The_Info_Web/10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Tom McNear.md

aliases	category	tags	summary	location	relations	created	updated
Tom McNear Thomas McNear Thomas M. McNear Captain Tom McNear Tom Nance CPT McNear Tom Nance	Military	Person Military ArmyIntelligence Counterintelligence Stargate CenterLane CRV	Army military intelligence captain trained by Ingo Swann in Coordinate Remote Viewing from 1982, who wrote the February 1985 CRV working paper and later served in counterintelligence until retirement as a lieutenant colonel in 1997.	Fort Meade, Maryland	type with start end role fn employed_by United States Army Intelligence and Security Command 1981 1985 captain, military intelligence; project officer in the Grill Flame and Center Lane office at Fort Meade 3 type with start end role fn participant_in Coordinate Remote Viewing 1982-07 1984-05 first Army trainee of Ingo Swann's CRV course at SRI, through Stage VI, with a Stage VII phonetics series 5 type with start end role fn reported_to Brian Buzby 1983-08 1985 project officer in the Center Lane office under Lieutenant Colonel Buzby 10 type with end role fn employed_by U.S. Army 1997 counterintelligence and counterespionage officer; retired in uniform in 1997 as a lieutenant colonel, then a civilian intelligence officer until 2019 1	2026-05-15	2026-10-09

Thomas M. McNear was a captain of military intelligence who became, with Rob Cowart, one of the first two soldiers trained by Ingo Swann in Coordinate Remote Viewing (CRV). The Omega Institute describes him as a retired lieutenant colonel who served in the Army's remote viewing program from 1981 to 1985, the first member of the program personally trained by Swann in CRV and the only member Swann trained through what the biography calls Stage VII (phonetics).¹ Jim Schnabel gave him the pseudonym "Tom Nance" in Remote Viewers (1997); the book's list of pseudonyms includes the name, and an Omega Institute biography of McNear quotes Schnabel's passage on Swann's "true protégé" as "Tom (McNear)."²

Assignment

Army documents give his name as "THOMAS M. McNEAR, CPT, MI, Project Officer." A memorandum of March 16, 1982 on the purchase of maps, signed by him, is addressed within the human intelligence office of United States Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM). On April 5, 1982, when Doug Olin of the Office of Management and Budget was briefed on Grill Flame at Building T-2561 at Fort Meade, the memorandum of the briefing lists, as an item of the agenda, "Presentation of completed but unevaluated projects (CPT's Cowart and McNear)"; Olin was classed in it as "an honest skeptic."³ In the writer Jim Schnabel's account, Captains Rob Cowart and "Tom Nance," fresh from the advanced intelligence course at Fort Huachuca, joined the unit in early 1982 and began traveling to Stanford Research Institute every few weeks for Swann's training; the Omega Institute's biography renders the same passage of Schnabel's book as concerning "Tom (McNear)," and the working paper of 1985 discussed below contains a Stage Six model and a Stage Seven session on Tulum.⁴

Training, 1982 to 1984

The Army's chronology records that in July 1982 Grill Flame personnel "begin training at SRI-International in the new Coordinate Remote Viewing (CRV) method." The first of McNear's own reports on that training is cited as a trip report of July 6 to 22, 1982 on Stages One through Three. A memorandum he wrote on March 24, 1983 reports a TDY to SRI from March 7 to 15, 1983 to learn Stage Three, in which the viewer produces aesthetic impact statements, sketches, "trackers" and movement at the site, and a second memorandum dated April 18, 1983 reports the second two-week period, from April 4 to 15, with lectures on refined ideograms and on "bilocation," the viewer's simultaneous perception at the site and in the viewing room, with a "Bilo Break" called when the viewer was too deep in the signal or too analytical. He wrote that a new student had been introduced in that period, "a female civilian employee (GS-9) of NSA," that "there were numerous problems with her selection as a trainee that were overlooked by NSA," and that her presence cut into Swann's time with him. Schnabel names the National Security Agency trainees as Debbie Norfeld and her monitor Richard Henderson and wrote that the agency withdrew when it learned their office had not authorized their participation.⁵

