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---
created: 2026-05-17
updated: 2026-09-22
title: Edwin May
aliases:
- Edwin May
- Edwin C. May
category: "Scientists & Researchers"
tags:
- Person
- SRI
- Stargate
- CIA
- SAIC
- PSI
- Stargate
- GrillFlame
- CognitiveSciencesLaboratory
- AnomalousCognition
- DIA
- Physics
- PSI
- 1980s
- 1990s
category: "Scientists & Researchers"
summary: "Particle physicist who succeeded Puthoff as principal investigator of the remote-viewing research at SRI in 1985, moved it to SAIC in 1991, and chose the ten experiments the 1995 AIR panel reviewed."
alias:
- Edwin May
- Edwin C. May
- Ed May
- Dr. Edwin C. May
- Dr. May
summary: "Nuclear physicist who joined SRI's psychoenergetics work in 1976, ran it from 1985, moved it to SAIC in 1991, and chose the ten experiments the 1995 AIR panel reviewed."
location: "Palo Alto, California"
relations:
- type: employed_by
with: "[[Stanford Research Institute]]"
start: 1976
end: 1990
role: "consultant to the psychoenergetics program 1976 to 1979, senior research physicist 1979 to 1985, program manager of the cognitive sciences program 1985 to 1990"
fn: 4
- type: employed_by
with: "[[Science Applications International Corporation]]"
start: 1991
end: 1996
role: "director of the Cognitive Sciences Laboratory"
fn: 4
- type: head_of
with: "[[Cognitive Sciences Laboratory]]"
start: 1991
end: 1996
role: "director"
fn: 4
- type: contractor_to
with: "[[Defense Intelligence Agency]]"
start: 1991
end: 1995
role: "principal investigator under contracts MDA908-91-C-0037 and MDA908-93-C-0004 as described in the sole-source justification"
fn: 12
- type: contractor_to
with: "[[Army Medical Research and Development Command]]"
start: 1985-10-07
end: 1990-09-30
role: "principal investigator under contract DAMD17-85-C-5130, Research and Application of Psychoenergetics"
fn: 10
- type: contractor_to
with: "[[Office of Research and Development (CIA)]]"
start: 1995-04
end: 1995-11-28
role: "administrative and consultative support to the Star Gate review under a small contract to SAIC; resigned on the day the AIR report was released"
fn: 20
- type: founded
with: "[[Laboratories for Fundamental Research]]"
start: 1996
fn: 22
created: 2026-05-17
updated: 2026-10-05
---
Edwin C. May is a particle physicist who served as principal investigator of the U.S. government's remote viewing research program from 1985, succeeding [[Hal Puthoff]] at [[Stanford Research Institute]], and who moved the program to [[Science Applications International Corporation|SAIC]] in 1991 when SRI withdrew from the contract. He directed the program through its final phase until the CIA's 1995 termination and commissioned the [[American Institutes for Research]] evaluation that recommended the program's end. Of the government program's principal investigators, May was the most scientifically rigorous in design and the most cautious about operational claims, treating the research as an ongoing scientific investigation rather than an established intelligence capability.
Edwin C. May is a physicist with a Ph.D. from the [[University of Pittsburgh]] (1968) who joined the [[Stanford Research Institute]] (SRI) psychoenergetics program as a consultant in 1976, became its program manager in 1985, and in 1991 became director of the [[Cognitive Sciences Laboratory]] of [[Science Applications International Corporation]] (SAIC), where the work continued under [[Defense Intelligence Agency]] contracts until the [[Central Intelligence Agency]] took custody of the program in 1995. He chose the ten experiments reviewed by the [[American Institutes for Research]] (AIR) in 1995 and in 1996 founded the [[Laboratories for Fundamental Research]].[^1][^2]
### Background and SRI Entry
### Education and early work
May completed a Ph.D. in nuclear and particle physics from the University of Pittsburgh and had a background in experimental physics research before joining the SRI remote viewing program in 1976. He worked initially as a research scientist under Puthoff and [[Russell Targ]], contributing to experimental design and data analysis while the program was in its most active CIA-funded phase. His experimental physics background gave him a different methodological orientation than Puthoff, who had trained as an electrical engineer and was more willing to accept operational application of early-phase research results.
A resume of September 1994 gives his education as a B.S. in physics from the [[University of Rochester]] (1962) and a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Pittsburgh (1968), with a dissertation, "Nuclear Reaction Studies via the (p,pn) Reaction on Light Nuclei and the (d,pn) Reaction on Medium to Heavy Nuclei," under B. L. Cohen. It lists a postdoctoral fellowship at the [[University of California, Davis]] (1968 to 1971), a physics instructorship at [[City College of San Francisco]] (1972 to 1976), and consulting for [[Digital Pathways]], Inc. of [[Mountain View, California|Mountain View]] (1972 to 1979), for the [[Psychophysical Research Laboratories]] in [[Princeton, New Jersey]] (1972 to 1976) and for the [[Biofeedback Institute of San Francisco]] (1973 to 1979), and states that he had been involved in anomalous mental phenomena research "since 1972," after "over 12 years experience in experimental nuclear physics research." It records an Outstanding Achievement Award in Parapsychology from the [[Parapsychological Association]] in 1994.[^3]
### Principal Investigator (1985-1995)
In an interview of May 12, 1996, May said that he knew nothing of psi during his physics education, drifted after becoming "uninterested in experimental, low-energy nuclear physics," met [[Charles Honorton]] and other parapsychologists, spent nine months in [[India]] on a search for evidence of "anything out of the ordinary" and failed to find any, and then saw "more psi than I had ever seen in India" while working with Honorton at [[Maimonides Medical Center]].[^2]
When Puthoff left SRI in 1985, May assumed the principal investigator role for the government research contract. He shifted the program's emphasis toward rigorous experimental methodology, imposing tighter statistical standards and more controlled experimental protocols than had been standard under the SRI program's earlier phases.
### SRI, 1976 to 1985
In 1991, SRI withdrew from the remote viewing research contract. May negotiated the transfer of the contract to SAIC, relocating the research to the Cognitive Sciences Laboratory within SAIC's structure. Under his direction, the SAIC phase was conducted with careful attention to experimental controls and protocol documentation, reflecting May's view that the field's credibility depended on methodological rigor rather than operational demonstrations.
The resume lists him as consultant to SRI's psychoenergetics program from 1976 to 1979 and senior research physicist from 1979 to 1985.[^4] His name appears as an author on SRI's final report to the [[Naval Electronic Systems Command]], *Sensing of Remote EM Sources (Physiological Correlates),* covering November 1975 to October 1976 under contract N00039-76-C-0077, with [[Russell Targ]], [[Hal Puthoff]], and [[David Galin]] and [[Robert Ornstein]] of the [[Langley Porter Neuropsychiatric Institute]] in [[San Francisco]], addressed to [[James Foote]] of the Navy command.[^5] [[Jim Schnabel]] wrote that he "was a physicist who had been brought into the program in 1976," that "he struggled to set up his own contractual fiefdoms at SRI," and that in trying to fund one of his projects he fell out with [[Ingo Swann]], who later said, "I regret to this day that I didn't look at Ed May's horoscope first."[^6]
### AIR Evaluation and Termination
SRI's final report of October 1978, *Advanced Threat Technique Assessment* (SRI Project 5309, April 18, 1977 to April 15, 1978), lists May as a consultant author with Puthoff, Targ and Swann; it was classified by DIA.[^7] For the Defense Intelligence Agency under contract MDA903-81-C-0292 (a number later replaced, by modification P00002, with MDA908-81-C-0004), SRI delivered his reports *Electronic System Perturbation Techniques* (September 30, 1980, with [[Beverly Humphrey]] and [[G. Scott Hubbard]]) and *Countermeasures: A Survey and Evaluation* (January 1982, with Hubbard); under MDA908-82-C-0034 the *Free World Psychoenergetics Research Survey* (November 1983, with Humphrey).[^8] For the Department of the Army's [[United States Army Intelligence and Security Command|Intelligence and Security Command]] at [[Fort Meade]], SRI's *[[Center Lane]]-3* report of December 1984, *Personnel Identification and Selection,* was written by May and [[David Saunders]] and addressed to a Lt. Col. [[Brian Buzby]].[^8]
When the CIA, which had taken custody of the program from the DIA in 1995 at the direction of Congress, contracted the American Institutes for Research in June 1995 to evaluate it ([[1995 AIR evaluation of Star Gate]]), May, as principal investigator, was asked "to list those studies which he believes provide the strongest evidence" and every unique study since the 1988 [[National Research Council]] report. His memorandum of July 25, 1995, listed ten SAIC experiments, among them "Entropy II" (90 trials, effect size 0.550, p = 9.1 × 10^-8), "ERD AC Behavior" (70 trials, 0.303), "Remote observation" (48 trials, 0.361), and "AC with binary coding" (40 trials, −0.067). [[Jessica Utts]] took them, with the 1988 analysis of the SRI database, as establishing that "psychic functioning has been well established"; [[Ray Hyman]] agreed the effects were "too large and consistent to be dismissed as statistical flukes" but held that ten experiments from one laboratory could not establish a phenomenon. May told the panel that "approximately 20 percent of the information supplied by a viewer is accurate," and AIR noted that throughout the experiments "only one judge, apparently the Principal Investigator, was used in assessing matches." The report of September 29, 1995, recommended against continuing the operational program. May's commentary in the *Journal of Parapsychology* the next year described the review as the result of "a Congressionally Directed Activity" and gave the report's public release as November 28, 1995.[^1]
Reports prepared for the Defense Intelligence Agency under contract DAMD17-83-C-3106 include *QRT Tasking* (November 1984, covering October 1983 to October 1984, by Puthoff, May and Humphrey), *Data Base Management* (December 1984, by May), *Photon Production (Chinese Replication)* (May 1985, by Hubbard and May) and *An Automated RV Evaluation Procedure* (May 1985, by May, Humphrey and Puthoff). His own final report, *Enhanced Human Performance Investigations* (SRI Project 7408, December 1988, covering November 1983 to October 1985, prepared for the contracting officer [[Jean V. Smith]] and classified by the [[Army Medical Research and Development Command]]), states that "during FY 1985 a total of $1,240 K was allocated to contract DAMD17-83-C-3106 for the psychoenergetic investigation and review."[^9]
The CIA's chronology of the transfer records for February 28, 1995: "CIA met with DIA principal investigator at SAIC, Dr. Ed May. All-day technical exchange." An ORD memorandum for the record of April 20, 1995, its author redacted, states that "Ed May of SAIC called this morning and volunteered to send me unsolicited information he had obtained from a 'remote viewer' named 'Joe' relating to the [[Oklahoma City bombing|Oklahoma City Bombing]]," that ORD had no means of "tasking or disseminating this type of information," that May asked for a law-enforcement contact and, told to send it to his former contracting officer's representative at DIA, "said they didn't get along"; given an FBI number that evening, "he asked if this would be a 'cold call' because he didn't want to sound like a 'lunatic,'" and "agreed reluctantly" to call. The Director of Research and Development's covering memorandum to the [[Counterterrorist Center]] the same day: "We attach no credibility to this information, and currently have no way to evaluate it. We have asked Dr. Ed May of SAIC to forward this information to you directly. Please direct any questions regarding how the information was acquired to Dr. May. He has been the primary contract investigator in this area, and we have not completed our evaluation of his past efforts."[^2]
### Principal investigator, 1985 to 1990
### The 1996 Commentary
In 1985 the Army's Surgeon General's research office began a five-year program, and the Defense Intelligence Agency, in its own later description, "established close ties with this R/D effort to ensure that applications research would be adequately pursued." The contract was DAMD17-85-C-5130, "Research and Application of Psychoenergetics," for the period October 7, 1985 to September 30, 1990, to SRI under proposals ESU 84-246 Rev-2 of April 15, 1985 and ESU-246 of September 16, 1985. It names "Edwin C. May, Ph.D." as principal investigator, with an estimated 1,848 hours in the first twelve months, and requires approval of the contracting officer to change him. It also directs the contractor to "attempt to duplicate significant foreign research" to help the intelligence community judge foreign capability. A military interdepartmental purchase request in the same file runs from the Defense Intelligence Agency to Jean V. Smith, SGRD-ACQ, at the Army Medical Research and Development Command at [[Fort Detrick]], Maryland, providing funds for general phenomenological research and development at SRI International. The DIA description adds that when Army funding "might not be available to carry through to the end of the five year period" in 1987, "additional funding was sought by DIA and acquired through funding transfer action by the [[House Appropriations Committee]]."[^9][^10]
May "was asked by the CIA to provide administrative support, technical documents, and briefings on an as-needed basis for the review," under a small contract to SAIC, from which he resigned on November 28, 1995, the day the report was released. His commentary in the *Journal of Parapsychology* argued that "there is compelling evidence that the CIA set the outcome with regard to intelligence usage before the evaluation had begun," by "limiting the research and operations data sets to exclude positive findings, by purposefully not interviewing historically significant participants, by ignoring previous extensive Department of Defense program reviews, and by using the questionable National Research Council's investigation of parapsychology as the starting point." He noted that AIR's president, [[David Goslin]], had also overseen the NRC's 1988 report; that of the seventeen members of the SRI and SAIC oversight committees and review board "only one was contacted by the CIA"; that his memorandum of June 6, 1995, "the existence of anomalous mental phenomena cannot be statistically determined from the results of a single laboratory," was "ignored by fiat"; and that a Senate staff member told him the CIA's briefing to Congress gave eight bullet points to Hyman's conclusions and four to Utts's. He quoted Jessica Utts's letter of December 19, 1995: "I was explicitly asked by AIR staff NOT to mention the NRC report in my review!" and "we were shown very little of the 'operational' remote-viewing work"; and [[Robert Rosenthal]] on the NRC's 1988 request that he omit his ganzfeld section, "censorship did not occur." He quoted [[Joe McMoneagle]]'s 1984 Legion of Merit citation, "more than 200 missions, addressing over 150 essential elements of information," reported "at the highest echelons," and traced a line from ARPA's George Lawrence and Hyman being refused access at SRI in 1974, through Lawrence's commissioning of the NRC study in 1985, to Goslin's AIR review. Of the program's last years: a 1993 attempt to move it to the CIA "found no willing recipient," the last DIA officer "had little knowledge of the program," and "the program was in shambles." "I am forced to conclude that either the AIR investigators were not competent to conduct a proper review of such a complex program, a view to which I do not subscribe, or they knew exactly what they were doing: They wanted to demonstrate that AC lacked usefulness for intelligence operations. They did so by construction rather than by careful analysis." On *Nightline* that November he said: "I think about 15% of our data, over 1500 separate remote viewing trials, are of such a quality that you might think they were sketched," and, after [[Robert Gates]] said the work was "better done on the outside": "I couldn't agree with Director Gates more."[^3]
