CRV

Cold War Context & the Parapsychology Landscape

The late 1960s and early 1970s were defined by Cold War rivalry and technological escalation. In intelligence circles, the United States was increasingly concerned that the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc were making advances in psychotronics (their term for research into parapsychology, mind–matter interactions, and anomalous perception).

At the same time, American scientists, psychologists, and a handful of independent researchers were pursuing their own investigations into human perceptual anomalies, often working at the fringes of mainstream science. Into this environment stepped two unlikely figures: Ingo Swann, a highly successful “sensitive” producing repeatable results in laboratory settings, and Dr. Harold (Hal) Puthoff, a laser physicist with a background in quantum electronics who had just moved to SRI International.

Their meeting would change the trajectory of anomalous-perception research in the United States.

Ingo’s Early Laboratory Work (ASPR, PK Experiments, OOBE Studies)

Before arriving at SRI, Ingo had already established himself as an unusually reliable experimental subject. In New York, he collaborated with:

Cleve Backster: Bioelectric Anomalies, “Primary Perception,” and the Early Biological Experiments

A pivotal figure in Ingo’s early scientific development was Cleve Backster, the former CIA polygraph expert whose 1960s discovery of “primary perception” (Backster’s hypothesis that living cells, plant or human, exhibit immediate electrical reactions to emotions, thoughts, or intentions, suggesting a pre-sensory, nonlocal form of biological responsiveness) made him a controversial but influential pioneer in bioelectronic research. Backster’s lab in New York became a meeting point for investigators, police agencies, intelligence contacts, and parapsychology researchers exploring the margins of consciousness and physiology.

Backster quickly recognized that Ingo produced exceptionally strong responses on highly sensitive galvanic and biofeedback-style equipment. These reactions were unlike those he observed in typical subjects, and Backster considered Ingo one of the clearest “psi responders” he had ever encountered.

From Plants to Biological Systems: According to Ingo’s own account in Remote Viewing: The Real Story, their collaborations soon expanded far beyond Backster’s original plant work. Backster began testing a wide range of “biologicals,” including:

one-celled organisms from biological supply houses;
microbial samples collected around the lab;
human blood; and
seminal fluids.

These experiments were exploratory rather than formal studies, but their results were often striking.

Human Blood Experiments: Ingo’s own blood, collected via sterile pinprick, proved to be extraordinarily reactive:

electrical readings spiked or shifted when he directed attention toward the isolated cells;
the responses increased as he became “psychically familiar” with the sample; and
the activity continued until the cells weakened or died.

Backster, with long-standing ties to military and intelligence communities, immediately grasped the implications. At one point he told Ingo:

“You’ve just done something the Soviets have been working on for a long time — the potential of invading someone’s body by mind alone.”

Seminal Fluid Experiments: The reactions of seminal fluid behaved differently:

electrical potential collapsed into a flat, unresponsive line,
suggesting, in Ingo’s words, an effect on the “vital nature” of the spermatozoa.

These experiments were considered sensitive enough that both men agreed no papers should be written about them.

Instrumental Anomalies: Across these sessions, Backster and Ingo observed recurring patterns:

unusual electrical activity well outside normal drift;
resistance and conductivity shifts; and
distinctive reaction profiles that did not appear with ordinary controls.

While these anomalies were never formalized into peer-reviewed studies, they were compelling enough that Backster regarded Ingo as an exceptional subject, someone whose presence and directed thought consistently affected biological systems in measurable ways.

Dr. Gertrude Schmeidler: Sealed-Container PK Experiments

One of Ingo’s earliest and most important scientific collaborations was with Dr. Gertrude R. Schmeidler, professor of psychology at the City College of the City University of New York.

Schmeidler was already a major figure in American parapsychology by the time Ingo met her. Known for her sharp intellect, statistical sophistication, and insistence on methodological rigor, she helped bring credibility to a field that often struggled with standards of evidence.

Schmeidler earned her place in the history of parapsychology through her pioneering research on the “sheep–goat effect,” which demonstrated that subjects’ attitudes and expectations influenced psi performance. Her work was widely respected because she approached parapsychology as a psychologist, not a mystic, emphasizing controlled variables, replicability, and theoretical framing. In professional circles, she was regarded as someone who would never exaggerate a result or endorse a subject unless the data warranted it.

