecdotal reports of extrasensory perception (ESP) capabilities have reached U.S. national security agencies at least since World War II, when Hitler was said to rely on astrologers and seers. Suggestions for military applications of ESP continued to be received after World War II. For example, in 1952 the Department of Defense was lectured on the possible usefulness of extrasensory perception in psychological warfare.xix Over the years, reports continued to accumulate.
In 1961, the reports induced one of the earliest U.S. government parapsychology investigations when the chief of CIA's Office of Technical Service (then the Technical Services Division) became interested in the claims of ESP. Technical Project Officers soon contacted Stephen I. Abrams, the Director of the Parapsychological Laboratory, Oxford University, England. Under the auspices of Project ULTRA, Abrams prepared a review article, which claimed ESP was demonstrated but not understood or controllable."xx The report was read with interest but produced no further action for another decade.
Two laser physicists, Dr. Russell Targ and Dr. Harold E. Puthoff, reawakened CIA research in parapsychology. Targ had been avocationally interested in parapsychology for most of his adult life. As an experimentalist, he was interested in scientific observa
tions of parapsychology. Puthoff became interested in the field in the early 1970s. He was a theoretician who was exploring new fields of research after extensive work in quantum electronics.
In April of 1972, Targ met with CIA personnel from the Office of Strategic Intelligence (OSI) and discussed the subject of paranormal abilities. Targ revealed that he had contacts with people who purported to have seen and documented some Soviet investigations of psychokinesis. Films of Soviets moving inanimate objects by "mental powers" were made available to analysts from OSI. They, in turn, contacted personnel from the Office of Research and Development (ORD) and OTS. An ORD Project Officer then visited Targ who had recently joined the Stanford Research Institute (SRI). Targ proposed that some psychokinetic verification investigations could be done at SRI in conjunction with Puthoff.
These proposals were quickly followed by a laboratory demonstration. A man was found by Targ and Puthoff who apparently had psychokinetic abilities. He was taken on a surprise visit to a superconducting shielded magnetometer being used in quark (high energy particle) experiments by Dr. A. Hebbard of Stanford University Physics Department. The quark experiment required that the magnetometer be as well shielded as technology would allow Nevertheless, when the subject placed his attention on the interior of the magnetometer, the output signal was visibly disturbed, indicating a change in the internal magnetic field. Several other correlations of his mental efforts with signal variations were observed. These variations were never seen before or after the visit. The event was summarized and transmitted to the Agency in the form of a letter to an OS! Analystxxi and as discussions with OTS and ORD officers.
The Office of Technical Services took the first action. With the approval of the same manager who supported the ESP studies a decade previously, an OTS Project Officer contracted for a demonstration with the previously mentioned man for a few days in August, 1972. During this demonstration, the subject was asked to describe objects hidden out of sight by the CIA personnel. The subject did well. The descriptions were so startlingly accurate that the OTD and ORD representatives suggested that the work be continued and expanded. The same Director of OTS reviewed the data, approved another $2,500 work order, and encouraged the development of a more complete research plan.
By October, 1972, I was the Project Officer. I was chosen because of my physics background to work with the physicists from SRI. The Office of Technical Service funded a $50,000 expanded effort in parapsychology.21 The expanded investigation included tests of several abilities of both the original subject and a new one. Curious data began to appear; the paranormal abilities seemed individualistic. For example, one subject, by mental effort, apparently caused an increase in the temperature measured by a thermistor; the action could not be duplicated by the second subject. The second subject was able to reproduce, with impressive accuracy, information inside sealed envelopes. Under identical conditions, the first subject could reproduce nothing. Perhaps even more disturbing, repeating the same experiment with the same subject did not yield consistent results. I began to have serious feelings of being involved with a fraud.
Approximately halfway through this project, the SRI contractors were invited to review their results. After careful consideration of the security and sensitivity factors, the results were shared and discussed with selected Agency personnel during that and subsequent meetings. In February, 1973, the most recent data were reviewed; thereafter, several ORD officers showed definite interest in contributing their own expertise and office funding.
The possibility of a joint OTS/ORD program continued to develop. The Office of Research and Development sent new Project Officers to SRI during February 1973, and the reports that were brought back convinced ORD to become involved. Interest was translated into action when ORD requested an increase in the scope of the effort and transferred funds to OTS.xxii About this time, a third sensitive subject, Pat Price, became available at SRI, and the remote viewing experiments in which a subject describes his impressions of remote objects or locations began in earnest. The possibility that such useful abilities were real motivated all concerned to move ahead quickly.
