The Wizards of Langley

by Jeffrey T Richelson

  Four years earlier, Puthoff had experienced a number of personal and professional changes. Separation from his wife, a visit to the Esalen Institute, and boredom with teaching in Stanford’s electrical engineering department had been followed by his moving over to SRI, which had close ties to Stanford University but was funded largely by government contracts. Puthoff joined SRI to assist with a laser-related project, but when funding dwindled, he sought permission from his boss and obtained $10,000 from the part-owner of a fried-chicken franchise to test for the existence of psychic abilities.73 Puthoff ’s turn toward fringe science was not exactly a radical departure. For several years, he had been an active member of the Church of Scientology, and he provided the church with a letter referring to Scientology as a “highly sophisticated and highly technological system more characteristic of the best of modern corporate planning and applied technology.” In addition, he wrote that he found Scientology “to be an uplifting and workable system of concepts which blend the best of Eastern and Western traditions.”74

  In April 1972, Targ met with personnel from the Office of Scientific Intelligence to discuss the subject of paranormal abilities, and stated that he knew individuals who claimed they witnessed Soviet research into psy-chokinesis—the alleged movement of objects using only a mind-generated force—and made films of such activities available to the CIA representatives. In turn, OSI contacted both the research and development and technical service offices, whose past research (including in the case of TSD, research into ESP) made them candidates to fund further investigation.75

  The first test subject was Ingo Swann, a New York artist who had been involved in psychic experiments at the City College of New York. In June 1972, Puthoff invited him to SRI to demonstrate his alleged abilities. For the first test, Swann was taken to a superconducting shielded magnetometer at Stanford University that was being used in quark experiments. According to accounts that accept the existence of psychic abilities, when Swann directed his attention to the interior of the magnetometer, there was a disturbance in its output signal, indicating a change in the internal magnetic field. In addition, other signal variations were observed in response to his mental efforts, variations never witnessed before or after his visit. A description of the events was transmitted in a letter to OSI and in discussions with OTS and ORD representatives.76

  TSD followed up by arranging for an experiment, costing less than $1,000, in which Swann was asked to describe objects hidden by TSD personnel—specifically, a live brown moth placed in a sealed box. Reportedly, Swann stated that “I see something small, brown, and irregular, sort of like a leaf, or something that resembles it, except that it seems very much alive, like it’s even moving!” The results led then TSD head Sidney Gottlieb to approve another $2,500 in funding and suggest development of a more detailed research agenda.77

  Just as was the case with the MKULTRA experiments, part of the interest was in determining what results the Soviets might be achieving in their work and how those results might be used in operations against the CIA and the United States. In July 1972, the Defense Intelligence Agency published one of what would be several studies dealing with Soviet bloc research in the parapsychology field. The study examined purported Soviet efforts with respect to ESP, pyschokinesis, astral projection, clairvoyance, and other reputed paranormal phenomena.78

  By October 1972, TSD authorized a $50,000 Biofield Measurements Program and appointed Kenneth Kress to monitor the activity. Over the next eight months, experiments progressed from attempts to “remote view” objects hidden in boxes to viewing sites in the San Francisco Bay area to which SRI employees had been sent as “beacons.” In February 1973, halfway through the contract, a review of the results led several ORD officers to favor contributing personnel and funding from their office. At about the same time, a third remote viewer, Pat Price, joined the project. Price was a small-building contractor, who had served as a local councilman in Burbank in the 1950s and briefly had been the town’s police commissioner. He had met Puthoff at a lecture in Los Angeles a few years earlier, and had run into Puthoff and Swann in late 1972 while he was selling Christmas trees.79

  In late April 1973, a management review involving OTS, ORD, and Executive Director William Colby allowed the project to continue, although Kress was told not to increase the scope of the project or anticipate any follow-on funding. There was a potential for significant embarrassment, and OTS already had enough problems—it was being investigated for possible involvement in Watergate.80 But this guidance did not prevent a somewhat different approach. Swann had suggested that instead of relying on a “beacon” individual at sites to be viewed (which certainly would not be feasible with regard to the sensitive Soviet and Chinese sites), the viewer be given geographic coordinates and asked to view the facility or activity at those coordinates. Such a procedure was dubbed Scanate—Scanning by coordinate.81