Under her direction, Ingo participated in a series of sealed-target psychokinesis (PK-ST) experiments. The targets (temperature-sensitive materials enclosed within insulated, sealed containers) were designed with exceptional care to prevent normal physical influences. No body heat, breath, airflow, or environmental temperature shift could reach the materials. The experiments were observed, timed, instrumented, and statistically analyzed.

The results were noteworthy:

Ingo produced reliable, measurable temperature changes within sealed systems.
The effects appeared under strict laboratory controls, eliminating mundane explanations.
Schmeidler considered the outcomes valid enough to discuss within professional circles, an unusually strong endorsement for a subject she had only recently begun working with.
The data helped establish Ingo as a serious experimental subject, not a performer or anecdotal “psychic.”

Schmeidler’s influence on Ingo was substantial. She validated his insistence on controls, helped shape his respect for scientific structure, and confirmed that psi functioning could be observed, and measured, without the theatrics or altered states common in popular psychic demonstrations.

Dr. Karlis Osis, Dr. Janet Lee Mitchell & Dr. Carole K. Kendig: Out-of-Body Perception, Psychophysiology, and Early Remote-Viewing Foundations

After his early PK work with Dr. Gertrude Schmeidler, Ingo became involved in a series of increasingly sophisticated perception experiments at the American Society for Psychical Research (ASPR). Under the leadership of Dr. Karlis Osis, one of the most respected experimental parapsychologists of the 20th century, and with psychologist Dr. Janet Lee Mitchell, the ASPR conducted controlled studies on out-of-body perception, spatial awareness, and nonlocal sensory processing.

Osis & Mitchell: Controlled Out-of-Body Target Experiments: Osis and Mitchell designed experiments that required Ingo to describe visual targets placed at significant height (on shelves, upper-story platforms, or special racks) positioned well above his natural line of sight. Ingo was seated or reclining at ground level with no physical access to the targets.

They valued Ingo’s:

insistence on strong experimental controls;
ability to remain fully awake and conversational (no trance, hypnosis, or dissociation); and
highly detailed, often accurate renderings of hidden spatial and geometric information.

His performance in these trials, especially his ability to “shift viewpoint” without losing clarity, gave Osis and Mitchell data that fit neither ordinary sensory explanation nor classical mediumship models.

These structured sessions contributed to the emergence of a new conceptual category of perception, what would soon be called Remote Viewing.

Dr. Carole K. Kendig: Flicker-Fusion Experiments & Psychophysiological Correlates: At the ASPR, Ingo also worked with Dr. Carole K. Kendig, a psychologist focused on flicker-fusion thresholds, attentional shifts, and the physiological markers of altered perception. Flicker-fusion experiments involve exposing participants to a rapidly flickering light stimulus to determine the frequency at which the flicker is perceived as continuous.

Kendig was interested in whether individuals with strong psi abilities displayed:

different sensory thresholds;
unusual attentional stability; or
neurophysiological patterns correlated with nonordinary perception.

According to Ingo’s accounts, he showed:

significantly lower flicker-fusion thresholds than typical subjects;
rapid shifts into “psi-conducive” states without trance; and
distinctive autonomic or micro-electrical fluctuations during perception tasks.

These results suggested that Ingo’s perceptual system was operating with atypical sensitivity, a possible physiological correlate of his abilities.

Kendig’s work was important because it offered a bridge between classical sensory psychology and psi research, placing Ingo’s abilities within measurable psychophysiological parameters rather than purely anecdotal or subjective descriptions.

Why This Early ASPR Work Mattered

Together, the Osis-Mitchell-Kendig experiments:

established that Ingo maintained conscious clarity during nonlocal perception;
identified repeatable performance patterns across different kinds of hidden-target tasks; and
revealed potential physiological markers associated with his perceptual shifts.

This cluster of research helped transform Ingo from an unusual subject into a scientifically compelling one, attracting the attention of Puthoff and laying the groundwork for the SRI program that would later formalize Remote Viewing.