A third trip report records Stage Three training at SRI, Menlo Park, California, from August 21 to September 2, 1983, with a transition to Stage Four planned and a quarrel between Hal Puthoff and Swann over the end-of-year reports and the renewal of Swann's contract for fiscal 1984. On September 27 and 28, 1983 he traveled by Amtrak to New York City to inspect SRI's facilities there for Swann's work, which he found "less than desirable," and on the telephone told Puthoff that SRI's people "who understand the requirements of our contracts" should fly to New York "with check-book in hand to rent suitable space."⁶ During July and August 1983 he was the point of contact, at extension 2656, on the forms changing the contracting officer's representative for SRI contract DAKF27-83-C-0018, first from Lieutenant Colonel Robert Jachim to Frederick Atwater effective July 11 and then from Atwater to Lieutenant Colonel Brian Buzby effective August 17.⁷ On October 3, 1983 the list of personnel assigned to the Security Systems Planning Division of the 902d Military Intelligence Group named Buzby, Smith, McNear, Atwater and Joe McMoneagle.⁸

On April 13, 1984 the INSCOM commander, Major General Albert Stubblebine, toured the Center Lane buildings and "spent approximately 10 minutes in a one-to-one session with CPT McNear behind closed doors."⁹ On April 24, 1984 Buzby wrote to Puthoff that "upon completion of Stage IV training by Tom McNear" under the contract he had not received the written evaluations of the trainee's progress after each two-week session or the final report within 30 days of each stage, and he asked about the status of research on Stage V and about "the trainee currently in Stage VI with regard to Stage V."¹⁰

SRI's July 1984 report on Stage IV, covering February 1983 to April 1984, describes a trainee identified only as Trainee #059. The trainee began Stage IV in December 1983 and "completed the requirements for S-IV on 22 March 1984."¹¹ Puthoff's December 1984 report on Stages V and VI calls the same trainee "Army INSCOM Trainee #059," the "first individual to complete the six-stage training package described in this report."¹² The reports do not name the trainee. The Stage IV completion date falls within a month of the April 24, 1984 letter's reference to "completion of Stage IV training by Tom McNear," and the program, unit and stage sequence match. The records found do not establish whether Trainee #059 is McNear.

In May 1984, Schnabel wrote, near the close of his formal training, Swann put McNear through a valedictory series of sessions that were bound into a red folder and shown to Army and Defense Intelligence Agency officials. Schnabel listed among the targets Grand Coulee Dam, drawn accurately and modeled in white clay, with an SRI photographer later sent to photograph the dam from the same angle; a site in Tulsa, Oklahoma that McNear took by Stage Four for a university and named as Oral Roberts University; Bunker Hill Monument; Grant's Tomb; and a ruin in Mexico for which, in Stage Seven phonics, he produced "Tuh," "too," "luh," "loo," and the name "Tulum." Schnabel noted that Swann gave constant feedback during such sessions and apparently was not blinded to the targets. He wrote that Swann considered McNear his true protégé, "the formal prototype for the CRV-trained military remote viewer," with training begun in late 1982 that would not end until Swann's contract with INSCOM expired two years later.¹³

A DIA memorandum of April 23, 1985, signed by Buzby, states that SRI-International's training of three source personnel by its subcontractor ended in December 1984 "upon completion of the training contract" and that in-house training modeled on Swann's procedure, with its progressive multi-stage acquisition process, took over in January 1985.¹⁴

The Omega Institute biography adds that McNear was a member of Swann's five-person team that on June 15, 1984 remote viewed the planet Mars. A transcript in the CIA collection headed "Mars Exploration, May 22, 1984" records a monitor and a subject, the subject not named, given a sealed envelope reading "The planet Mars. Time of interest approximately 1 million years B.C." and the geographic coordinates "40.89 degrees north, 9.55 degrees west"; the subject reported "a pyramid or pyramid form" and "very large people," "very tall...thin."¹⁵ Annie Jacobsen reported that McNear needed two and a half years to reach Stage Six, the stage in which the viewer builds a three-dimensional clay model of the target; that photographs of his models beside pictures of the targets were used in briefings of the National Security Council; and that Swann told colleagues McNear was "better than me."¹⁶

