SRIs remote viewing program

The program was the remote-viewing research effort at SRI International, begun in the early 1970s by Hal Puthoff and Russell Targ. Funding is said to have come from the CIA, the DIA and Army and Navy intelligence groups. Around 1991 contract research on the government's remote-viewing work moved from SRI to SAIC.

Kenneth Kress's 1977 article, the CIA's own account, describes staff of the CIA Office of Scientific Intelligence meeting Targ in July 1972 and an unnamed officer continuing informal work with SRI through 1973. Later secondary sources identify that officer as Kit Green; the article does not name him.

On one account, the CIA contracted SRI researchers, chiefly Puthoff, under Project SCANATE to judge whether remote viewing could be useful operationally. Puthoff worked with civilian viewers, among them Ingo Swann and Pat Price; according to SRI's own assessments, their controlled trials gave statistically anomalous results. Puthoff left SRI in the mid-1980s, and on the same account Edwin May then became lead researcher.

Jacques Vallee also worked at SRI, but in the Augmentation Research Center, a separate unit. His SRI post is often conflated with the program. He was consulted intermittently on the classified remote-viewing research: consultation, not membership.

Whether the program showed anything is disputed. On one account, a review of the government's remote-viewing work by the American Institutes for Research produced a split verdict, and the statistical debate is unresolved.