The Real Story

As the early experiments at SRI unfolded, Ingo became increasingly aware that much of what he was witnessing (the breakthroughs, the mistakes, the politics, the scientific struggles, and the personalities involved) would never be fully understood if left only to official reports or secondhand retellings. Determined that the true history of remote viewing should be preserved in his own words, he began writing Remote Viewing: The Real Story in 1995, publishing each chapter on his Superpowers of the Human Biomind website as he completed it. By the time of his passing in 2013, he had written fifty-eight chapters, with more undoubtedly still in his mind.

About this project Ingo wrote:

An (eventual) full-length book (currently being serialized on the Internet), revealing the actual history of Remote Viewing and its developments. Four general categories are interwoven throughout: the Discoveries; the Political and Technical History; the Rise and Fall; the Saga and the Soap Opera. Although the topic of Remote Viewing has attracted media and speculative attention at various times, the real and detailed insider story has never been presented before.

For anyone seeking to understand how remote viewing truly emerged (its scientific origins, its government involvement, and its internal complexities) Ingo’s unfinished memoir remains the most direct and unfiltered record of its early development.

Superpowers

Read Ingo’s foundational Biomind essays, which outline the perceptual principles that later shaped CRV.

Superpower link

SRI & The Quark Detector Event (July 1972)

When Puthoff invited Ingo to SRI “to play around,” no one expected what followed. Puthoff brought him to a heavily shielded quark detector at Stanford University, buried under concrete to isolate it from external interference.

Surrounded by physicists, Ingo focused his attention on the unseen device and began sketching it.

As he did, the detector’s previously stable readout began to fluctuate.

The physicists, who had never seen such disturbances, took immediate notice.

This event (combined with Ingo’s accurate sketch of the classified device) became the turning point. It convinced Puthoff and others that further investigation was warranted and opened the door to formal funding.

Shortly afterward, physicist Dr. Russell Targ joined the SRI team.

SCANATE (1973): The First Systematic Remote Viewing Program

The intelligence community wanted to know whether anomalous perception could be verified and potentially used. In early 1973, the CIA funded the first official remote-viewing project at SRI: SCANATE, short for “scan by coordinate.”

SCANATE was built directly from Ingo’s insights into attention, signal acquisition, and perceptual structure. He helped shape target-selection methods, coordinate-based cueing, and early analytical procedures. Numerous sessions produced results detailed enough to justify expanded funding.

SCANATE marked the moment remote viewing moved from curiosity to structured inquiry.

SCANATE (1973–1974): The First Formal Remote Viewing Program

Why Ingo Swann’s Accuracy Stood Up to Scientific Controls

Ingo’s unusual consistency in early perception experiments shifted intelligence interest from possibility to application. The question became:

Can anomalous perception be studied, structured, and used for intelligence gathering?

To explore this, the CIA created the first formal Remote Viewing program at Stanford Research Institute (SRI):

Project SCANATE, short for scan by coordinate. It ran from May 1973 to June 1974 under the Office of Technical Services (OTS) and the Directorate of Science and Technology.

SCANATE’s objectives were twofold:

Determine whether remote viewing (then called “remote seeing”) could be reproduced under controlled laboratory conditions.
Assess whether this ability could be operationally useful for real intelligence tasks.

The core team included:

Ingo, principal viewer and perceptual modeler.
Dr. Puthoff, SRI physicist and principal investigator.
Dr. Kenneth “Ken” Kress of the CIA (later referenced as “Richard Kennett”).
Dr. Targ, physicist who joined soon after the quark-detector tests.

SCANATE became the first U.S. government effort to treat anomalous perception as a researchable cognitive skill rather than an oddity or superstition.

Ingo's Controlled Laboratory Sessions

Ingo’s sessions at SRI were conducted under observable, scientific conditions:

real-time monitoring;
recorded transcripts;
blind or double-blind target selection;
immediate documentation; and
later comparison to feedback data.

A declassified CIA assessment later stated that Ingo’s work went “well beyond chance expectation” and showed evidence of “genuine information transfer.”

One of the defining SCANATE sessions occurred when Kress sent a set of coordinates as a blind target. Sitting in a monitored SRI conference room, Ingo produced impressions of rolling hills, a northern town, a circular driveway, fences, and hints of underground features, sketching maps in real time. He spontaneously repeated the session at home the next morning, producing similar sketches. All materials were forwarded to CIA evaluators.