The contract required additional management review before it could be continued or its scope increased. The initial review went from OTS and ORD to Mr. William Colby, then the DDO. On 24 April, Mr. Colby decided that the Executive Management Committee should pass judgment on this potentially sensitive project. By the middle of May, 1973, the approval request went through the Management Committee. An approval memorandum was written for the signature of the DCI, then Dr. James Schlesinger.xxiii Mr. Colby took the memorandum to the DCI a few days later. I was soon told not to increase the scope of the project and not to anticipate any follow-on in this area. The project was too sensitive and potentially embarrassing. It should be tabled. It is interesting to note that OTS was then being investigated for involvement in the Watergate affair, and that in May 1973, the DCI issued a memorandum to all CIA employees requesting the reporting of any activities that may have been illegal and improper. As Project Officer, clearly my sense of timing had not been guided by useful paranormal abilities!
During the summer of 1973, SRI continued working informally with an OSI officer on a remote viewing experiment which eventually stimulated more CIA-sponsored investigations of parapsychology. The target was a vacation property in the eastern United States. The experiment began with the passing of nothing more than the geographic coordinates of the vacation property to the SRI physicists who, in turn, passed them to the two subjects, one of whom was Pat Price. No maps were permitted, and the subjects were asked to give an immediate response of what they remotely viewed at these coordinates. The subject came back with descriptions, which were apparent misses. They both talked about a military-like facility. Nevertheless, a striking correlation of the two independent descriptions was noted. The correlation caused the OSI officer to drive to the site and investigate in more detail.
To the surprise of the OSI officer, he soon discovered a sensitive government installation a few miles from the vacation property. This discovery led to a request to have Price provide information concerning the interior workings of this particular site. All the data produced by the two subjects were reviewed in CIA and the Agency concerned.
The evaluation was, as usual, mixed.xxiv Pat Price, who had no military or intelligence background, provided a list of project titles associated with current and past activities including one of extreme sensitivity. Also, the codename of the site was provided. Other information concerning the physical layout of the site was accurate. Some information, such as the names of the people at the site, proved incorrect.
These experiments took several months to be analyzed and reviewed within the Agency. Now Mr. Colby was DCI, and the new directors of OTS and ORD were favorably impressed by the data. In the fall of 1973, a Statement of Work was outlined, and SRI was asked to propose another program. A jointly funded ORD and OTS program was begun in February 1974.xxv The author again was the Project Officer. The project proceeded on the premise that the phenomena existed; the objective was to develop and utilize them.
The ORD funds were devoted to basic studies such as the identification of measurable physiological or psychological characteristics of psychic individuals, and the establishment of experimental protocols for validating paranormal abilities. The OTS funds were to evaluate the operational utility of psychic subjects without regard to the detailed understanding of paranormal functioning. If the paranormal functioning was sufficiently reproducible, we were confident applications would be found.
Before many months had passed, difficulties developed in the project. Our tasking in the basic research area proved to be more extensive than time and funds would allow. The contractors wanted to compromise by doing all of the tasks with less completeness. The ORD scientists insisted that with such a controversial topic, fewer but more rigorous results would be of more value. The rigor of the research became a serious issue between the ORD Project Officers and SR
I, with myself generally taking a position between the righteousness of the contractor and indignation of the researchers. Several meetings occurred over that issue.
As an example of the kinds of disputes, which developed over the basic research, consider the evaluation of the significance of data from the "ESP teaching machine" experiments. This machine was a four-state electronic random number generator used to test for paranormal abilities. SRI claimed the machine randomly cycled through four states, and the subject indicates the current machine state by pressing a button. The state of the machine and the subject's choice were recorded for later analysis. A subject "guessing" should, on the average, be correct 25 percent of the time. SRI had a subject who averaged a statistically very significant 29 percent for more than 2,500 trials.
I requested a review of the experiment and analysis, and two ORD officers quickly and skeptically responded. They first argued that the ESP machine was possibly not random. They further argued the subjects probably learned the nonrandom machine patterns and thereby produced higher scores.xxvi During this review, it was noted that whether the machine was random or not, the data taken during the experiment could be analyzed to determine actual machine statistics. The machine's randomness was unimportant, because the subject's performance could then be compared with actual machine performance.xxvii The ORD Project Officers, however, did not believe it would be worth the effort to do the extra analysis of the actual data.
I disagreed. I had the Office of Joint Computer Services redo the data analysis. The conclusion was that during the experiment "no evidence of non-randomness was discovered" and there was "no solid reason how he was able to be so successful."xxviii I further ordered the subject retested. He averaged more than 28 percent during another 2,500 trials. This information was given in written and oral form to the ORD Project Officers, who maintained there must be yet another flaw in the experiment or analysis, but it was not worth finding. Because of more pressing demands, the issue could not be pursued to a more definite conclusion.
The Stargate Chronicles: Memoirs of a Psychic Spy Page 34