His final report of December 1988 for the Army Medical Research and Development Command, *Meta-Analysis of Forced-Choice Precognition Experiments,* written with Honorton, [[Diane Ferrari]] and [[George Hansen]] of the Psychophysical Research Laboratories, names the contract DAMD17-85-C-5130 and a contracting officer's technical representative, [[Peter J. McNelis]].[^11] On September 8, 1989 May, as director of the Cognitive Sciences Program at SRI International, wrote to Jean Smith at the Army's medical research command asking that three of ten paragraphs be removed from the program's security classification guide. He stated that "all the experimental data, results, theories and protocols collected or developed under contract DAMD 17-85-C-5130 are not inconsistent with what is generally available in the open literature," and that the meta-analysis task for fiscal 1989 had found that "our quantitative measures are statistically inseparable from those resulting from experiments conducted in open laboratories."[^11]
### Post-STARGATE Research
### SAIC, 1991 to 1995
After the STAR GATE program's termination, May founded the Laboratories for Fundamental Research (LFR) in Palo Alto, California, a private research organization continuing anomalous cognition research. He published extensively in scientific journals on experimental parapsychology, focusing on statistical analysis of remote viewing data and theoretical frameworks for understanding what physical mechanism might account for the observed effects. He proposed "decision augmentation theory" (DAT) as a framework for interpreting the statistical patterns in remote viewing data without requiring conventional psychic transmission.
The resume lists him as program manager of the Cognitive Sciences Program at SRI from 1985 to 1990 and director of SAIC's Cognitive Sciences Laboratory from 1991, which "currently employs over twenty full or part-time researchers from a variety of disciplines."[^4] In 1996 May said that he had "presided over 70% of the projects's $20M funding and been responsible for over 85% of the data collected under US Government contracts," that "the CIA started the government's secret work at SRI in 1972" and put in "approximately $250,000" of a program of more than $20 million over 24 years, and that he "shifted the project to another defense contractor" in 1991.[^2]
May continued to serve as a consultant on anomalous cognition research for academic and government-adjacent projects after STAR GATE's termination, representing continuity between the government-funded program and the subsequent private research that drew on the government program's methodological legacy.
The Defense Intelligence Agency's contracting file for the SAIC contracts describes the funding. A DIA description of 1992 says that in 1983 "a report with project findings was sent to congressional intelligence and appropriation committees" which "affirmed the existence of remote viewing phenomenon" and was endorsed by a science panel; that follow-on research support "was provided to DIA by Congressional action for FY91," with DIA "identified as the executive agent"; and that "additional R&D funding was received by DIA in the FY 92 Defense Authorization Act." The file names the existing DIA contract MDA908-91-C-0037; it contains a justification for a new $1,450,000 contract under purchase request 330/025Z/92, out of $1,850,000 available "for this Congressional Directed Program" (the remainder for a modification to the existing contract), and a modification, P00001, to contract MDA908-93-C-0004 that corrected a reference from MDA908-92-C-0037 to MDA908-91-C-0037. The [[Virginia Contracting Activity]]'s justification for other than full and open competition cites the authority "Only one Responsible Source." It states that the earlier "bulk of this prior R&D effort was provided by the Department of the Army's [[Office of the Surgeon General (United States Army)|Surgeon General Office]] (SGRD) in 1985" with "Dr. Edwin May as the principle researcher and program manager" at SRI, who "has since joined" SAIC "and has taken his extensive data base and key research assistants with him." It describes him as "regarded as the leading U.S. investigator in this phenomenological area," states that "an extensive classified data base ... has co-mingled with both government and proprietary data," and adds a second SAIC physicist, a Dr. Angelo, with "over 10 years of involvement in this field." A later justification of the same kind, for a modification to the action that produced MDA908-93-C-0004, repeats that restricting the procurement to one source is needed "due to national security considerations," and that the contractor "has been instrumental in establishing all necessary foreign links for this modification."[^12]
SAIC's technical proposal of August 27, 1992, by May and [[Wanda L. W. Luke]], "Phenomenological Research and Analysis," answered solicitation MDA908-92-R-0164 from the Cognitive Sciences Laboratory at 1010 El Camino Real, [[Menlo Park]].[^13] A memorandum of May 31, 1995 on the laboratory's letterhead gives its address as 330 Cowper Street, Suite 200, [[Palo Alto]].[^14]
### AIR evaluation and termination
When the CIA, which had taken custody of the program from the DIA in 1995 at the direction of [[Congress]], contracted the American Institutes for Research in June 1995 to evaluate it ([[1995 AIR evaluation of Star Gate]]), May, as principal investigator, was asked "to list those studies which he believes provide the strongest evidence" and every unique study since the 1988 [[National Research Council]] report. His memorandum of July 25, 1995, listed ten SAIC experiments, among them "Entropy II" (90 trials, effect size 0.550, p = 9.1 × 10^-8), "ERD AC Behavior" (70 trials, 0.303), "Remote observation" (48 trials, 0.361), and "AC with binary coding" (40 trials, -0.067). [[Jessica Utts]] took them, with the 1988 analysis of the SRI database, as establishing that "psychic functioning has been well established"; [[Ray Hyman]] agreed the effects were "too large and consistent to be dismissed as statistical flukes" but held that ten experiments from one laboratory could not establish a phenomenon. May told the panel that "approximately 20 percent of the information supplied by a viewer is accurate," and AIR noted that throughout the experiments "only one judge, apparently the Principal Investigator, was used in assessing matches." The report of September 29, 1995, recommended against continuing the operational program. May's commentary in the *[[Journal of Parapsychology]]* the next year described the review as the result of "a Congressionally Directed Activity" and gave the report's public release as November 28, 1995.[^15]
The CIA's chronology of the transfer records for February 28, 1995: "CIA met with DIA principal investigator at SAIC, Dr. Ed May. All-day technical exchange." An Office of Research and Development memorandum for the record of April 20, 1995, its author redacted, states that "Ed May of SAIC called this morning and volunteered to send me unsolicited information he had obtained from a 'remote viewer' named 'Joe' relating to the [[Oklahoma City bombing|Oklahoma City Bombing]]," that ORD had no means of "tasking or disseminating this type of information," that May asked for a law-enforcement contact and, told to send it to his former contracting officer's representative at DIA, "said they didn't get along"; given an FBI number that evening, "he asked if this would be a 'cold call' because he didn't want to sound like a 'lunatic,'" and "agreed reluctantly" to call. The Director of Research and Development's covering memorandum to the [[Counterterrorist Center]] the same day: "We attach no credibility to this information, and currently have no way to evaluate it. We have asked Dr. Ed May of SAIC to forward this information to you directly. Please direct any questions regarding how the information was acquired to Dr. May. He has been the primary contract investigator in this area, and we have not completed our evaluation of his past efforts."[^16]
A draft ORD memorandum of April 17, 1995, from the Emerging Programs Group, sought funds from the Director's reserve for "administrative and consultative work by Ed May of SAIC during the Star Gate review," stating that "there will be no substantive research funded or executed."[^17] An ORD memorandum for the record of April 11, 1995, records that all contractor reports at the Star Gate facility had been compiled on two annotated bibliographies, one for SRI and one for SAIC, that all additional or duplicate copies of contractor reports at the facility "were destroyed," and drafts a letter to May under his contract asking for an unclassified annotated bibliography of reports by May 15, 1995 and classified copies by July 1, 1995, noting that "the NRC Blue Ribbon Panel will be able to review unclassified documents only."[^18]
### Publicity letters, 1995
In a letter of May 13, 1995 to an officer at the CIA's Rosslyn, Virginia office (name redacted), on SAIC letterhead, May summarized a video tape of the project's television publicity. He wrote that the program "was started in 1972 with Dr. Hal Puthoff; Mr. Russ Targ joined a year later, and Dr. May joined in 1976," that Hammid and Price, "both now deceased," were viewers, and that Hammid "was a long-time friend of Russ." He wrote that an on-site representative "from [[Jack Vorona]]'s shop" had asked that Targ and the viewer [[Keith Harary]] be removed from the project, and that the publicity came "shortly after Russ, Keith and Hella left in 1982." Of an episode of *[[Nightline]]* of about 1983 he noted a discussion of "a CIA 1952 report"; of a *[[NOVA]]* program of about 1983, "The Case of ESP," that it included footage of [[J. B. Rhine]] and that [[Gertrude Schmeidler]] "shows the sheep/goat effect in which 'believers' score better than do 'skeptics.'" Of Ray Hyman he wrote that "Ray was not given access to our records in part because he is on record as saying there is no evidence that could get him to change his mind." Of a 1992 television segment on a group called PSI-Teck, he described attending a marketing meeting in [[Santa Clara]] where the group presented itself as former intelligence officers, identifying himself in the question period as the project director since 1985 and the author of many of the SRI reports being cited, and said that what they ascribed to the research "bore no resemblance, at all, to what they were claiming."[^19]
In a memorandum of May 31, 1995, he wrote that "Mr. James Schnabel" was preparing a piece for [[Channel 4]] in Britain on CIA's [[Project Scanate]] and the Army's remote viewing unit, covering "details of its organization and its predecessors, specifics of some of the live missions, which agencies had used the service, and who were the major players," that Schnabel had listed five retired program members and some current ones, and that "it is my impression that Schnabel and Channel 4 are interested in an exposé and have garnered full cooperation of past project personnel." The memorandum states that this "raises once again the question of the veracity of past agreements between project personnel and the government."[^14]
### The 1996 commentary
May "was asked by the CIA to provide administrative support, technical documents, and briefings on an as-needed basis for the review," under a small contract to SAIC, from which he resigned on November 28, 1995, the day the report was released. His commentary in the *Journal of Parapsychology* argued that "there is compelling evidence that the CIA set the outcome with regard to intelligence usage before the evaluation had begun," by "limiting the research and operations data sets to exclude positive findings, by purposefully not interviewing historically significant participants, by ignoring previous extensive Department of Defense program reviews, and by using the questionable National Research Council's investigation of parapsychology as the starting point." He noted that AIR's president, [[David Goslin]], had also overseen the NRC's 1988 report; that of the seventeen members of the SRI and SAIC oversight committees and review board "only one was contacted by the CIA"; that his memorandum of June 6, 1995, "the existence of anomalous mental phenomena cannot be statistically determined from the results of a single laboratory," was "ignored by fiat"; and that a [[Senate]] staff member told him the CIA's briefing to Congress gave eight bullet points to Hyman's conclusions and four to Utts's. He quoted Jessica Utts's letter of December 19, 1995: "I was explicitly asked by AIR staff NOT to mention the NRC report in my review!" and "we were shown very little of the 'operational' remote-viewing work"; and [[Robert Rosenthal]] on the NRC's 1988 request that he omit his ganzfeld section, "censorship did not occur." He quoted [[Joe McMoneagle]]'s 1984 [[Legion of Merit]] citation, "more than 200 missions, addressing over 150 essential elements of information," reported "at the highest echelons," and traced a line from ARPA's [[George Lawrence]] and Hyman being refused access at SRI in 1974, through Lawrence's commissioning of the NRC study in 1985, to Goslin's AIR review. Of the program's last years: a 1993 attempt to move it to the CIA "found no willing recipient," the last DIA officer "had little knowledge of the program," and "the program was in shambles." "I am forced to conclude that either the AIR investigators were not competent to conduct a proper review of such a complex program, a view to which I do not subscribe, or they knew exactly what they were doing: They wanted to demonstrate that AC lacked usefulness for intelligence operations. They did so by construction rather than by careful analysis." On *Nightline* that November he said: "I think about 15% of our data, over 1500 separate remote viewing trials, are of such a quality that you might think they were sketched," and, after [[Robert Gates]] said the work was "better done on the outside": "I couldn't agree with Director Gates more."[^20]
### After 1995
In the interview of May 1996 he said that "in 1996 we moved the Cognitive Sciences Laboratory from SAIC to the Laboratories for Fundamental Research (LFR)," "a formal California Corporation that, among other things, will be conducting psi research," then seeking funding with proposals pending.[^21][^22] He said that Decision Augmentation Theory "resulted from a carefully conducted RNG study we did for the Army in 1979," on which "we spent over $250,000 on that single experiment," with Beverly Humphrey and Jessica Utts as colleagues "from the beginning" and [[James Spottiswoode]] joining "much later." The model, he said, "holds that since ESP is real, that it would be very unlikely that we would not integrate that additional, albeit weak and unreliable, into the normal decision processes."[^21]
### Footnotes
[^1]: Mumford, Michael D., Andrew M. Rose, and David A. Goslin. *An Evaluation of Remote Viewing: Research and Applications.* American Institutes for Research, September 29, 1995, pp. 2-3, 3-18, 3-67, 5-2. https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB438/docs/doc_57.pdf May, Edwin C. "The American Institutes for Research Review of the Department of Defense's STAR GATE Program: A Commentary," *Journal of Parapsychology,* vol. 60, no. 1, 1996, pp. 3-23, abstract only.
