disinfozone/The_Info_Web
1
0
Fork 0
Code Issues Pull requests Projects Releases Packages Wiki Activity Actions

vault backup: 2026-10-08 12:20:40

Browse source
This commit is contained in:
disinfo.zone 2026-10-08 12:20:41 -04:00
parent fbf0935d58
commit b51e2a359a
No known key found for this signature in database
89 changed files with 2265 additions and 717 deletions
Download patch file Download diff file Expand all files Collapse all files

15
10 - PEOPLE/(T-Z)/Russell Targ.md
View file

@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
---
created: 2026-05-17
updated: 2026-09-22
updated: 2026-10-08
title: Russell Targ
aliases:
- Russell Targ
@ -36,9 +36,15 @@ The Army's [[Grill Flame Scientific Evaluation Committee]], which met Targ, Puth
The Snyders' evaluation of 1979 wrote of one SRI target that "Targ, who selected the coordinates, had also worked for Sylvania," that "Targ was an accomplished amateur magician," quoting his pages in Mind-Reach on "sleights" and "illusions," and of an airport drawing, "Was it drawn by Russell Targ?"; David Marks found in the fourth Price transcript Targ's remark to the subject, "Nothing like having three successes behind you," on a page missing from the copy SRI gave John Wilhelm.[^4]
### The DARPA network experiments, 1976 to 1977
A 1977 SRI final report by Hal Puthoff, Targ and [[Edwin May]], "Advanced Threat Technique Assessment," lists in its section on long-distance remote-viewing experiments the "Use of the [[DARPA]] teleconferencing computer network to provide date and time records of experiments in progress," with experiments from New York to California, New York to Dayton, and New Orleans to California.[^5] Papers of the 1977 International Conference on Cybernetics and Society describe the conversational TALK mode of the DARPA net being used for post-experiment feedback between a subject in California and an experimenter in New York.[^6]
[[Michael Zarbo]], writing in 1992, describes a 1976 test, reported in The New York Times, in which Targ acted as a conduit in New York City while a viewer at SRI in California typed his impressions on a terminal linked to DARPA's computer network. He writes that the target, chosen only minutes before the test, was the central water fountain in Washington Square Park.[^7]
### The 1996 Memoir
Targ requested his CIA files in May 1994, "moved from number 540 in line to number 474" in a year, and with "two Washington lawyers, two congressmen, and a senator" obtained them on August 11, 1995. His memoir of 1996 recounts Price telephoning Puthoff in June 1973 to say he had been "doing that kind of psychic thing for years, catching crooks when he was the police commissioner in Burbank"; the protocol of sixty target cards and a calculator with a random-number key, run by the laboratory director Bonnar Cox, with Targ and the viewer in a Faraday cage on the second floor of the Radio Physics building; Price's drawing of the Rinconada Park pools, "about a hundred feet in diameter (it was actually hundred and ten feet)," with water tanks that the city's centennial report showed had stood there in 1913; and the session of July 10, 1974, in which Price, given coordinates by "a physicist from the CIA," said: "I am lying on my back on the roof of a two or three story brick building. It's a sunny day. The sun feels good. There's the most amazing thing. There's a giant gantry crane moving back and forth over my head. As I drift up in the air and look down, it seems to be riding on a track with one rail on each side of the building." Targ added that Price described "a giant, 'sixty-foot diameter metal sphere'" being assembled from "thick metal gores" with welding difficulties, and that *Aviation Week* of May 2, 1977, reported satellite photographs of Soviet technicians manufacturing "huge extremely thick steel gores" for "a large sphere estimated to be about 18 meters (57.8 feet) in diameter." He quoted the *Chicago Tribune* of August 13, 1977, on Director [[Stansfield Turner]]'s disclosure that the agency "had found a man who could 'see' what was going on anywhere in the world through his psychic powers," dropped in 1975: "'He died,' Turner said, 'and we haven't heard from him since.'" Of the agency's position in 1995 he wrote: "It is as though the CIA discovered that there were indeed little men on Mars, but concluded that since they were pretty small and didn't have weapons, they weren't worth investigating any further."[^5]