The 1985 working paper

"Coordinate Remote Viewing, Stages I-VI and Beyond," dated February 1985 and marked as a working paper with "Project Officer" and the name withheld, runs to eleven chapters and a glossary. It is written in the first person. Its introduction says it provides "the basics that have been learned in the past three years of training" and that CRV "must be learned by doing." Its sample session, a Stage I to Stage VII sequence, ends with ideograms and phonetic sounds ("tooloo," "the site is the Mayan Temple at Tolum") and a photograph of the Stage VI model, captioned as the Tulum ruins in Mexico. A Stage V example used the site of Grant's Farm outside St. Louis.¹⁷

Its tenth chapter, headed "Future Stages," is presented as "the personal thoughts of the writer," the product of "the last three and one-half years of training." It proposes Stage VII "Analytics," the ability to make yes/no decisions without analytical overlay, developed by Swann; Stage VIII "Phonetics/Sonics," with the example of "Carribah," produced when tasked against Kariba Dam; Stage IX "Telepathic Signals," in two phases, receiving and transmitting; Stage X "Remote Action," or psychokinesis, with phases of interaction with objects at the site and teleportation of things from and to it; and Stage XI "Altering the Dimensionality at the Site," in which time at the site "could be frozen, moved forward, or moved back." The writer says: "I realize these concepts are difficult to grasp and impossible to believe, but, they are a natural flow of the signal." The conclusions state: "After four years of training I know the CRV training program is a usable program for instructing personnel to RV."¹⁷ Jacobsen reported that a forty-one-page Department of Defense how-to manual of 1985 with this title was by McNear and was declassified in 2000.¹⁶

Departure and later career

McNear did not wish to remain at Fort Meade. In Jacobsen's account he cited the program's inconsistent funding, the deaths of two members from cancer, and the medical retirement for cancer of Cowart, his fellow trainee and friend; he said he had become very withdrawn; and the Army granted his transfer. Schnabel wrote that "Nance" was gone by the end of 1985, that he left "to get back to ordinary life," that his marriage and Army career had suffered from the remote viewing work, and that he took a post overseas; Schnabel also recorded that, after Nance's divorce, he and Swann traveled together to the Yucatan Peninsula, where Nance visited Tulum and experienced "a certain strange thrill that told him he had already been there."¹⁸ Shortly afterward, Schnabel wrote, a viewer in the unit circulated memoranda about "the loss of their comrade, Tom," in the context of the hostility General William Odom directed at the unit.¹⁸

The Omega Institute states that McNear continued in counterintelligence and counterespionage and "was the leader of a team that neutralized eight persons committing espionage against the United States," retired from uniformed service in 1997, served as a civilian intelligence officer until 2019, "culminating in 45 years of service," and holds a master's degree in counseling psychology from Saint Mary's University in San Antonio, Texas.¹

Footnotes

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1. Omega Institute, "Thomas (Tom) McNear," teacher biography, https://www.eomega.org/workshops/teachers/thomas-tom-mcnear. ↩︎

2. Jim Schnabel, Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies (Dell, 1997), "Pseudonyms," https://archive.org/details/jim-schnabel-remote-viewers-the-secret-history-of-americas-psychic-spies_2; Omega Institute, "Thomas (Tom) McNear," https://www.eomega.org/workshops/teachers/thomas-tom-mcnear. ↩︎

3. McNear, Thomas M., "Purchasing of Maps," memorandum for the record, March 16, 1982, CIA-RDP96-00788R001200060026-6, https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp96-00788r001200060026-6; "Briefing for Mr. Doug Olin," memorandum for the record, April 12, 1982, CIA-RDP96-00788R001100270001-1, https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp96-00788r001100270001-1. ↩︎