[^2]: "Star Gate Transfer Chronology: 1995," memorandum for the record, undated, CIA-RDP96-00791R000200190017-9. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection. Memorandum for the record and memorandum for CTC from the Director, Research and Development, "Star Gate Program Issues," April 20, 1995, CIA-RDP96-00791R000100030036-6. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.
[^3]: May, Edwin C. "The American Institutes for Research Review of the Department of Defense's STAR GATE Program: A Commentary," *Journal of Parapsychology,* vol. 60, no. 1, March 1996, pp. 3-23. The letter of December 19, 1995, is printed at pp. 15-17 as Utts's reply to May's e-mail of December 17, checked against the page images. "Psychic Spies: Cold War Whimsy or Secret Weapon?," ABC News *Nightline,* November 28, 1995, Radio TV Reports transcript for the CIA Public Affairs Staff, CIA-RDP99-01448R000402140001-7, read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room.
[^1]: Mumford, Michael D., Andrew M. Rose, and David A. Goslin. *An Evaluation of Remote Viewing: Research and Applications.* American Institutes for Research, September 29, 1995, pp. 2-3, 3-18, 3-67, 5-2. https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB438/docs/doc_57.pdf May, Edwin C. "The American Institutes for Research Review of the Department of Defense's STAR GATE Program: A Commentary," *Journal of Parapsychology,* vol. 60, no. 1, 1996, pp. 3-23.
[^2]: "Edwin May Interview," conducted May 12, 1996, Fourmilab (Random PK Project). https://www.fourmilab.ch/rpkp/may.html
[^3]: "Edwin C. May, Ph.D., Director, Cognitive Sciences Laboratory," SAIC resume dated September 1994, CIA-RDP96-00791R000200190063-8. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.
[^4]: Resume, September 1994, CIA-RDP96-00791R000200190063-8 (employment history, 1976 to date).
[^5]: Targ, Russell, Edwin May, and Harold Puthoff, with David Galin and Robert Ornstein. *Sensing of Remote EM Sources (Physiological Correlates),* final report to the Naval Electronic Systems Command, contract N00039-76-C-0077, period November 1975 to October 1976, SRI International, CIA-RDP96-00788R001300350001-0. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.
[^6]: Schnabel, Jim. *Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies.* New York: Dell, 1997, chapter on the SRI program's internal conflicts, read in the archive.org full-text copy, https://archive.org/details/jim-schnabel-remote-viewers-the-secret-history-of-americas-psychic-spies_2
[^7]: Puthoff, Harold E., Russell Targ, Edwin C. May and Ingo Swann. *Advanced Threat Technique Assessment,* final report, October 1978, SRI Project 5309, CIA-RDP96-00788R001300040001-4 and CIA-RDP96-00791R000200270001-7. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.
[^8]: May, Edwin C., Beverly S. Humphrey, and G. Scott Hubbard. *Electronic System Perturbation Techniques,* final report, September 30, 1980, SRI Project 8585, CIA-RDP96-00788R001300210001-5. Hubbard, G. Scott, and Edwin C. May. *Countermeasures: A Survey and Evaluation,* final report, January 1982, contract MDA903-81-C-0292, CIA-RDP96-00788R001300260001-0. Humphrey, Beverly S., and Edwin C. May. *Free World Psychoenergetics Research Survey,* final report, November 1983, contract MDA908-82-C-0034, CIA-RDP96-00788R001800130001-9. Saunders, David, and Edwin C. May. *Personnel Identification and Selection,* Center Lane-3 final report, December 1984, CIA-RDP96-00788R001800230001-8. Modification P00002, "New Contract No. MDA908-81-C-0004," CIA-RDP96-00788R001500110012-2 and CIA-RDP96-00788R001500110014-0. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.
[^9]: Puthoff, Harold E., Edwin C. May, and Beverly S. Humphrey. *QRT Tasking,* final report, November 1984, contract DAMD17-83-C-3106, CIA-RDP96-00788R001800220001-9; May, Edwin C. *Data Base Management,* December 1984, CIA-RDP96-00788R001800250001-6; Hubbard and May, *Photon Production (Chinese Replication),* May 1985, CIA-RDP96-00792R000400310001-9; May, Humphrey and Puthoff, *An Automated RV Evaluation Procedure,* May 1985, CIA-RDP96-00789R003800310001-6; May, Edwin C., *Enhanced Human Performance Investigations,* final report, SRI Project 7408, December 1988, CIA-RDP96-00789R002200390001-5. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.
[^10]: Contract DAMD17-85-C-5130, "Research and Application of Psychoenergetics," sections B and C, CIA-RDP96-00789R003000400005-0; military interdepartmental purchase request from the Defense Intelligence Agency to the U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command, CIA-RDP96-00789R003000400001-4; DIA statement of work and background, CIA-RDP96-00789R003000460008-1. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.
[^11]: May, Edwin C., Charles Honorton, Diane B. Ferrari, and George Hansen. *Meta-Analysis of Forced-Choice Precognition Experiments,* final report, objective 1, task 1, December 1988, covering July 31, 1987 to September 30, 1988, contract DAMD17-85-C-5130, CIA-RDP96-00789R002200410001-2. May, Edwin C., letter to Jean Smith, HQ USAMRDC, Fort Detrick, September 8, 1989, CIA-RDP96-00789R002600170003-3 and -170004-2. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.
[^12]: Defense Intelligence Agency, Uniform Contract Format, sections B, C, F and H, and "Justification and Approval for Other Than Full and Open Competition," Virginia Contracting Activity, purchase request 330/025Z/92, dated February 10, 1992 in the acquisition package, CIA-RDP96-00789R003000460008-1 (and companion copies -460007-2, -460003-6 and -460005-4, the last two being modification P00001 to MDA908-93-C-0004); second justification and approval, purchase request 330/0262/93, CIA-RDP96-00789R003000200009-8. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.
[^13]: May, Edwin C., and Wanda L. W. Luke. *Phenomenological Research and Analysis,* technical proposal, Science Applications International Corporation, Cognitive Sciences Laboratory, August 27, 1992, response to RFP MDA908-92-R-0164, CIA-RDP96-00789R003100200001-5. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.
[^14]: May, Edwin C., memorandum "Publicity and British TV," May 31, 1995, on Cognitive Sciences Laboratory letterhead, 330 Cowper Street, Suite 200, Palo Alto, CIA-RDP96-00791R000200190068-3. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.
[^15]: Mumford, Rose and Goslin, *An Evaluation of Remote Viewing,* September 29, 1995, pp. 2-3, 3-18, 3-67, 5-2; May, "The American Institutes for Research Review," *Journal of Parapsychology,* vol. 60, no. 1, 1996, pp. 3-23, abstract.
[^16]: "Star Gate Transfer Chronology: 1995," memorandum for the record, undated, CIA-RDP96-00791R000200190017-9. Memorandum for the record and memorandum for CTC from the Director, Research and Development, "Star Gate Program Issues," April 20, 1995, CIA-RDP96-00791R000100030036-6. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.
[^17]: Draft memorandum, Emerging Programs Group, ORD, to the Director of Research and Development, "Tasking of Edwin C. May of SAIC to facilitate government program review," April 17, 1995, CIA-RDP96-00791R000200190057-5. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.
[^18]: Memorandum for the record, "Status of Contractor Reports and Annotated Bibliographies," April 11, 1995, with draft letter to Dr. Edwin May, CIA-RDP96-00791R000200170009-0. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.
[^19]: May, Edwin C., letter to a CIA officer, Rosslyn, Virginia, on his opinions of network television broadcasts about remote viewing, May 13, 1995, CIA-RDP96-00791R000200190060-1. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.
[^20]: May, Edwin C. "The American Institutes for Research Review of the Department of Defense's STAR GATE Program: A Commentary," *Journal of Parapsychology,* vol. 60, no. 1, March 1996, pp. 3-23. The letter of December 19, 1995, is printed at pp. 15-17 as Utts's reply to May's e-mail of December 17, checked against the page images. "Psychic Spies: Cold War Whimsy or Secret Weapon?," ABC News *Nightline,* November 28, 1995, Radio TV Reports transcript for the CIA Public Affairs Staff, CIA-RDP99-01448R000402140001-7, read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room.
[^21]: "Edwin May Interview," May 12, 1996, Fourmilab. https://www.fourmilab.ch/rpkp/may.html
[^22]: Same interview; May himself dates the move of the Cognitive Sciences Laboratory to the Laboratories for Fundamental Research to 1996.

90
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/George Lawrence.md
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@ -1,18 +1,92 @@
---
aliases:
- George Lawrence
category: "Intelligence & Government"
tags:
- Person
- Skeptic
summary: "George Lawrence was an ARPA project manager who, along with two civilian psychologists, Robert Van de Castle and Ray Hyman, traveled to SRI to test Uri Geller's purported psychic abilities."