The Arrival of Pat Price

Around this time, Pat Price, a former business owner from Burbank, made contact with Puthoff. Several researchers have noted that Price maintained significant ties to Scientology during this period, including associations with individuals linked to the Church’s intelligence division, the Guardian’s Office.

Prior to his later involvement with SRI, Price’s initial contact with Puthoff appears to have occurred in an informal, public context in Los Angeles. At that time, Price was not affiliated with SRI and was not yet participating in structured laboratory research.

In an informal decision, Puthoff provided Price with the same set of target coordinates that had been used in Ingo’s controlled session.

A few days later, Price mailed in a packet of handwritten descriptions and sketches.

Unlike Ingo’s work (documented in real time under controlled laboratory conditions) Price’s session was:

unobserved;
delivered by mail days later; and
far more elaborate than could be independently verified.

This contrast became important as the data moved up the intelligence review chain.

The Sugar Grove Controversy

When analysts at the Central Intelligence Agency reviewed both sets of material, they observed that elements described by both viewers appeared to resemble features not of the intended decoy target, but of the nearby National Security Agency facility at Sugar Grove, West Virginia, a highly sensitive signals-intelligence site.

The apparent correspondence of certain broad features (hills, circular drives, cleared lawns, underground structures) triggered an internal review, as officials were required to rule out the possibility of unintended information exposure.

The critical distinctions noted were:

Ingo’s descriptions were cautious, sensory-based, time-stamped, and produced under tight laboratory controls.
Price’s descriptions were expansive, unverifiable, and generated outside established protocol.

Price's URDF-3 Attempt and Further Concerns

In 1974, Price attempted to describe the Soviet site known as URDF-3. A CIA analyst reviewed his sketches and transcripts and ultimately judged the experiment unsuccessful. Under observation, Price’s accuracy declined sharply, and he failed to identify the site’s primary underground structure, its central feature.

The CIA analyst noted that the absence of strong experimental controls left open the possibility that Price’s information could have originated from an external source, raising even the hypothetical question of influence by “the Disinformation Section of the KGB.” The analyst recommended much tighter protocols for future work and suggested that Price’s taped sessions be reviewed using voice-stress analysis to assess whether his descriptions reflected genuine perception or possible contamination.

(CIA Reading Room: CIA-RDP96-00791R000200240001-0)

CIA program manager Kress later wrote that Price continued to work with intelligence personnel “on and off,” but often outside SRI’s structured laboratory setting.

(CIA Reading Room: CIA-RDP96-00791R000200030040-0)

Separately, Jacques Vallée, in Forbidden Science, Vol. 2, cites what he describes as material recovered during the FBI’s 1977 raids on Scientology’s Guardian’s Office. Vallée recounts that seized documents indicated Price may have acted as an infiltrator within intelligence contexts on behalf of Scientology (Forbidden Science 2, p. 626). Vallée presents this as information contained in the recovered documents; it was not a conclusion reached by SRI researchers or by CIA personnel managing SCANATE.

These concerns, raised internally by a CIA analyst and later reported by Vallée, added complexity to how Price’s background was viewed. They did not, however, determine SCANATE’s scientific evaluation, which relied primarily on Ingo’s controlled, time-stamped, and independently verifiable laboratory sessions.

What SCANATE Ultimately Proved

Despite the complications surrounding Price, SCANATE’s central conclusion (based on Ingo’s controlled sessions) was clear:

Some form of anomalous perception appeared to exist and could be studied under scientific protocols.

This was enough for the CIA to continue funding Remote Viewing research under new contracts after SCANATE ended in 1974.

SCANATE established the foundation for:

structured perceptual modeling;
the first systematic laboratory protocols;
the notion of signal vs. noise;
the recognition of viewer-specific strengths and limits;
operational tasking experiments; and
the future development of a teachable method.

SCANATE

Link to the Declassified CIA SCANATE Report:

CIA READING ROOM

From SCANATE to CRV Development (1973–1982)

As SCANATE progressed, Ingo increasingly focused on how Remote viewing worked, not just that it worked. He observed patterns, signal dynamics, cognitive noise, and stages in which information seemed to emerge. Working with Puthoff, he began outlining a repeatable, trainable method that would allow others to achieve similar results.