Targ requested his CIA files in May 1994, "moved from number 540 in line to number 474" in a year, and with "two Washington lawyers, two congressmen, and a senator" obtained them on August 11, 1995. His memoir of 1996 recounts Price telephoning Puthoff in June 1973 to say he had been "doing that kind of psychic thing for years, catching crooks when he was the police commissioner in Burbank"; the protocol of sixty target cards and a calculator with a random-number key, run by the laboratory director Bonnar Cox, with Targ and the viewer in a Faraday cage on the second floor of the Radio Physics building; Price's drawing of the Rinconada Park pools, "about a hundred feet in diameter (it was actually hundred and ten feet)," with water tanks that the city's centennial report showed had stood there in 1913; and the session of July 10, 1974, in which Price, given coordinates by "a physicist from the CIA," said: "I am lying on my back on the roof of a two or three story brick building. It's a sunny day. The sun feels good. There's the most amazing thing. There's a giant gantry crane moving back and forth over my head. As I drift up in the air and look down, it seems to be riding on a track with one rail on each side of the building." Targ added that Price described "a giant, 'sixty-foot diameter metal sphere'" being assembled from "thick metal gores" with welding difficulties, and that *Aviation Week* of May 2, 1977, reported satellite photographs of Soviet technicians manufacturing "huge extremely thick steel gores" for "a large sphere estimated to be about 18 meters (57.8 feet) in diameter." He quoted the *Chicago Tribune* of August 13, 1977, on Director [[Stansfield Turner]]'s disclosure that the agency "had found a man who could 'see' what was going on anywhere in the world through his psychic powers," dropped in 1975: "'He died,' Turner said, 'and we haven't heard from him since.'" Of the agency's position in 1995 he wrote: "It is as though the CIA discovered that there were indeed little men on Mars, but concluded that since they were pretty small and didn't have weapons, they weren't worth investigating any further."[^8]
### Footnotes
@ -46,4 +52,7 @@ Targ requested his CIA files in May 1994, "moved from number 540 in line to numb
[^2]: 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. Marks, David, and Richard Kammann. "Information Transmission in Remote Viewing Experiments," *Nature,* vol. 274, 1978, pp. 680-681; quoted from Puthoff, Targ, and Tart, "Information Transmission in Remote Viewing Experiments: II," with Tart, "Reanalysis of SRI Remote Viewing Experiments," submitted to *Nature,* January 1979, CIA-RDP96-00787R000200090017-5, archive.org mirror.
[^3]: *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.
[^4]: 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. 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
[^5]: Targ, Russell. "Remote Viewing at Stanford Research Institute in the 1970s: A Memoir," *Journal of Scientific Exploration,* vol. 10, no. 1, 1996, pp. 77-88, reprinted from Targ and Katra, *Mind-to-Mind* (1996); read in a Wayback Machine copy of the journal's PDF.
[^5]: Harold E. Puthoff, Russell Targ and Edwin C. May, "Advanced Threat Technique Assessment," Stanford Research Institute, 1977, CIA-RDP96-00791R000200270001-7. https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00791R000200270001-7.pdf
[^6]: Proceedings, International Conference on Cybernetics and Society, IEEE Systems, Man and Cybernetics Society, Washington, D.C., September 19 to 21, 1977, CIA-RDP96-00787R000200080055-4. https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00787R000200080055-4.pdf
[^7]: Michael E. Zarbo, "Remote Viewing: Parapsychological Potential for Intelligence Collection?" master's thesis, Defense Intelligence College, November 1992, CIA-RDP96-00789R002600250001-6, citing William J. Broad, "Pentagon is said to Focus on ESP for Wartime Use," *The New York Times,* January 10, 1984, section C. Sole source for the account of the 1976 test as carried here. https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00789R002600250001-6.pdf
[^8]: Targ, Russell. "Remote Viewing at Stanford Research Institute in the 1970s: A Memoir," *Journal of Scientific Exploration,* vol. 10, no. 1, 1996, pp. 77-88, reprinted from Targ and Katra, *Mind-to-Mind* (1996); read in a Wayback Machine copy of the journal's PDF.