  That approach was a step in the direction McMahon wanted the effort to go—away from experimentation and toward application. He considered parapsychology an “extremely attractive” approach to intelligence collection and argued that standard intelligence sensors operated “in narrow bands.” Thus, there was reason to expect, in his view, that information in other bands could be obtained if “the right receiver” could be developed. OTS, however, was not in business to conduct pure research but rather to support the CIA’s clandestine operators.82

  In summer 1973, Puthoff asked an OSI official to give him “coordinates of a place I don’t know anything about” for him to pass on to the remote viewers. The official responded, “I’ll do you one better. I’ll get you the coordinates of some place even I don’t know about.” A colleague in the CIA provided the OSI official with a set of coordinates, without further explanation.83

  In late May, Ingo Swann sat at one end of a table in the SRI conference room, wrote down the coordinates read by Puthoff, and began his 3,000- mile psychic journey. After six minutes, he had produced an account that included rolling hills, a city to the north, lawns similar to the ones found at a military base, and a flagpole. He also spent an hour at home the following morning viewing the target, although the effort didn’t add much to his description.84

  On June 1, two days after Swann’s at-home viewing, Price was given the same coordinates as Swann. On June 4, Price’s report, dated June 2, of his viewing was received in the mail. The result was a more detailed account of the site, although one that was consistent with Swann’s report. Beyond descriptions of the terrain and the assertion that it was a former missile base, Price claimed that he saw an underground area used for record storage as well as to house computers, communication equipment, and large maps. He also saw personnel from the Army 5th Corps of Engineers and the Army Signal Corps.85

  Subsequently, he was asked to revisit the site and report on any information concerning code words stamped on documents at the site. According to Price, there was a file cabinet on one wall. The first two words on its label were “Operation Pool . . .” with the final word unclear. Files inside the cabinet were labeled CUEBALL, 14 BALL, 4 BALL, 8 BALL, and RACKUP. On the top of one desk were papers labeled FLYTRAP and MINERVA, and the code name associated with the site seemed to be HAYFORK or HAYSTACK. Price also came up with the names of personnel—a Colonel R. J. Hamilton, Major General George Nash, and possibly a Major John C. Calhoun.86

  The OSI officer took the information to the colleague who had provided him with the coordinates, who said that Swann and Price were not even close, that their reports were “bullshit”—the coordinates corresponded to his summer cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains. However, the OSI officer remained intrigued with the similarity of the descriptions and decided to find out if there was an installation near his friend’s retreat similar to that described by the two remote viewers.87

  Indeed, the OSI staffer discovered a huge facility at Sugar Grove, West Virginia. Nominally a U.S. Navy communications facility, it actually was a National Security Agency intercept site, with a va
riety of eavesdropping antennae, including a sixty-foot receiving dish for pulling in the traffic from INTELSAT and other satellites. Operations were directed from a two-story underground building.88 The intelligence mission was secret, but the facility, given its ostensible function, was not.

  The results of Swann’s and Price’s psychic journeys to the West Virginia mountains were the subject of an October 1 report to the CIA. The following month, a “Top-Secret/Codeword Eyes Only” memo evaluated selected results of the experiments. A map drawn by Swann was “correct,” while the terrain was “exactly as drawn” by Price, and was “not otherwise accessible to non-base personnel.” Elevations given by Price were correct to within 100 feet, and there was “an astonishing similarity between [Price’s] description of the facility, some dissimilarities, but most of the important ones do match.”89