This became Controlled Remote Viewing (CRV).

CRV was designed to:

Prevent imagination from overtaking perception.
Separate signal from noise.
Allow beginners to access stable perceptual impressions.
Build information gradually through structured stages.

It did not require trance, mediumship, altered states, or channeling. Ingo insisted it was a cognitive, perceptual process, not a mystical one, and that the ability was inherent in all humans.

By the late 1970s and early 1980s, CRV had become the dominant methodological framework at SRI.

Ingo’s CRV Training for the U.S. Military (1982–1984)

In 1982, the Army sent its first group of military personnel to SRI for formal CRV instruction.

Ingo trained them directly, stage by stage, refining the methodology as he observed their progress. His goal was to ensure viewers could collect information in a controlled, replicable way.

CRV training continued under Project Center Lane (1983–84), after which the military integrated and adapted the method according to operational needs.

By 1985, after Puthoff left SRI and the program shifted under DIA control, Ingo gradually withdrew from involvement. He formally stepped away by 1988–89.

How does Controlled Remote Viewing (CRV) work?

Simply put...

Ingo often described remote viewing as one expression of what he called the superpowers of the human biomind, innate perceptual capacities that have appeared throughout human history under many different names. Long before laboratories existed, cultures recognized forms of extraordinary awareness: intuition, visionary insight, memory that extended beyond ordinary recall, and the ability to perceive or sense information at a distance.

In modern times, we tend to define human perception only in terms of the known laws of matter, energy, and linear time. Ingo argued that this view is incomplete. Human faculties such as memory and imagination already transcend those limits. They are not bound by physical laws, yet they are universally accepted as natural parts of the mind. To Ingo, these were not trivial functions but superpowers in their own right.

He believed that many of our indwelling perceptual capacities fall along a cognitive-perceptual spectrum:

Some abilities (like memory, imagination, intuition, and telepathic sensitivity) are widely shared.

Others exist in more subtle or dormant form, requiring development to become active.

All of them are part of the human design.

As Ingo wrote:

The superpowers of the human biomind…are those indwelling faculties of our species which can transcend space and time as one major category of activity, and energy and matter as another. These faculties are permanent within our species. Each generation is a carrier of them, equally as much as it is a carrier of our species’ gene pool. It is not the purpose of this site to convince anyone that the superpowers exist. The only purpose is to present information.

To help people understand what he meant, Ingo pointed to what he called exceptional human experiences, not as fantasy, but as lived phenomena that countless people report across cultures. In Reality Boxes, he listed many examples of experiences that arise naturally within our perceptual awareness systems, including:

cosmic consciousness
inter-species communication (such as the intuitive rapport between humans and animals)
transformational or peak-performance experiences
martial-arts states of heightened perception
out-of-body experiences
empathy and emotional resonance
electrical or environmental sensitivity
bilocation or multi-location impressions
aura or “vibe” sensing
lucid dreaming
déjà vu
premonition, intuition, and sudden insight
“aha” moments
kundalini or energy-awakening experiences
near-death experiences
encounters perceived as spiritual, angelic, or anomalous
UFO or abduction-related experiences

For Ingo, these were not fringe anomalies. They were signposts of the vast range of perceptual faculties humans naturally possess. Remote viewing was one part of this larger spectrum: a trainable, structured expression of capacities that have been with humanity since the beginning.

The Ability Called Remote Viewing

Believing all things "psi" are species wide abilities, Ingo pioneered the development of a Remote Viewing training technique using geographical coordinates, with its requisite protocols.

Ingo's Technique

Ingo used CRV protocols to train intelligence operatives to assess operational targets, ones that could not be seen using conventional means. Ingo's training consisted of progressing through six stages.

THE CRV STages

In developing CRV, Ingo set out to define three things clearly: what CRV is, how it works, and the rules by which it can be trained. Out of this came the CRV protocols: a structured, stage-based method designed to teach a viewer how to acquire information from a target site in a controlled, step-by-step format. The training process unfolded across six stages, each governing a particular layer of perceptual contact.