- ARPA
- DARPA
- ArmyResearchInstitute
- Psychologist
- UriGeller
- SRI
- NationalResearchCouncil
- Biofeedback
- PSI
- 1970s
- 1980s
alias:
- George Lawrence
- George H. Lawrence
- Dr. George Lawrence
- G. H. Lawrence
summary: "ARPA projects manager who joined Ray Hyman and Robert Van de Castle at SRI's Uri Geller experiments on December 8, 1972, and later monitored the NRC's 1988 performance-techniques study for the Army Research Institute."
relations:
- type: employed_by
with: "[[Advanced Research Projects Agency]]"
start: 1972
role: "projects manager; arranged the visit to SRI on December 8, 1972 with consultants Hyman and Van de Castle"
fn: 1
- type: investigated
with: "[[Stanford Research Institute]]"
start: 1972-12-08
role: "visited the Uri Geller experiments with Ray Hyman and Robert Van de Castle to advise on ARPA funding"
fn: 1
- type: employed_by
with: "[[U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences]]"
start: 1984
role: "author of Technical Report 658 in 1984; project monitor and liaison to the NRC Committee on Techniques for the Enhancement of Human Performance"
fn: 4
- type: participant_in
with: "[[National Research Council Committee on Techniques for the Enhancement of Human Performance]]"
start: 1985
end: 1988
role: "Army Research Institute project monitor"
fn: 4
created: 2026-05-17
updated: 2026-10-05
---
George Lawrence was an [[DARPA]] project manager who, along with two civilian psychologists, [[Robert Van de Castle]] and [[Ray Hyman]], traveled to [[Stanford Research Institute|SRI]] to test [[Uri Geller]]'s purported psychic abilities. Their conclusion, later reported in *Time* magazine, was that anyone who believed in Geller's powers was falling for the "ridiculous"[^1].
George H. Lawrence was a psychologist and a projects manager at the [[Advanced Research Projects Agency]] (ARPA) of the [[Department of Defense]] in the early 1970s. He visited the [[Stanford Research Institute]] (SRI) on December 8, 1972, with his consultants [[Ray Hyman]] and [[Robert Van de Castle]], to see the work of [[Hal Puthoff]] and [[Russell Targ]] with [[Uri Geller]],[^1] and *[[Time]]* of March 12, 1973 reported that neither he nor Hyman was impressed.[^2] According to a CIA note of February 28, 1973, the magazine's science editor named him as the source of a skeptical article, which Lawrence denied.[^3] By 1984 he was a staff member of the [[U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences]], and from 1985 to 1988 he served as its project monitor for the [[National Research Council]] committee whose report on techniques for enhancing human performance included a chapter on parapsychology.[^4]
Lawrence expressed concern that [[Hal Puthoff]] and [[Russell Targ]]'s "own experimental bias in favor of successful outcomes is undermining their objectivity in properly controlled experimental procedures." He opined that Puthoff and Targ were guilty of the same three claims [[Martin Gardner]] had leveled against [[J. B. Rhine]]'s research: loose laboratory controls, skewing of data, and the premise that the attitude of the scientists could negatively influence the subject[^1].
### The visit of December 8, 1972
Lawrence told *Time* editor [[Leon Jaroff]] that Geller was a "charlatan" and encouraged the magazine to write an exposé. This unauthorized communication with a reporter was a violation of his security clearance, leading to an investigation by the [[Central Intelligence Agency]]. Despite Lawrence's denial of having talked to *Time*, Jaroff insisted otherwise[^1].
Hyman, writing in *[[The Humanist]]* in 1977, described the visit as that of "a visiting team to ascertain if Targ and Puthoff had sufficient evidence and an adequate case to justify the Advanced Research Projects Agency [funding] their research on Uri Geller." He said Geller "sent everyone out of the room except George Lawrence and myself," had Lawrence place his hands on two envelopes containing a drawing by Van de Castle and a magazine picture, and tried to obtain an impression without result; and that after lunch Geller again tried "while all alone with George."[^1]
*Mind-Reach* (1977), by Targ and Puthoff, records the same visit as "a privileged, confidential visit requested by George Lawrence, at that time a projects manager for the Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA)." Lawrence arrived with his two consultants, Hyman and Van de Castle, during Geller's stay; "their stated aim was to determine whether anything in our study would be of interest to ARPA." Targ and Puthoff wrote that they declined to let the visitors watch an experiment in progress, offered instead that they conduct experiments of their own with Geller, and that Van de Castle concluded from one of them that Geller was "an interesting subject for further study" while "Hyman and Lawrence were not impressed." The authors included Lawrence, Hyman, [[Martin Gardner]], [[James Randi]] and [[Joe Hanlon]] in a chapter called "The Loyal Opposition."[^5][^6]
*Time* of March 12, 1973 reported that "news of the unusual activity at [[Menlo Park]] reached the Department of Defense," that Lawrence "was accompanied to SRI by Robert Van de Castle," and that "neither Lawrence nor Hyman was impressed." It described Geller asking Lawrence to write a number between one and ten on a pad while covering his own eyes with his hands, Hyman seeing Geller's open eyes through his fingers, and, later, Geller causing a compass needle to turn about five degrees, Lawrence moving his body and vibrating the floor to deflect the needle more, and Targ insisting on examining "the DOD man" for hidden magnets, "(He did not.)"[^2]
### The CIA record, January and February 1973
An Office of Research and Development memorandum of January 24, 1973, ORD-413-73, by an officer whose name is redacted, reports on a film of the Geller experiments shown at SRI on January 23 by Targ and Puthoff. It states that "on the basis of meetings I have attended at ARPA, whose Drs. [[Austin Kibler]] and George Lawrence have been to SRI to observe Geller, Puthoff and Targ in action, there is serious doubt that Geller's accomplishment transcends the range of activities of a skillful magician can perform and much concern that Puthoff's and Targ's own experimental bias in favor of successful outcomes is undermining their objectivity in designing properly controlled experimental procedures." The writer added that he had observed no unorthodox behavior by Puthoff or Targ at the briefing that "could serve to corroborate ARPA's judgment," and, of the idea of testing Geller on previously unseen blueprints, that "Dr. Lawrence reported that Geller balked at reproducing anything more complex than a simple line drawing."[^7]
A note of February 28, 1973, "More Geller Business," records that the science editor of *Time*, "a Mr. Jareff," had told SRI's public information officer that the issue of Monday, March 5 would carry an article tending to discredit Geller; that "Jareff says that the source of the article was Dr. George Lawrence of ARPA, and apparently the article identifies Lawrence as the source"; and that "Lawrence, on the other hand, denies having talked to TIME" while "Jareff says this is nonsense, Lawrence has talked to TIME lots of times." The note says Lawrence "felt Geller was a charlatan based on the die-calling experiment," his reasoning being that Geller was "influencing the die so that it came up with the face that he wished," and that the writer expected the article, which "does not give any indication of Agency interest," to complicate dealing with Geller and [[Ingo Swann]].[^3] A CIA memorandum of February 2, 1973 on the paranormal, in its paragraph on the subject it calls "G," an Israeli who had been an army magician, says he "had one bad brush with Mr LAWRENCE of ARPA whom he perceived (perhaps not without reason) as being hostile."[^8]
[[Annie Jacobsen]], in *Phenomena* (2017), wrote that the conclusion of Hyman, Lawrence and Van de Castle, reported in *Time*, was that anyone who believed in Geller's powers was falling for the "ridiculous"; that Lawrence expressed concern that Puthoff and Targ's "own experimental bias in favor of successful outcomes is undermining their objectivity in properly controlled experimental procedures," and that they were guilty of the three charges Gardner had made against [[J. B. Rhine]]: loose laboratory controls, skewing of data, and the premise that the attitude of the scientists could influence the subject; and that Lawrence told the *Time* editor [[Leon Jaroff]] that Geller was a "charlatan" and urged an exposé, which she described as an unauthorized contact with a reporter in violation of his security clearance and the subject of a CIA investigation, although Lawrence denied having spoken to *Time* and Jaroff insisted that he had.[^9]
*Time* returned to the visit in its cover story of March 4, 1974, "Boom Times on the Psychic Frontier," which said that "assigned by the Department of Defense to report on the wondrous happenings at S.R.I., Hyman, accompanied by George Lawrence, DoD projects manager for the Advanced Research Projects Agency, caught Geller in some outright deceptions."[^10]
### Later accounts
A staff study prepared for the Army's [[Center Lane]] program in 1983 includes an article by Dr. [[Roger A. Beaumont]], "On the Strategic Potential of ESP," which says that "in 1972, the [[Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency]] sent a team to evaluate Stanford Research Institute's claimed results with spoon-bender Geller. The team was headed by Dr. George Lawrence, a psychologist who is open-minded on the subject of parapsychology," and that "the team's report was totally negative."[^11] A [[Defense Intelligence College]] thesis of 1992 by Captain [[Michael Zarbo]], citing [[Ronald McRae]]'s *[[Mind Wars]]* (1984), states that "DARPA's director, Dr. George Lawrence, was ordered by his superiors to find something to satisfy Congressional demands to match purported Soviet efforts in the field."[^11]
### The Army Research Institute
A technical report of 1984, *Biofeedback and Performance: An Update* (Technical Report 658), by G. H. Lawrence was issued by the U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences in [[Alexandria, Virginia]]; he had earlier written a review of biofeedback and performance with L. C. Johnson in *Biofeedback: Theory and Research* ([[Academic Press]], 1977). The NRC report *Enhancing Human Performance: Issues, Theories, and Techniques* (1988) cites both, and its preface states that "definition and guidance for the committee's task came primarily from [[Edgar M. Johnson]], director of the Army Research Institute," and that "administrative and technical liaison was ably provided by project monitor George Lawrence, who worked closely with the committee in its various activities."[^4]
A memorandum of January 31, 1995, ORD-0143-95, from the CIA's Director of Research and Development to the Associate Deputy Director for Military Affairs, asking for liaison with the Army Research Institute in the review of the [[Defense Intelligence Agency]]'s Star Gate program, states: "The original requester of the 1985 ARI study was Edgar M. Johnson, Technical Director of ARI. George Lawrence served as the ARI liaison to the NRC Committee on Techniques for the Enhancement of Human Performance. We would like to contact these two individuals directly."[^12] [[Edwin May]]'s commentary of 1996 on the [[American Institutes for Research]] review traced the sequence from the 1972 visit, in which Hyman and Lawrence were refused access to an experiment in progress, through Lawrence's commissioning of the NRC study in 1985, to the AIR evaluation.[^13]
### Footnotes
[^1]: Jacobsen, Annie. *Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis*. Little, Brown and Company, 2017.
[^1]: Hyman, Ray. "Psychics and Scientists: 'Mind-Reach' and Remote Viewing." *The Humanist,* May/June 1977, pp. 16-20 and following (visit of December 8, 1972), CIA-RDP96-00787R000200080037-4. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.
[^2]: "The Magician and the Think Tank," *Time,* March 12, 1973, as held in CIA-RDP96-00787R000400100023-4. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.
[^3]: Note for the record, "More Geller Business," February 28, 1973, CIA-RDP96-00787R000400070022-9. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.
[^4]: Druckman, Daniel, and John A. Swets, eds. *Enhancing Human Performance: Issues, Theories, and Techniques.* Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1988, preface and references (Lawrence, G. H., *Biofeedback and Performance: An Update,* Technical Report 658, U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences, Alexandria, Virginia, 1984; Lawrence and Johnson, 1977), read in ERIC document ED296127, archive.org, and in the CIA Reading Room copy CIA-RDP96-00791R000200320001-1.
[^5]: Targ, Russell, and Harold Puthoff. *Mind-Reach: Scientists Look at Psychic Abilities.* New York: Delacorte Press, 1977, chapter on the critics and the account of the ARPA visit, read in the archive.org full-text copy of the 2005 reprint, https://archive.org/details/mind-reach-scientists-look-at-psychic-abilities-2005-russell-targ-harold-e.-puth
[^6]: Hyman, "Psychics and Scientists," *The Humanist,* May/June 1977, describing Targ and Puthoff's chapter "The Loyal Opposition" as naming Randi, Gardner, Joe Hanlon, George Lawrence and Hyman. CIA-RDP96-00787R000200080037-4.
[^7]: Memorandum for C/IP&A/ORD, "Briefing by Stanford Research Institute," ORD-413-73, January 24, 1973, CIA-RDP96-00787R000400070029-2. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.
[^8]: Memorandum for the record, "Paranormal Phenomena: Further Developments / Reflections / Suggestions," February 2, 1973, CIA-RDP96-00787R000400070025-6. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.
[^9]: Jacobsen, Annie. *Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis.* Little, Brown and Company, 2017.
[^10]: "Boom Times on the Psychic Frontier," *Time,* cover story, March 4, 1974, as held in CIA-RDP96-00787R000100030002-8. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.