  The code words elicited by Price were “current or past active COMINT descriptives.” An initial survey showed all the code words to be inactive by 1966, but subsequent investigation turned up two that were relevant to the site but unfamiliar to current personnel. In addition, the site reference (code name) was also among the words reported by Price. One individual named by Price was an NSA security officer, although the memo noted that it was not known whether “he was present during [Price’s] alleged ‘visit.’” The other individuals named were also DOD personnel but were not familiar to personnel at the site who were asked.90

  The same memo also evaluated summer remote-viewing sessions that involved a Soviet installation in the Urals and a joint French-Soviet meteorological station on Kerguelen Island in the southern Indian Ocean. Price had “discovered” the Urals site at Mount Narodnaya on his own, without the apparent provision of coordinates. He described an underground facility, helipads, a railway, and a radar installation 30 miles to the north of the site with a 165-foot dish and two small dishes.91

  The CIA memo referred to Price’s description as generally correct with regard to “topography and location of radar dishes.” There was a discrepancy between the number of dishes “viewed” by Price and those shown in KH-4 satellite imagery from 1972. There was only one radar dome visible, and that was 60–100 miles from the facility as opposed to 30 miles. There was no evidence on the satellite imagery of a railway or helipads. Despite the discrepancies, Price’s descriptions of the site, the Abez space tracking facility, ranged from “similar to identical.” The memo also commented that the odds were “over one million to one” that Price could have provided the description based on coincidence or guess, even with the inaccuracies—although there was no explanation as to the basis upon which those odds were calculated.92

  The description of the Indian Ocean facility was produced by Swann after Puthoff had been given the coordinates by his OSI contact. In addition to its acknowledged function, the site was rumored to double, at least for the Soviets, as an intercept or missile tracking station.93 The CIA assessment noted that the “descriptions are rather precise, and correct to the limits of KH-4 photography” and that “description of installation functions correct.” Other descriptions were not verifiable on the basis of information available to the CIA.94

  The memo’s author noted that he had no “explanation in fact or in principle” for the results and verified that [Price] “is a highly gifted subject capable of obtaining accurate ‘visual’ information at a distance by non-ordinary means.” He went on to state that “whether this information is obtained by paranormal ability or not remains open to speculation.”95

  An attached memo from Puthoff ’s OSI contact noted that he was informed that Puthoff’s laboratory would likely be terminated “unless at least a modest level of support can be obtained . . . from a reputable Governmental agency such as CIA.” The OSI official also noted that the SRI vice-president for research informed him that SRI could find no evidence of fraud. Nor could the CIA official, although he refused to offer an ironclad statement with regard to experiments in which he had not participated.96

  The memo, however, did not discuss a number of issues that would be expected to arise in evaluating the extraordinary claims arising from the remote-viewing experiments—in particular with regard to the Sugar Grove site. Neither Swann nor Price conducted his remote viewing under circumstances in which his lack of access to outside information could be verified. In addition, there was no concern expressed, at least in the memo, about Puthoff ’s having worked at NSA in the early 1960s—which might have given him access to information about Sugar Grove, including about code words and personnel. Suspicion might have been heightened by Price’s reporting of a number of obsolete code words—the type of error that could be explained by his having been provided the information by someone who had access at an earlier time but not any longer. Nor did there appear to be any examination of public information, such as media coverage about the targets, information that certainly was available about the existence of a facility at Sugar Grove.97

  In any case, the summer 1973 experiments were reviewed by Colby, who had replaced Schlesinger as DCI in September; McMahon; and Sayre Stevens, who had become director of ORD in July 1972 and was far less enthusiastic than McMahon about such activities. He even told Duckett he “was out of his mind” to approve such research.* Nevertheless, a jointly funded ORD-OTS program commenced in February 1974. The premise behind the program was that paranormal phenomena such as remote viewing existed; the objective was to develop and exploit them for intelligence purposes. ORD funds were used for research into measurable physiological or psychological characteristics of individuals believed to have psychic capabilities and the establishment of protocols for verifying such abilities. OTS funding was used to assess the operational utility of paranormal capabilities.98