Central to CRV is what Ingo called bilocation: not leaving the body or entering an altered state, but maintaining an attentional split between one’s physical location and a point of perceptual focus at the site. It is not telepathy, channeling, mediumship, or trance. It is a cognitive, intellectual mode of information gathering based on perceptual processes that Ingo believed operate at subtle or quantum levels within consciousness.

Ingo emphasized that this capability is not exotic and not reserved for a select few. He often used the word ability because people understood that term, but his deeper view was that CRV drew on built-in perceptual awareness systems all humans possess. He described consciousness as having a kind of internal machinery (a “vehicle,” as he put it) that makes instantaneous perception, instantaneous telepathic communication, and even pre-cognitive impressions possible. The purpose of CRV was to bring parts of this mechanism under conscious, intellectual control, rather than leaving them to chance flashes of intuition.

As with any research-and-development process, many ideas were explored in the early years. Some concepts were tested and discarded; others were refined and formalized. Had Ingo felt that additional stages were necessary (stages rigorously developed, validated, and trained) there is no doubt they would have appeared in his protocols and in the programs that adopted them. To date, no viewer trained directly by Ingo has claimed to have received more than the six established stages.

Beginning in the late 1980s and into the early 1990s, Ingo’s attention turned increasingly toward what he described in a FATE Magazine article as the psychic castration of humanity: his term for the suppression or underdevelopment of our innate perceptual capacities. In works like Penetration, he distinguished sharply between remote viewing, which involves the perceptual penetration of physical locations, and telepathy, which involves mental or relational connection with another consciousness. As he wrote:

Remote viewing pertains to penetration of "physicals," not to penetration of "mentals."

— Penetration

For Ingo, discussions of psychic communication, mind-melding, or multidimensional contact fall not under CRV but under Telepathy, and, in his later terms, Telepathy+: an advanced form of communication very different from the structured acquisition of site information. CRV is about information access. Telepathy is about connection. They are distinct faculties within the broader perceptual spectrum he believed humans naturally possess.

More than anything, Ingo wanted people to understand that these capacities were ours, part of our species’ perceptual inheritance. They are not something we needed to learn from any “other-than-terrestrial” source, nor something to be feared. CRV and telepathic faculties were simply two aspects of a larger, innate human potential he hoped people would learn to strengthen, protect, and consciously direct.

For additional discussion about whether Ingo ever added more stages to CRV (and reflections from his trained students) you can read this external article: https://rviewer.com/in-controlled-remote-viewing-did-ingo-swann-add-more-stages/

Military Adoption: ERV, CRV & Hybrid Methods

While CRV was developing at SRI, the Army’s Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM) began exploring its own approach. Their early project, Gondola Wish (1978), contracted the Monroe Institute to study altered states and out-of-body experience using audio entrainment.

This work became Extended Remote Viewing (ERV).

ERV relied on deep relaxation and altered consciousness. CRV, by contrast, emphasized structure and controlled cognition. Over time, operational units sometimes combined the two approaches: CRV for target acquisition, ERV for deep detail.

U.S. Government Remote Viewing Programs (Development vs. Operational)

Gondola Wish (1978–1979): U.S. Army

Type: Developmental

Agency: U.S. Army Intelligence & Security Command (INSCOM)

Purpose:

Initial feasibility and vulnerability assessment.
Determined whether foreign nations could use psychic abilities against U.S. targets.
Early-stage ERV exploration, not yet an operational collection unit.

Grill Flame (1979–1983): U.S. Army + Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA)

Type: Developmental → Limited Operational

Agencies: Army INSCOM, DIA (joint oversight)

Purpose:

Transition from pure research toward controlled applications.
Included both training (under Ingo Swann’s CRV methodology) and limited use of RV for intelligence tasks.
Mixed structure: part research, part early operational trials.

Center Lane (1983–1985): U.S. Army

Type: Operational

Agency: Army INSCOM

Purpose:

In-house Army intelligence collection using trained personnel.
Supported specific intelligence requirements when other sources were insufficient
Less research, more real-tasking.
At this stage, RV is treated as an intelligence tool rather than an experiment.