[^11]: Beaumont, Roger A. "On the Strategic Potential of ESP," in the 1983 Center Lane staff study, CIA-RDP96-00788R001700360003-3. Zarbo, Michael E. *Remote Viewing: Parapsychological Potential for Intelligence Collection?,* master's thesis, Defense Intelligence College, November 1992, CIA-RDP96-00789R002600250001-6. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.
[^12]: Memorandum, Director of Research and Development to the Associate Deputy Director for Military Affairs, "Request for Military Liaison Support," ORD-0143-95, January 31, 1995, CIA-RDP96-00791R000100140001-2 and CIA-RDP96-00791R000100140004-9. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.
[^13]: May, Edwin C. "The American Institutes for Research Review of the Department of Defense's STAR GATE Program: A Commentary," *Journal of Parapsychology,* vol. 60, no. 1, 1996, pp. 3-23.

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10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Hella Hammid.md
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@ -1,56 +1,102 @@
---
created: 2026-05-17
updated: 2026-09-22
title: Hella Hammid
aliases:
- Hella Hammid
category: "Psychics & Remote Viewers"
tags:
- Person
- RemoteViewer
- SRI
- Stargate
- GrillFlame
- Photographer
- ProjectDeepQuest
- PSI
- 1970s
- 1980s
category: "Psychics & Remote Viewers"
summary: "Hella Hammid was a German-American professional photographer who became one of the Stanford Research Institute's primary remote viewing subjects alongside Ingo Swann, demonstrating statistically significant results in CIA-funded experiments under Hal Puthoff and Russell Targ from 1974 onward."
alias:
- Hella Hammid
- Hella Heyman
- Mrs. Hammid
- H.H.
- S4
summary: "Los Angeles photographer, a principal SRI learner subject from 1974 (S4 in the 1976 Proceedings paper), a viewer in Project Deep Quest in 1977, and interviewed by the Army's Grill Flame group in 1979."
born: 1921-07-15
died: 1992-05-01
location: "Los Angeles, California"
relations:
- type: participant_in
with: "[[Stargate Project]]"
start: 1974
role: "SRI subject H.H. from early 1974"
fn: 4
- type: participant_in
with: "[[Project Deep Quest]]"
start: 1977-07
role: "viewer aboard the submersible Taurus, according to Schnabel"
fn: 13
- type: participant_in
with: "[[Grill Flame]]"
start: 1979
role: "met the AMSAA core group at SRI on August 21 and 22, 1979"
fn: 15
created: 2026-05-17
updated: 2026-10-05
---
Hella Hammid (July 15, 1921 - May 1, 1992) was a German-American professional photographer based in [[Los Angeles, California|Los Angeles]] who became one of the [[Stanford Research Institute|SRI]]'s most extensively tested remote viewing subjects during the [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]]-funded research program directed by [[Hal Puthoff]] and Russell Targ from the early 1970s onward. Unlike [[Ingo Swann]] and [[Pat Price]], who brought backgrounds claiming psychic ability, Hammid entered the SRI program as an ordinary person whose experimental results proved unexpectedly consistent, making her an important test case for the hypothesis that anomalous perception was not limited to self-identified psychics.[^1]
Hella Hammid (July 15, 1921 to May 1, 1992) was a photographer who worked in [[Los Angeles, California|Los Angeles]] and the subject known as H.H. and S4 in the [[Stanford Research Institute]] (SRI) remote viewing reports of 1974 and 1976. She published in [[Life]], [[Ebony]] and [[The New York Times]], and had photographs in books including *The Family of Man*. She took part in [[Project Deep Quest]] in 1977 and met the Army's [[Grill Flame]] core group at SRI in 1979.[^1][^2] [[Russell Targ]] wrote in a tribute that he met her in 1961 in New York, that the CIA sponsors in 1974 wanted an inexperienced control subject, and that in her ten years with the program she became "our most reliable viewer."[^3]
### SRI Remote Viewing Experiments
### Photography
Puthoff and Targ began working with Hammid after establishing the initial remote viewing protocol with Swann. Her participation addressed a key question about the SRI research: whether the remote viewing phenomenon was specific to individuals with claimed psychic abilities or whether it could be demonstrated in ordinary subjects with no prior psychic claims.
Maya Deren's brochure for her films lists "Technical assistance: Hella Heyman, [[Alexander Hammid]]" for *At Land* (1944) and "Photographed by Hella Heyman" for *Ritual in Transfigured Time*.[^1] Targ's tribute states that she was born in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1921 and "lived most of her adult life in New York and Los Angeles."[^3] Her obituary tribute in *The Sun* in August 1992, by the magazine's editor [[Sy Safransky]], states that she was born in [[Germany]] and educated in [[France]], [[England]] and the United States; that she was a freelance photographer for *[[Life (magazine)|Life]]*, *Ebony* and *The New York Times* and taught photography at the [[University of California, Los Angeles|UCLA]]; that she photographed [[Anaïs Nin]] and [[Benjamin Spock]]; and that her photographs were included in books including *The Family of Man*. She had written in her contributor notes that she "lives in a treehouse in California."[^2]
Hammid was a subject in the formal SRI remote viewing experiments described in Puthoff and Targ's 1976 paper in *Proceedings of the IEEE*, which presented results from a series of experiments conducted under controlled conditions with independent judges evaluating the correspondence between subjects' descriptions and target locations. Her results contributed to the statistical case for anomalous information transfer that the SRI team presented to CIA and Defense Department sponsors as evidence of a genuine, reproducible phenomenon.
### SRI, 1974
The SRI protocol for Hammid and other subjects involved an outbound experimenter who traveled to a randomly selected location within thirty minutes' driving distance. The subject remained at SRI with Puthoff or Targ and attempted to describe the target location through spontaneous description and drawing. Independent judges matched the descriptions to the target locations blind, without knowing which description came from which trial.[^1]
SRI's first progress report of March 12, 1974, records "a preliminary remote viewing pilot experiment" with "a subject (H.H.) previously screened by the EEG correlates experiment": "The target chosen at random was a small red clapboard schoolhouse structure with a bell steeple on top in a miniature golf course. The subject's response was that she saw a red clapboard structure with a steeple that seemed to be artificial as in a movie set." An outside reviewer noted that of six subjects in the EEG work, "one of the six subjects, HH, showed a consistent alpha blocking effort. Therefore, this subject was studied further and most of the data recorded is based on HH's performance."[^4] [[Jim Schnabel]] wrote that she arrived in 1974, "was not steeped in psi experiences as Swann and Price had been," and that of the six receivers in the EEG work only hers changed when the sender was stimulated, with slightly depressed alpha and slightly enhanced beta rhythms.[^5]
[[David Marks]] wrote in 1982 that of the six transcripts of her series shown to him by the SRI judge [[Arthur Hastings]], "four of the six Hammid transcripts actually carried dates" and "one transcript even carried the name of the associated target"; he listed twenty-four cues ("This is the 18th of September," "Russell Targ has gone to the remote site," "Hal has gone to a second target," "Hella has made a drawing of Hal's first location") from which a judge in [[New Zealand]], using no descriptive material, matched the transcripts better than Hastings had, and reported that Hastings had received three target lists, one randomized and two not. Targ and Puthoff's own account of her had been that she was "a friend: 'I (R.T.) had known Hella for more than a dozen years.'"[^2]
Targ and [[Hal Puthoff]] described her in the *[[Nature (journal)|Nature]]* paper of October 18, 1974 and in later SRI reports as one of "two of our subjects (H.H. and P.P.)," the other being [[Pat Price]], who "had not considered themselves to have unusual perceptual ability before their participation."[^6] Targ and Puthoff's account in the 1976 *[[Proceedings of the IEEE]]* paper calls her "a gifted professional photographer" who "was selected for this series on the basis of her successful performance as a percipient in the EEG experiment described earlier" and who "had no previous experience with apparent paranormal functioning," and records that she had "no strong feelings about the likelihood of her ability to succeed in this task." The paper contrasts her with [[Ingo Swann]], who "had come to our laboratory fresh from a lengthy and apparently successful series of experiments with Dr. [[Gertrude Schmeidler]] at [[City College of New York]]," and with Price, who "felt that he used his remote viewing ability in his everyday life." It describes her series as a nine-experiment replication of the series with Price, the first replication attempted, in which she described a pedestrian overpass target as "a kind of trough up in the air" and drew nested squares at the bottom of the page, and described a barn-like structure with slatted sides, a pitched roof and "light and dark bars on the wall."[^7]
### The 1974 Record
[[David Marks]] wrote in 1982 that of the six transcripts of her series shown to him by the SRI judge [[Arthur Hastings]], "four of the six Hammid transcripts actually carried dates" and "one transcript even carried the name of the associated target"; he listed twenty-four cues ("This is the 18th of September," "Russell Targ has gone to the remote site," "Hal has gone to a second target," "Hella has made a drawing of Hal's first location") from which a judge in [[New Zealand]], using no descriptive material, matched the transcripts better than Hastings had, and reported that Hastings had received three target lists, one randomized and two not. Targ and Puthoff's own account of her had been that she was "a friend: 'I (R.T.) had known Hella for more than a dozen years.'"[^8]
SRI's first progress report of March 1974 records "a preliminary remote viewing pilot experiment" with "a subject (H.H.) previously screened by the EEG correlates experiment": "The target chosen at random was a small red clapboard schoolhouse structure with a bell steeple on top in a miniature golf course. The subject's response was that she saw a red clapboard structure with a steeple that seemed to be artificial as in a movie set." An outside reviewer noted that of six subjects in the EEG work, "one of the six subjects, HH, showed a consistent alpha blocking effort. Therefore, this subject was studied further and most of the data recorded is based on HH's performance." A CIA officer who observed her in 1974 wrote: "Hella is very alert and outgoing; although not insightful. She is very concerned with her performance. Her aim seems to be pleasing the experimenters rather than proving anything to herself." "She does very badly on absolute size estimates. She does very well on indicating lighting conditions, including the presence of steady or pulsing lights. She does not often describe colors, but is very accurate when she does." "There can be no question that Hella can repeatably, although not reliably, produce information not available through normal means." Set to describe an electric typewriter on which the officer had typed for ten minutes, she missed, while [[Russell Targ]], who had been questioning her throughout, "gave a nearly perfect account of the target." Called in by a police lieutenant named Konar, who "had exhausted all available leads" in the murder of a young woman in the [[Stanford University|Stanford]] chapel, she "gave details of the crime location, described the victim and her assailant, indicated the exact location of the fatal wound, alluded to the ritualistic tone of the crime, and traced the victim's movements before the crime as well as the relocation of the body afterwards," the only known error being earrings; Konar wrote SRI a letter and followed her leads; but "none of the data that Hella generated, that has been verified, was unknown to Lt. Konar at the time of this experiment. Therefore, it is possible that Hella received all of her information from the Lt., by some unknown means." The same officer warned that if funding lapsed Puthoff and Targ "will publish everything they have generated," including "their association with unreliable subjects." A cassette of September 19, 1974, is catalogued "Tape 'N' Text Editor and Drill Press, Beacon Russell Targ, Viewer Hella Hammid."[^3]
Schnabel wrote that in the series of nine outbound trials the judge matched five transcripts correctly and ranked her four other transcripts second, and that on one day she told Targ the site before it had been selected by random-number generator, which led Puthoff and Targ to adopt a protocol with ten sealed sites in which she described the target in advance and the target was then chosen by calculator; blind judging matched all four of her transcripts to their targets. Schnabel added that "Hella Hammid was the queen of remote viewers when it came to film canisters."[^9]
### Project Deep Quest
### The 1974 observer's report
Hammid participated in [[Project Deep Quest]] in the summer of 1977, a unique experiment testing whether remote viewing could be performed under extreme environmental conditions. The experiment, conducted in the [[Pacific Ocean]] near Catalina Island, used the deep-sea research submersible *Taurus I*.