  It was not long before a number of problems developed with the program, including the objection of ORD scientists that the tests being conducted by SRI were not sufficiently rigorous.99 Such objections were also raised by the broader scientific community. Later in 1974, Puthoff and Targ published some of their remote-viewing experiments in the prestigious science journal Nature. However, an accompanying editorial comment noted that “there was agreement that the paper was weak in design and presentation, to the extent that details given as to the precise way in which the experiment was carried out were disconcertingly vague.” Further, all the referees felt that the details of the various safeguards taken to rule out fraud were “uncomfortably vague.”100

  By the time the paper was published in fall 1974, there were new directors of both OTS and ORD. In August, John McMahon took another step in his rise through the agency, becoming Associate Deputy Director for Administration. He was replaced by former FMSAC head David Brandwein, who was skeptical about the value of the program. Meanwhile, Stevens became Duckett’s deputy in June. He was replaced as head of ORD by James V. Hirsch, who had graduated from MIT with a master’s degree in electrical engineering in 1959 and had been lured away from General Electric by the directorate’s ELINT office in 1968. Hirsch told Kress that he could not accept that paranormal capabilities existed, but, realizing his bias, would accept the advice of his staff.101 That willingness would give the project further life.

  But an experiment conducted in summer 1974 and evaluated in the fall confirmed Brandwein’s and Hirsch’s skepticism. That experiment, the result of the push by Duckett and McMahon for viewing of sensitive targets, began on July 9 at SRI, four days after the United States had obtained satellite imagery of a target of special interest—located at 50 degrees, 9 minutes, 59 seconds north, and 78 degrees, 22 minutes, 22 seconds east. Targ and Puthoff informed Pat Price of the coordinates.102

  Of interest to the CIA at those coordinates was an installation the agency had designated URDF-3 for Unidentified Research and Development Facility-3. The Air Force designated the same site, which was sixty miles southwest of the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site in Kazakhstan, as a PNUTS—possible nuclear underground test site. The chief of Air Force intelligence, Maj. Gen. George Keegan, and key aid
es believed the site could well be a center for particle-beam research. Concern that such activity might be taking place was first aroused in the late 1960s, when satellite images showed workers assembling four steel spheres nearly sixty feet in diameter. The spheres were then lowered into underground chambers that had been dug out of rock. In the particle-beam scenario, they would serve to contain nuclear low-yield explosions that would create the energy required for producing the particle beam’s “lightning bolt.”103

  Price was shown maps of the area and told only that the target was a scientific military research and test facility and was 25–30 miles southwest of the Irtysh River. He was instructed to start with a view of the general area as it would be seen from 50,000 feet and get the layout of any complexes or buildings.104

  The July 9 session, the first of four over four days, lasted about two hours. From the beginning, Price made the assumption, which was incorrect, that the facility was related to ongoing Soviet space launch and recovery activities. He gave what the experiment’s evaluator, a Los Alamos scientist, judged to be “an almost perfect description of someone’s first look at the Operations Area of URDF-3”—as low one-story buildings partially dug into the ground.105

  Price also reported seeing nine other items that the evaluator noted “simply don’t appear at or near URDF-3.” The imagined objects included a road from the river to the target area, a 500-foot-tall antenna, an array of outdoor telephone poles, an outdoor pool, an airstrip twelve miles from URDF-3, a small village to the northeast, a city sixty miles southwest of the facility, and a three-story building (which Price claimed was the dominant building in the complex).106

  On the night of July 9, Price completed and turned over, presumably to Puthoff, drawings of part of a perimeter fence and a rail-mounted gantry crane; the drawings were then passed to the CIA monitors the next day. The fence, Price stated, was electrified, but he did not mention its unique shape or the existence of four perimeter fences at URDF-3. His drawing of the gantry crane was evaluated as “remarkably close in detail to the actual gantry crane at URDF-3.” Then, on the afternoon of July 10, Price described a complicated relationship involving three gantry cranes at the facility, which the evaluator wrote “does not exist at URDF-3.”107