Sun Streak (1986–1990): Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA)

Type: Operational

Agency: DIA

Purpose:

Full operational intelligence collection program.
Army transferred its personnel and RV assets to DIA.
Sun Streak handled real-world intelligence missions (foreign facilities, hostages, weapons sites, etc.).
CRV still used, alongside ERV and other methods.

Star Gate (1990–1995) — DIA → CIA

Type: Operational → Termination Review

Agencies: DIA (1990–1995), CIA (late 1995, final review before shutdown)

Purpose:

Consolidation of all RV efforts under one name (“Star Gate”).
Continued use for actual intelligence collection until transferred to CIA.
CIA closed the program after the AIR report in late 1995.

Program Evolution & The End of Star Gate (1995)

Over the span of nearly two decades, the intelligence-backed remote-viewing effort moved through several agencies and program names. It began within U.S. Army intelligence, shifted into the Defense Intelligence Agency for its longest operational period, and finally came under CIA oversight near the end. Methods evolved, personnel changed, and the work ranged from research and development to limited operational tasking. The program, consolidated under the name Star Gate, was officially terminated in 1995.

Regardless of political opinions about its usefulness, one legacy is clear:

CRV provided the first structured, teachable system for Remote Viewing, and Ingo was at the center of its creation.

But What is controlled RV?

The best way to explain Ingo's CRV, would be to show it...

In 1994, when author Jim Schnabel trained with Ingo as part of his research for Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America’s Psychic Spies, Ingo invited another new student to join the sessions: Robert (Bob) Durant, a commercial airline pilot with a longstanding interest in remote viewing and UFO research. Although Bob had only recently been introduced to Ingo, the two quickly formed a strong connection, and after the training was complete, Bob became one of Ingo’s closest lifelong friends.

More than a decade later, when filmmakers began working with Ingo on a documentary about his life (now titled A Life Gone Wild) Bob sat down with journalist Nick Cook to recount his experience training under Ingo. In these remarkable recordings, Bob vividly describes the step-by-step process Ingo used, offering a rare, first-person example of what CRV actually looks like when taught directly by its originator. One segment also includes a brief exchange with filmmaker Robert Knight, adding context to the training environment and Ingo’s teaching style.

Presented below are the full, unedited videos of Bob Durant’s interview. It is an authentic window into the way Ingo taught, the precision he expected, and the clarity of the CRV method as he originally designed it.

Let's just wake up and remember we have these things!

For a beginner's guide on RV see Ingo's book Everybody's Guide to Natural ESP.

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Remote Viewing didn’t begin as mystery. It began as history: a Cold War question, a handful of disciplined minds, and a search for how human perception truly works.

Cold War Context & the Parapsychology Landscape

Ingo’s Early Laboratory Work (ASPR, PK Experiments, OOBE Studies)

The Real Story

Superpowers

SRI & The Quark Detector Event (July 1972)

SCANATE (1973): The First Systematic Remote Viewing Program

SCANATE (1973–1974): The First Formal Remote Viewing Program

Why Ingo Swann’s Accuracy Stood Up to Scientific Controls

SCANATE

From SCANATE to CRV Development (1973–1982)

Ingo’s CRV Training for the U.S. Military (1982–1984)

How does Controlled Remote Viewing (CRV) work?

Simply put...

The Ability Called Remote Viewing

Ingo's Technique

THE CRV STages

CRV Theory and Manuals

Military Adoption: ERV, CRV & Hybrid Methods

Program Evolution & The End of Star Gate (1995)

But What is controlled RV?

The best way to explain Ingo's CRV, would be to show it...

Let's just wake up and remember we have these things!

An Interview with Bob Durant

Bob Durant RV Session Intro

Bob Durant RV Session Part 1

Bob Durant RV Session Part 2

Journeying Through CRV: Examples of operational RV Target Sessions 1976-1977 Done by Ingo

Videos and More Information on Remote Viewing

Video

The Origins of the CRV Manuals

The Origins of Remote Viewing

Videos

Stargate Remote Viewer: Bill Ray

Debra Lynn Katz

Stargate Remote Viewer: Tom McNear

Ingo on Art Bell's Dreamland

Psychic Sea Hunt