A CIA officer who observed her in 1974, his name redacted in the released memoranda, wrote: "Hella is very alert and outgoing; although not insightful. She is very concerned with her performance. Her aim seems to be pleasing the experimenters rather than proving anything to herself." "She does very badly on absolute size estimates. She does very well on indicating lighting conditions, including the presence of steady or pulsing lights. She does not often describe colors, but is very accurate when she does." "There can be no question that Hella can repeatably, although not reliably, produce information not available through normal means." Set to describe an electric typewriter on which the officer had typed for ten minutes, she missed, while Targ, who had been questioning her throughout, "gave a nearly perfect account of the target." She had talked, "without provocation," about "the 'two men from DOD'" who had made her "tense" on a previous visit.[^10]
In one part of the experiment, Hammid worked with Ingo Swann to attempt to identify the locations of previously unidentified seafloor shipwrecks, using maps and dowsing-style intuitive technique. Both subjects independently marked a single location; when the *Taurus I* investigated, the submersible found an uncharted wreck.
During the same visit she was called in by a police lieutenant, [[Walt Konar]], who "had exhausted all available leads" in the murder of a young woman in the [[Stanford University|Stanford]] chapel some weeks before. She "gave details of the crime location, described the victim and her assailant, indicated the exact location of the fatal wound, alluded to the ritualistic tone of the crime, and traced the victim's movements before the crime as well as the relocation of the body afterwards," the only known error being earrings; Konar wrote SRI a letter and followed her leads. The officer noted that "none of the data that Hella generated, that has been verified, was unknown to Lt. Konar at the time of this experiment. Therefore, it is possible that Hella received all of her information from the Lt., by some unknown means." He warned that if funding lapsed Puthoff and Targ "will publish everything they have generated," including "their association with unreliable subjects." A cassette of September 19, 1974, is catalogued "Tape 'N' Text Editor and Drill Press, Beacon Russell Targ, Viewer Hella Hammid."[^10]
In the Air Force's classified component of the experiment, Hammid was sealed inside the *Taurus I* submersible at 500 feet depth, 375 miles from a land-based target she had not been told about. She was given a set of six sealed envelopes and asked to identify which contained a photograph corresponding to a location on land where Puthoff and [[Dale Graff]] were serving as a beacon. Her selection matched the correct target.[^1]
A separate undated memorandum for the record by an officer of the CIA's [[Office of Technical Service]], "Operational Use of Paranormals in Police Activities," reports that "two paranormal subjects being tested at Stanford Research Institute" had produced impressive data on two police cases, the [[Patty Hearst]] kidnapping and a Stanford student homicide, and that an OTS officer had witnessed the sessions in the second.[^11]
### CIA Handler Relationship
### Project Deep Quest, July 1977
Hammid's work was part of the SRI research program funded through the CIA beginning in 1972. The CIA's liaison to the SRI program, [[Kit Green]] of the CIA's Life Sciences Division, oversaw the program in its early years and would have been aware of Hammid's results as they were reported to the agency. Her participation alongside Pat Price and Ingo Swann in the early SRI experiments was cited in the classified reports that Green and his successors used to justify continued CIA funding for the program.
SRI's report of October 1978, *Advanced Threat Technique Assessment*, covering April 18, 1977 to April 15, 1978 for the [[Defense Intelligence Agency]], describes a submersible experiment in July 1977 near [[Santa Catalina Island]] using the *Taurus*, a five-man vehicle made by International Hydrodynamics Company Ltd. of Canada and made available to SRI by [[Stephan Schwartz]] of the [[Philosophical Research Society]] of Los Angeles, who had arranged its use for an underwater archaeology experiment. Six messages were each assigned a Bay Area site; a team went to the site and stayed fifteen minutes while a subject aboard the submersible, "500 miles away," described the team's location and then chose the target from a list and noted the attached message. Four trials were planned. The first was aborted for failure to follow the dive schedule. In the second, on July 16, 1977, at 170 metres in 340 metres of water, the subject began, "A very tall looming object. A very, very huge tall tree and a lot of space behind them. There almost feels like there is a drop-off or a palisade or a cliff behind them"; the target was a giant oak on a hilltop in [[Portola Valley]] and the message "Rendezvous at Pickup Point Three" was correctly obtained. The third was aborted for lack of synchronization. In the fourth, with the submersible on the bottom in 78 metres, the subject described "flat stone flooring, walls, small pool, reddish stone walk, large doors," and the target was a shopping mall in [[Mountain View]]. The report does not name the subjects.[^12]
Hammid was not herself a CIA employee or contractor; she was a civilian research subject who participated in experiments conducted under institutional protocols at SRI.[^1]
Schnabel identified the viewers as Hammid, in the first successful trial at "550 feet beneath the Pacific," and Ingo Swann in the second, with Hammid suffering from seasickness; that the experiments were conducted for the Air Force contract of [[Dale Graff]]; and that Schwartz, a former Navy officer, had persuaded the two to serve as his viewers in a search for undiscovered shipwrecks, finding "some debris that suggested they had hit the right wreck."[^13] [[Annie Jacobsen]], in *Phenomena*, wrote that Hammid and Swann each marked a single location on maps and that the submersible found an uncharted wreck, and that Hammid was sealed in the submersible at 500 feet, 375 miles from a target she had not been told about, with Puthoff and Dale Graff acting as the beacon, and chose from six sealed envelopes the photograph matching the target.[^14]
### Grill Flame, 1979
A memorandum for the record of September 19, 1979, by the Special Activities Office of the [[Army Materiel Systems Analysis Activity]] (AMSAA), reports that the four members of the AMSAA Grill Flame core group visited SRI on August 21 and 22, 1979 "for discussions with the SRI staff and Hella Hammid." It states that she "has participated in the SRI remote viewing (RV) program for the past 5-6 years," that she "originally participated in SRI's RV program as a 'control subject,' basically as a personal favor to Russ Targ, whom she'd known for several years," and that she "is in no way an absolute believer." She told them she had spent three weeks in [[Egypt]] with Stephan Schwartz using a procedure that was "basically coordinate RV in time instead of space," given a site and a date to view such as 200 BC, and had not yet received feedback; and that she and Targ had attended a two-day out-of-body experience seminar led by [[Robert Monroe]] at [[Esalen Institute|Esalen]] during which she slept throughout. The group recorded that she "views lying down with her eyes closed" and draws each impression as it comes, "a compulsive doodler," that she "works practically exclusively with Russ Targ as her interviewer," and that "she did all of the box RV sessions," a 4 by 4 grid of sixteen bins. A separate part of the memorandum records that [[Manfred Gale]] met Puthoff and Targ that morning on the [[Army Science Board]]'s criticism of their evaluation procedure.[^15]
### Later training
Schnabel wrote that Hammid and [[Gary Langford]] were trainees of Ingo Swann's coordinate method, that in May 1980 Swann gave them the coordinates of the erupting [[Mount St. Helens]], and that Swann often told of a target he gave Hammid, a precipice over the [[Khyber Pass]], in which the kinesthetic sense of the site was so strong that her hand "went sharply down, off the paper, and off the table." Schnabel also described a clash between Hammid and the SRI subject [[Keith Harary]], who in his own opinion thought she had begun to see herself as a superpsychic.[^16]
Hammid died at home in Los Angeles on May 1, 1992. In her last letter to Safransky she wrote, "I have looked death squarely in the face most of last year. I have cancer but am fighting it with everything I've got."[^17]
### Footnotes
[^1]: Jacobsen, Annie. *Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis.* Little, Brown and Company, 2017. Puthoff, Harold E., and Russell Targ. "A Perceptual Channel for Information Transfer over Kilometer Distances: Historical Perspective and Recent Research." *Proceedings of the IEEE* 64, no. 3 (March 1976): 329-354 (the primary published SRI remote viewing experimental results).
[^2]: Marks, David F. "Remote Viewing Revisited." *Skeptical Inquirer,* vol. 6, no. 4, Summer 1982, pp. 18-29. https://cdn.centerforinquiry.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/29/1982/07/22165420/p20.pdf Snyder, Harry L., and Arlene G. Snyder. *Summary and Critical Evaluation of Research in Remote Viewing,* Report RV-79-1, final technical report, contract 77F104420, Systemetrics, Inc., Blacksburg, Virginia, June 1, 1979, parts 1 and 2, CIA-RDP96-00791R000100440001-9 and CIA-RDP96-00787R000100260003-2. The sponsor of the contract is not named in the report. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.
[^3]: Puthoff, Harold E. *Perceptual Augmentation Techniques,* progress report no. 1, March 12, 1974, SRI Project 3183, CIA-RDP96-00787R000100010001-1. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection. "Review of Perceptual Augmentation Techniques," unsigned review of SRI progress reports 1 to 3, c. August 1974, CIA-RDP96-00787R000200230001-6. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection. "Experiments with Hella Hammid," CIA memoranda of 1974 with an officer's trip report of November 1974, author's name redacted, CIA-RDP96-00787R000200070006-9 and CIA-RDP96-00787R000200070002-3; cassette catalogue card of September 19, 1974, CIA-RDP79-00999A000400040013-3. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.
[^1]: *Maya Deren Films* (brochure, undated; the credits name a Hella Heyman and an Alexander Hammid), Cinema 16 and Art in Cinema materials, Vogel collection (identifier Vogel_MCHC81-068_B07_F026_DerenFilms), archive.org, https://archive.org/details/Vogel_MCHC81-068_B07_F026_DerenFilms
[^2]: Safransky, Sy. "Hella Hammid." *The Sun,* issue 200, August 1992. https://www.thesunmagazine.org/issues/200/hella-hammid
[^3]: Targ, Russell, "A Tribute to Hella Hammid: The First Woman Remote Viewer," as reproduced on her Find a Grave memorial. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/129802432/hella-hammid The tribute is quoted for what Targ states; it does not mention the name Heyman.
[^4]: Puthoff, Harold E. *Perceptual Augmentation Techniques,* progress report no. 1, March 12, 1974, SRI Project 3183, CIA-RDP96-00787R000100010001-1. "Review of Perceptual Augmentation Techniques," unsigned review of SRI progress reports 1 to 3, c. August 1974, CIA-RDP96-00787R000200230001-6. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.
[^5]: Schnabel, Jim. *Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies.* New York: Dell, 1997, chapter on the early SRI work, read in the archive.org full-text copy, https://archive.org/details/jim-schnabel-remote-viewers-the-secret-history-of-americas-psychic-spies_2
[^6]: Targ, Russell, and Harold Puthoff. "Information Transmission under Conditions of Sensory Shielding," *Nature,* vol. 251, October 18, 1974, pp. 602-607, read in the CIA Reading Room copy CIA-RDP96-00787R000100220001-8 on archive.org.
[^7]: Puthoff, Harold E., and Russell Targ. "A Perceptual Channel for Information Transfer over Kilometer Distances: Historical Perspective and Recent Research." *Proceedings of the IEEE* 64, no. 3 (March 1976): 329-354, section on learner subject S4, read in the SRI report copy CIA-RDP96-00787R000500020001-6 and in the CIA Reading Room copy CIA-RDP96-00787R000200080046-4, archive.org mirror of the STARGATE collection.
[^8]: Marks, David F. "Remote Viewing Revisited." *Skeptical Inquirer,* vol. 6, no. 4, Summer 1982, pp. 18-29. https://cdn.centerforinquiry.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/29/1982/07/22165420/p20.pdf Snyder, Harry L., and Arlene G. Snyder. *Summary and Critical Evaluation of Research in Remote Viewing,* Report RV-79-1, final technical report, contract 77F104420, Systemetrics, Inc., Blacksburg, Virginia, June 1, 1979, parts 1 and 2, CIA-RDP96-00791R000100440001-9 and CIA-RDP96-00787R000100260003-2. The sponsor of the contract is not named in the report. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.
[^9]: Schnabel, *Remote Viewers,* 1997, chapters on the SRI work. Schnabel's figures are his own account of the judging and of Puthoff's protocol and differ from the sum-of-ranks tables in the Proceedings paper cited above.
[^10]: "Experiments with Hella Hammid," CIA memoranda of 1974 with an officer's trip report of November 1974, author's name redacted, CIA-RDP96-00787R000200070006-9 and CIA-RDP96-00787R000200070002-3; "Objective Assessment of SRI Visit," CIA-RDP96-00787R000700090008-0; cassette catalogue card of September 19, 1974, CIA-RDP79-00999A000400040013-3. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection. The warning about "unreliable subjects" is in the same officer's assessment of SRI, CIA-RDP96-00787R000700090008-0.
[^11]: Memorandum for the record, "Operational Use of Paranormals in Police Activities," undated, author redacted, Office of Technical Service, CIA-RDP96-00787R000200130013-4. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.