4. Schnabel, Jim, Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies, Dell, 1997, chapters on the arrival of Nance and Cowart and on Swann's training program; Omega Institute, "Thomas (Tom) McNear," quoting Schnabel. ↩︎

5. McNear, Thomas M., "CRV Stage Three Training," March 24, 1983, CIA-RDP96-00788R001200220006-0, https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp96-00788r001200220006-0; McNear, Thomas M., "CRV Stage Three Training," April 18, 1983, CIA-RDP96-00788R001200220005-1, https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp96-00788r001200220005-1; "List of Events from September 1977 to January 1986," CIA-RDP96-00788R001100020001-8, https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp96-00788r001100020001-8; Schnabel, Remote Viewers, Dell, 1997. The trip report of July 6 to 22, 1982 is cited in both 1983 memoranda. ↩︎

6. McNear, Thomas M., "Trip Report 21 Aug-2 Sep 83," October 5, 1983, CIA-RDP96-00788R001200220002-4, https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp96-00788r001200220002-4; McNear, Thomas M., "Trip Report 27-28 Sep 83," October 5, 1983, CIA-RDP96-00788R001200220001-5, https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp96-00788r001200220001-5. ↩︎

7. Jachim, Robert J., "Redesignation of COR," July 13, 1983, CIA-RDP96-00788R001500120013-0, https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp96-00788r001500120013-0; DIO Contracting Division reply, July 22, 1983, CIA-RDP96-00788R001500120012-1; McNear, Thomas M., "Redesignation of COR," August 8, 1983, CIA-RDP96-00788R001500120011-2, https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp96-00788r001500120011-2; McNear, Thomas M., "Redesignation of COR," August 17, 1983, CIA-RDP96-00788R001500120010-3, https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp96-00788r001500120010-3; Buzby, Brian, "CENTER LANE TDY/Leave Schedule 6-16 Sep 83," August 31, 1983, CIA-RDP96-00788R001600520010-8. ↩︎

8. INSCOM, "Personnel Assignments," October 3, 1983, CIA-RDP96-00788R001700300005-7, https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp96-00788r001700300005-7. ↩︎

9. "Visit by CG, INSCOM 13 Apr 84," memorandum for record, April 16, 1984, CIA-RDP96-00788R001700220008-3, https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp96-00788r001700220008-3. ↩︎

10. Buzby, Brian, letter to Dr. Harold E. Puthoff, "Contract Requirements," April 24, 1984, CIA-RDP96-00788R001500120028-4, https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp96-00788r001500120028-4. ↩︎

11. SRI International, "Special Orientation Techniques: S-IV," final report, SRI Project 5590, covering February 1, 1983 to April 30, 1984, July 1984, CIA-RDP96-00788R001800200001-1. cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00788R001800200001-1.pdf. ↩︎

12. Harold E. Puthoff, "Special Orientation Techniques: S-V, S-VI," CENTER LANE-3 final report, December 1984, CIA-RDP96-00788R001800280001-3. cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00788R001800280001-3.pdf. ↩︎

13. Schnabel, Remote Viewers, Dell, 1997, chapter on Swann's training program, including its footnotes on Swann's feedback to Nance. ↩︎

14. Buzby, Brian, "SUN STREAK Training Report," memorandum for Dr. Vorona, April 23, 1985, with the "Training Report, First Quarter 1985," CIA-RDP96-00789R002100160001-1, https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp96-00789r002100160001-1. ↩︎

15. Omega Institute, "Thomas (Tom) McNear"; "Mars Exploration, May 22, 1984," transcript, CIA-RDP96-00788R001900760001-9, https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp96-00788r001900760001-9. ↩︎

16. Jacobsen, Annie, Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis, Little, Brown and Company, 2017. ↩︎

17. "Coordinate Remote Viewing: Stages I-VI and Beyond," working paper, February 1985, CIA-RDP96-00788R001000400001-7, https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp96-00788r001000400001-7. ↩︎

18. Schnabel, Remote Viewers, Dell, 1997, chapters on Swann's training program and on the unit's decline; Jacobsen, Phenomena, 2017. ↩︎