[^12]: Puthoff, Harold E., Russell Targ, Edwin C. May and Ingo Swann. *Advanced Threat Technique Assessment,* final report, October 1978, covering April 18, 1977 to April 15, 1978, SRI Project 5309, 132 pp., classified by DIA (OT), CIA-RDP96-00788R001300040001-4 and CIA-RDP96-00791R000200270001-7, the submersible section and figures 10 to 13. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.
[^13]: Schnabel, *Remote Viewers,* 1997, chapter on the Deep Quest experiments.
[^14]: Jacobsen, Annie. *Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis.* Little, Brown and Company, 2017.
[^15]: Special Activities Office, U.S. Army Materiel Systems Analysis Activity, memorandum for record, "Visit of AMSAA GRILL FLAME Participants to SRI, 21-22 August 1979," DRXSY-DS, September 19, 1979, CIA-RDP96-00788R002000240011-3. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.
[^16]: Schnabel, *Remote Viewers,* 1997, chapters on Swann's training program and on SRI's internal politics.
[^17]: Safransky, "Hella Hammid," *The Sun,* August 1992.

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---
category: "Intelligence & Government"
tags:
- Pseudonym
- Psi
- Person
- RemoteViewer
- Stargate
summary: "Morris worked with Norm Everheart, who tasked Ken Bell and Mel Riley to remote-view the KGB agent."
summary: "Pseudonym used by Jim Schnabel in Remote Viewers (1997) for a CIA officer who worked with the person he calls Norm Everheart."
---
Jim Morris is a pseudonym [[Jim Schnabel]] used in *Remote Viewers* (1997) for a CIA officer who worked with the person he calls Norm Everheart; the book's list of pseudonyms includes the name.[^2]
[[Jim Morris]] was a [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] counterintelligence officer. He sought assistance from the [[Stargate Project|Grill Flame]] psychics for a case involving a [[KGB]] "illegal" (a deep-cover officer) who had been arrested in South Africa. The KGB agent was not cooperating with interrogations, and Morris hoped the remote viewers could provide information on how the agent was decoding his messages.[^1]
In Schnabel's account, [[Jim Morris]] was a [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] counterintelligence officer. He sought assistance from the [[Stargate Project|Grill Flame]] psychics for a case involving a [[KGB]] "illegal" (a deep-cover officer) who had been arrested in South Africa. The KGB agent was not cooperating with interrogations, and Morris hoped the remote viewers could provide information on how the agent was decoding his messages.[^1]
Morris worked with [[Norm Everheart]], who tasked [[Ken Bell]] and [[Mel Riley]] to remote-view the KGB agent. Bell's "telepathic interrogation" revealed details about the agent's family and a hidden pocket calculator, which was later confirmed to have been used for coding messages. Morris confirmed the accuracy of the remote viewers' descriptions, including the agent's upstairs room, gray clothes, and the presence of two interrogators. This successful operation helped close the case.[^1]
---
[^1]: Schnabel, Jim. *Remote Viewers*. Dell, 1997.
[^1]: Schnabel, Jim. *Remote Viewers*. Dell, 1997.
[^2]: Jim Schnabel, *Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies* (New York: Dell, 1997), "Pseudonyms": "The following names mentioned in the text are pseudonyms," https://archive.org/details/jim-schnabel-remote-viewers-the-secret-history-of-americas-psychic-spies_2.

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10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Peter Maris.md
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@ -1,20 +1,22 @@
---
category: "Intelligence & Government"
tags:
- Pseudonym
- Psi
- Person
- RemoteViewer
- Military
- SRI
- Soviet
summary: "Peter Maris was a CIA physicist who, along with Ken Kress, an engineer from the Office of Technical Service (OTS), tasked Pat Price with remote viewing the mysterious Soviet military research facility at Semipalatinsk (URDF-3)."
summary: "Pseudonym used by Jim Schnabel in Remote Viewers (1997) for a CIA physicist who worked with Ken Kress."
---
Peter Maris is a pseudonym [[Jim Schnabel]] used in *Remote Viewers* (1997) for a CIA physicist who worked with Ken Kress; the book's list of pseudonyms includes the name.[^2]
Peter Maris was a [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] physicist who, along with [[Kenneth A. Kress|Ken Kress]], an engineer from the Office of Technical Service (OTS), tasked [[Pat Price]] with remote viewing the mysterious Soviet military research facility at Semipalatinsk (URDF-3). Maris and Kress were the CIA officials who brought in the coordinates for the site, which was also known as P-NUTS (probable nuclear underground test site) by Air Force intelligence. They knew little about the facility, only that it was a "research facility."[^1]
In Schnabel's account, Peter Maris was a [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] physicist who, along with [[Kenneth A. Kress|Ken Kress]], an engineer from the Office of Technical Service (OTS), tasked [[Pat Price]] with remote viewing the mysterious Soviet military research facility at Semipalatinsk (URDF-3). Maris and Kress were the CIA officials who brought in the coordinates for the site, which was also known as P-NUTS (probable nuclear underground test site) by Air Force intelligence. They knew little about the facility, only that it was a "research facility."[^1]
Maris was present during Price's remote viewing sessions of Semipalatinsk, where Price described a large gantry crane, the construction of large metal spheres, and unique welding techniques. Initially, Maris and Kress were unsure what to make of Price's descriptions, but they later confirmed the existence of the crane and the spheres through satellite photography. The accuracy of Price's remote viewing, particularly his description of the crane, was so impressive that it helped secure funding for SRI's psi research for several years.[^1]
---
[^1]: Schnabel, Jim. *Remote Viewers*. Dell, 1997.
[^1]: Schnabel, Jim. *Remote Viewers*. Dell, 1997.
[^2]: Jim Schnabel, *Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies* (New York: Dell, 1997), "Pseudonyms": "The following names mentioned in the text are pseudonyms," https://archive.org/details/jim-schnabel-remote-viewers-the-secret-history-of-americas-psychic-spies_2.

85
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Robert Lucky.md
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@ -2,22 +2,91 @@
category: "Scientists & Researchers"
tags:
- Person
- Skeptic
summary: "Bell Labs engineer and editor of the Proceedings of the IEEE who published Targ and Puthoff's 1976 remote-viewing paper and ran his own inconclusive trials."
- BellLabs
- IEEE
- Engineer
- Editor
- SRI
- RemoteViewing
- GrillFlame
- PSI
- 1970s
alias:
- Robert Lucky
- Robert W. Lucky
- R. W. Lucky
- Bob Lucky
- Dr. Lucky
summary: "Bell Labs engineer who edited the Proceedings of the IEEE when it published Puthoff and Targ's 1976 remote viewing paper, wrote its editorial, ran six Bell trials in 1975, and called the results ambiguous."
born: 1936-01-09
died: 2022-03-10
location: "Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA"
updated: 2026-09-22
relations:
- type: employed_by
with: "[[Bell Labs]]"
start: 1961
end: 1992
role: "engineer at Holmdel, New Jersey; executive director of the Communications Sciences Research Division from 1982"
fn: 1
- type: employed_by
with: "[[Bellcore]]"
start: 1992
role: "corporate vice-president of applied research"
fn: 1
- type: member_of
with: "[[IEEE]]"
role: "editor of the Proceedings of the IEEE in 1976; later vice-president for publications and executive vice-president"
fn: 1
- type: head_of
with: "[[U.S. Air Force Scientific Advisory Board]]"
start: 1986
end: 1989
role: "chairman"
fn: 1
created: 2026-05-17
updated: 2026-10-05
---
Robert W. Lucky was born in [[Pittsburgh]] on January 9, 1936, and died on March 10, 2022. An engineer at [[Bell Labs]] in [[Holmdel]], [[New Jersey]], he was editor of the *Proceedings of the [[IEEE]]* when it published [[Hal Puthoff]] and [[Russell Targ]]'s "A Perceptual Channel for Information Transfer over Kilometer Distances" in March 1976, and wrote the editorial that accompanied it. Copies of his correspondence with a CIA officer and of a CIA memorandum citing his laboratory's replication of the [[Stanford Research Institute|SRI]] experiments are held in the CIA's STARGATE collection.[^1]
[[Robert Lucky]] was a [[Bell Labs]] scientist and the editor of the prestigious *Proceedings of the IEEE* electrical engineering society journal. He initially hesitated to publish [[Hal Puthoff]] and [[Russell Targ]]'s paper on remote viewing in 1976. However, after Puthoff and Targ visited Bell Labs to answer questions from skeptical scientists, Lucky was impressed.[^1]
### Career
He eventually conducted some of his own informal remote viewing experiments and became convinced of its reality, stating, "Psychic stuff is really not much more far-fetched than some of the physics behind the laser." His decision to publish the paper in a respected scientific journal contributed to the growing, albeit controversial, recognition of remote viewing within the scientific community.[^1]
The history center of the IEEE records that Lucky took a B.S. in electrical engineering at [[Purdue University]] in 1957 and an M.S. and Ph.D. in 1959 and 1961, joined AT&T Bell Laboratories in Holmdel in 1961 to study digital transmission over telephone lines, became executive director of the Communications Sciences Research Division in 1982, and in 1992 left to be corporate vice-president of applied research at [[Bellcore]] in [[Red Bank]]. It states that he served on the IEEE Board of Directors as vice-president for publications and as executive vice-president, as president of the [[IEEE Communications Society]], as editor of several journals including the *Proceedings of the IEEE,* and as chairman of the [[U.S. Air Force Scientific Advisory Board|Scientific Advisory Board of the United States Air Force]] from 1986 to 1989, and that he was a member of the [[National Academy of Engineering]].[^1]
The Army's [[Grill Flame Scientific Evaluation Committee]] visited him at Bell Labs in Holmdel on September 8, 1979, and recorded a different account: "At Bell we spoke with Dr. Robert Lucky, the man who probably started the whole (serious) PSI debate. He did this during his tenure as editor of the IEEE Journal 'Proceedings', by publishing the now famous Targ and Puthoff article." "Bell has no on-going PSI research and given conservative management's feelings against the subject, never will." "Dr. Lucky believes that SRI does not have a bona fide scientific approach. He feels that good research is necessary, but should be carried out by a group of fully qualified scientists and engineers, with very tight experimental protocols." "In 1975, Dr. Lucky attempted a series of six RV tests, following the SRI protocol. Using in-house Bell volunteers, the tests were for the most part failures. But, enough correlations of Subject transcript to actual target were present in one or two trials, that he calls the whole thing ambiguous. He concluded that the issue should be pursued further, but Bell's management called it quits." "Lucky commented that he once proposed to Targ and Puthoff that they allow a 'debugger' like [[James Randi|Randy the Magician]] to watch an SRI RV session. They refused on the grounds that no one believes them anyhow, and did not feel that permitting an extremely vocal critic to intrude into their lives/work would accomplish anything." He held that "legitimate, scientific research should be going on, but the best approach is to do it openly, perhaps with a sponsor like NSF."[^2]
Documents of 1976 give his positions variously as head of the Advanced Data Communications Department at Bell Labs, Holmdel (SRI's letter of March 19, 1976), as "Vice Chairman of the IEEE Publications Board and Division Director at Bell Laboratories" (a CIA memorandum of February 1976), and as head of Transmission Terminal Systems in the Research Department (his own letterhead of June 10, 1976).[^2][^3][^4]
### Publication of the paper, 1976
[[Jim Schnabel]] wrote that Lucky "had initially been inclined to turn the paper down," that after Puthoff and Targ visited Bell Labs "to answer questions from skeptical scientists, Lucky was more impressed," that he "eventually tried some of his own informal remote-viewing experiments, and decided that remote viewing was probably for real," and that a journalist would one day quote him as saying, "Psychic stuff is really not much more far-fetched than some of the physics behind the laser." Schnabel's note gives Puthoff as his source for Lucky.[^5] Targ and Puthoff's note to the 2005 reprint of *Mind-Reach* states that "before the paper was accepted for publication, the editor, Robert W. Lucky, had us make a presentation to the engineering staff of Bell Laboratories to gauge reaction (it was positive!)," and that one reviewer had said "This is the kind of thing that I would not believe in, even if it existed!"[^6]
The editorial introducing the paper, as quoted in the program of the IEEE International Conference on Cybernetics and Society held in Washington in September 1977 (which announced a Puthoff and Targ presentation, "A Scientific Look at ESP"), reads in part: "In a series of experiments carried out at Stanford Research Institute, both experienced subjects and inexperienced volunteers were able to describe scenes being viewed at unknown remote locations by other members of the experimental team, sometimes with great accuracy, and always under carefully designed experimental protocol... We realize that many of our readers will think this an ill-considered decision (to publish this paper), as did one of the engineers we consulted who said, 'This is the kind of thing that I would not believe in even if it existed.'... We believe that the authors have been careful and sincere in the design and reporting of this experiment. Their work deserves scientific consideration and objective criticism... In any event, the paper itself may be the most readable ever published in this journal, and few readers will finish without wondering for at least a moment if indeed ESP might be possible after all."[^7]
### The CIA and SRI files, 1976
An [[Office of Technical Service]] memorandum for the record, OTS/CB Memo #76-18 of February 4, 1976, forwarding SRI's final report on the CIA-sponsored work, states that "the unclassified portion of the SRI investigation is to be published in the IEEE Proceedings in March 1976," that "the acceptance by this prestigious journal, is a significant indicator of interest in this field within the scientific community," and that "a number of laboratories, including that of Dr. R. W. Lucky, Vice Chairman of the IEEE Publications Board and Division Director at Bell Laboratories, have successfully replicated the SRI remote viewing tasks." It records that the [[United States Department of the Navy|Department of the Navy]], the [[Office of Naval Research]] and the [[Naval Electronics System Command]] had independently decided to support SRI. Copies of the memorandum went to the Director of Research and Development on February 20, 1976.[^2]
On March 19, 1976, Puthoff wrote to Dr. F. W. [[Niedenführ]] of the [[Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency]] about [[James Randi]]'s book *The Magic of Uri Geller,* in which Niedenführ's letter to Randi appeared as an appendix. Puthoff's letter states that the March *Proceedings* paper "details the results obtained in over 50 experiments with nine subjects," that "the editorial accompanying the paper was written by Dr. R. W. Lucky, editor of the journal and also head of the Advanced Data Communications Department at Bell Labs, Holmdel," and that "we understand that as part of the review process a group at Bell independently replicated our experiment and obtained results similar to ours. Three other Labs have also replicated the experiment."[^3]
A professor in the department of psychology and sociology of a Philadelphia college wrote to Lucky as editor on April 26, 1976 that the authors had followed "the traditional stratagems of the parapsychologists" and not the experimental method of manipulating independent variables, and so fell short of resolving the question under unambiguous conditions.[^8] On June 10, 1976 Lucky, writing from Holmdel as head of Transmission Terminal Systems in the Research Department, wrote to a CIA officer whose name is redacted: "I would like to thank you for the exceptional dinner which your prepared during my visit to Washington last month. I enjoyed the company of all the guests which had taken the trouble to come. I think you have a fine crew with many diversified interests." He enclosed a copy of a letter from the editor of the Russian edition of the *Proceedings,* who felt "the references to Russian work in this paper are seriously incomplete and outdated" and wished to change the paper in translation, which Lucky called "the only time they have ever proposed changing a paper in translation," and a letter by a correspondent named [[Calkins]], "typical of a number of other letters critical of the work because of the lack of proper controls." He ended: "Make of these what you will."[^4]
SRI's final report of October 1978 for the [[Defense Intelligence Agency]], *Advanced Threat Technique Assessment,* lists among its references "R. Lucky, Bell Telephone Laboratories, Holmdel, N.J. (private communication)."[^9]
### Bell trials of 1975 and the Grill Flame visit, 1979
The Army's [[Grill Flame Scientific Evaluation Committee]], chaired by [[Manfred Gale]], visited him at Bell Labs in Holmdel on September 8, 1979 and recorded: "At Bell we spoke with Dr. Robert Lucky, the man who probably started the whole (serious) PSI debate. He did this during his tenure as editor of the IEEE Journal 'Proceedings', by publishing the now famous Targ and Puthoff article." "Bell has no on-going PSI research and given conservative management's feelings against the subject, never will." "Dr. Lucky believes that SRI does not have a bona fide scientific approach. He feels that good research is necessary, but should be carried out by a group of fully qualified scientists and engineers, with very tight experimental protocols." "He considers the Targ & Puthoff IEEE piece a very important forward step, but underlines that to be credible the procedures they describe must be replicated by many other people and organizations." "In 1975, Dr. Lucky attempted a series of six RV tests, following the SRI protocol. Using in-house Bell volunteers, the tests were for the most part failures. But, enough correlations of Subject transcript to actual target were present in one or two trials, that he calls the whole thing ambiguous. He concluded that the issue should be pursued further, but Bell's management called it quits."[^10]
The committee also recorded that "Lucky commented that he once proposed to Targ and Puthoff that they allow a 'debugger' like [[James Randi|Randy the Magician]] to watch an SRI RV session. They refused on the grounds that no one believes them anyhow, and did not feel that permitting an extremely vocal critic to intrude into their lives/work would accomplish anything"; that he "described the extremely poor treatment given by the news media to PSI research," and "since he was once chastised by his superiors, based on a fabricated story in one of the sensationalist journals, he no longer talks to reporters"; and that he held that "legitimate, scientific research should be going on, but the best approach is to do it openly, perhaps with a sponsor like NSF. Peer review would be an important part of the process." The committee's schedule of visits lists "8 Sep, [[Princeton University]] & Bell Labs, Holmdel, NJ, [[Dean Jahn]] & Dr. Lucky."[^11]
### Footnotes
[^1]: Schnabel, Jim. *Remote Viewers*. Dell, 1997.
[^2]: *Report by the Grill Flame Scientific Evaluation Committee,* December 1979, Manfred Gale, chairman, CIA-RDP96-00788R001300120001-5. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection. The pages on Bell Labs belong to an annex whose heading is withheld from the released copy.
[^1]: "Robert W. Lucky," Engineering and Technology History Wiki, IEEE History Center. https://ethw.org/Robert_W._Lucky
[^2]: OTS/CB Memo #76-18, "Stanford Research Institute (SRI) Investigation into Parapsychology," February 4, 1976, CIA-RDP96-00791R000100460001-7, CIA-RDP96-00787R000200090006-7 and CIA-RDP96-00787R000700020003-2; memorandum for the Director of Research and Development, "Stanford Research Institute Parapsychology Research," February 20, 1976, CIA-RDP96-00787R000700090012-5. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.
[^3]: Puthoff, Harold E., letter to Dr. F. W. Niedenfuhr, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, March 19, 1976, CIA-RDP96-00787R000500240020-1. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.
[^4]: Lucky, R. W., Bell Laboratories, Holmdel, New Jersey, letter of June 10, 1976, CIA-RDP96-00787R000200080042-8. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.
[^5]: Schnabel, Jim. *Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies.* New York: Dell, 1997, chapter on the SRI work and its notes, read in the archive.org full-text copy, https://archive.org/details/jim-schnabel-remote-viewers-the-secret-history-of-americas-psychic-spies_2
[^6]: Targ, Russell, and Harold Puthoff. *Mind-Reach: Scientists Look at Psychic Abilities.* 2005 reprint, note 9 to the added afterword, read in the archive.org full-text copy, https://archive.org/details/mind-reach-scientists-look-at-psychic-abilities-2005-russell-targ-harold-e.-puth
[^7]: Program, IEEE International Conference on Cybernetics and Society, sponsored by the IEEE Systems, Man and Cybernetics Society and the IEEE Washington Section, Washington, D.C., September 19-21, 1977, quoting Lucky's editorial in *Proceedings of the IEEE,* vol. 64, no. 3, March 1976, CIA-RDP96-00787R000200080010-3. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.
[^8]: Letter to Mr. Robert W. Lucky, Editor, *Proceedings of the IEEE,* April 26, 1976, from a faculty member of the Department of Psychology and Sociology, College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Philadelphia (telephone area code 215; name partly illegible in the released copy), CIA-RDP96-00787R000200080043-7. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.
[^9]: Puthoff, Harold E., Russell Targ, Edwin C. May and Ingo Swann. *Advanced Threat Technique Assessment,* final report, October 1978, SRI Project 5309, reference list, CIA-RDP96-00788R001300040001-4 and CIA-RDP96-00791R000200270001-7. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.
[^10]: *Report by the Grill Flame Scientific Evaluation Committee,* December 1979, Manfred Gale, chairman, CIA-RDP96-00788R001300120001-5 and CIA-RDP96-00788R001300120002-4. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection. The pages on Bell Labs belong to an annex whose heading is withheld from the released copy; the second copy contains subparagraphs d, g and h that are not quoted in the first.
[^11]: Same report, annex 2, "Committee Visits and Discussions," CIA-RDP96-00788R001300120002-4 and CIA-RDP96-00788R001300120001-5.

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---
category: "Psychics & Remote Viewers"
tags:
- Pseudonym
- Psi
- Person
- RemoteViewer
- Military
- Stargate
summary: "Hanson was known to 'cool down' before a remote viewing session by reading Bible verses."
summary: "Pseudonym used by Jim Schnabel in Remote Viewers (1997) for a remote viewer."
---
Steve Hanson is a pseudonym [[Jim Schnabel]] used in *Remote Viewers* (1997) for a remote viewer; the book's list of pseudonyms includes the name.[^2]
[[Steve Hanson]] was an Army civilian photo-interpreter and an early member of the [[Stargate Project|Gondola Wish]] (later Grill Flame) remote viewing unit. He was a devout Christian and one of the four Army civilians in the initial group of candidates selected by [[Frederick Atwater|Skip Atwater]] and [[Murray Watt|Scotty Watt]].[^1]
In Schnabel's account, [[Steve Hanson]] was an Army civilian photo-interpreter and an early member of the [[Stargate Project|Gondola Wish]] (later Grill Flame) remote viewing unit. He was a devout Christian and one of the four Army civilians in the initial group of candidates selected by [[Frederick Atwater|Skip Atwater]] and [[Murray Watt|Scotty Watt]].[^1]
Hanson was known to "cool down" before a remote viewing session by reading Bible verses. However, he eventually faded from the remote viewing scene, as he had problems relaxing into the groove of remote viewing itself, often yanking himself out of the "zone" with worries about whether he was doing it correctly.[^1]
---
[^1]: Schnabel, Jim. *Remote Viewers*. Dell, 1997.
[^1]: Schnabel, Jim. *Remote Viewers*. Dell, 1997.
[^2]: Jim Schnabel, *Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies* (New York: Dell, 1997), "Pseudonyms": "The following names mentioned in the text are pseudonyms," https://archive.org/details/jim-schnabel-remote-viewers-the-secret-history-of-americas-psychic-spies_2.

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@ -1,17 +1,19 @@
---
category: "Psychics & Remote Viewers"
category: "Intelligence & Government"
tags:
- Pseudonym
- Psi
- Person
- RemoteViewer
- Military
- Stargate
summary: "Army civilian photo-interpreter and one of the original four candidates selected for the Gondola Wish remote viewing unit in the Stargate Project."
summary: "Pseudonym used by Jim Schnabel in Remote Viewers (1997) for an Army civilian photo-interpreter selected for the Gondola Wish unit."
---
Steve Holloway is a pseudonym [[Jim Schnabel]] used in *Remote Viewers* (1997) for an Army civilian photo-interpreter selected for the Gondola Wish unit; the book's list of pseudonyms includes the name.[^2]
[[Steve Holloway]] was an Army civilian photo-interpreter and an early member of the [[Stargate Project|Gondola Wish]] (later Grill Flame) remote viewing unit. He was one of the four Army civilians in the initial group of candidates selected by [[Frederick Atwater|Skip Atwater]] and [[Murray Watt|Scotty Watt]].[^1]
In Schnabel's account, [[Steve Holloway]] was an Army civilian photo-interpreter and an early member of the [[Stargate Project|Gondola Wish]] (later Grill Flame) remote viewing unit. He was one of the four Army civilians in the initial group of candidates selected by [[Frederick Atwater|Skip Atwater]] and [[Murray Watt|Scotty Watt]].[^1]
---
[^1]: Schnabel, Jim. *Remote Viewers*. Dell, 1997.
[^1]: Schnabel, Jim. *Remote Viewers*. Dell, 1997.
[^2]: Jim Schnabel, *Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies* (New York: Dell, 1997), "Pseudonyms": "The following names mentioned in the text are pseudonyms," https://archive.org/details/jim-schnabel-remote-viewers-the-secret-history-of-americas-psychic-spies_2.