The_Info_Web/10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Lyn Buchanan.md

created	updated	title	aliases	category	tags	summary	born	location	relations
2026-05-15	2026-10-05	Lyn Buchanan	Lyn Buchanan Leonard "Lyn" Buchanan Leonard Buchanan Sergeant Lyn Buchanan	Psychics & Remote Viewers	Person RemoteViewer Military PSI Stargate SunStreak CRV ProblemsSolutionsInnovations Author	Army sergeant brought into the Fort Meade remote viewing unit in 1984 on General Stubblebine's order, who served until 1992 as viewer, database manager and trainer, then founded the CRV training firm Problems Solutions Innovations.	1939-07-28	Alamogordo, New Mexico	type with start end role fn employed_by U.S. Army 1974 1992 Army linguist and computer systems specialist; sergeant first class, remote viewer, database manager, property book officer and trainer at Fort Meade from 1984 2 type with start end role fn participant_in Sun Streak 1984 1992 viewer and session monitor of the Fort Meade unit under INSCOM and then DIA control 8 type with start role fn employed_by Defense Intelligence Agency 1992 computer systems analyst after retirement from the Army 14 type with start role fn employed_by Albert Stubblebine 1992 gave remote viewing workshops at UFO and New Age conferences for the retired general until a falling-out 13 type with start role fn member_of Psi Tech 1990 supplier of raw viewing data to Ed Dames's private psychic investigation firm, with Morehouse, Paul Smith and Mel Riley 11 type with start role fn founded Problems Solutions Innovations 1992 executive director; data analysis firm that became a Coordinate Remote Viewing training firm after 1995 2 type with role fn founded Assigned Witness Program pro bono remote viewing for police and public agencies, begun after the 1995 declassification 14 type with role fn member_of International Remote Viewing Association member of the board of directors 15

Leonard "Lyn" Buchanan was a U.S. Army linguist and computer specialist who was transferred to the remote viewing unit at Fort Meade in 1984 and served there until 1992. His own biography calls him a sergeant first class; Jim Schnabel's list of sources calls him a first sergeant. In the unit he was a viewer, a session monitor, the keeper of the database of session data, the property book officer and a trainer.¹

Before the unit

According to the biography published by his firm, Buchanan began as a military computer specialist on the Nike Ajax and Nike Hercules missile systems, left the service for twelve years, during which he took two bachelor's degrees, in psychology and in linguistics, and a master's in linguistic psychology, and taught foreign languages in East Texas. He re-entered the Army in 1974 as a linguist in German, Russian and Spanish, served four years in Japan, where he also learned Japanese and Mongolian and, he says, became the only Mongolian linguist in the services, returned to the Defense Language Institute for a higher-level Russian course, and was posted for four years to the US Intelligence Field Station at Augsburg, Germany, where he also worked as a systems designer and programmer.² The reference work Contemporary Authors gives his degrees as a bachelor's in psychology and linguistics and an M.A. in linguistic psychology, and a home in Alamogordo, New Mexico, New Mexico.³

Recruitment

Schnabel wrote that in early 1984, at Augsburg, Buchanan was asked to demonstrate a piece of software that integrated Army intelligence computers across his sector of NATO, that the program crashed, that the colleague who had been tampering with it said he had made one small change, and that hundreds of other computers on the network crashed at the same moment, as Buchanan's anger rose. When Major General Albert Stubblebine, commander of United States Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM), came to Augsburg for a change of command, he took Buchanan into the base commander's new office and asked, "Did you crash my computers?" Buchanan answered, "Yes, sir, I did"; Stubblebine said "Far fucking out!" Schnabel wrote that an aide had heard officers discuss the crash and that Stubblebine, who believed the program should be augmented with psychokinesis, offered him a place in "a special project." Lieutenant Colonel Brian Buzby and Joe McMoneagle came to Augsburg a month later to speak with Buchanan and, over dinner, with his wife, Linda, about how exposure to psychic phenomena might change him and his marriage.⁴

Buchanan's own account places the event in 1982. Contemporary Authors records that "an incident occurred in 1982 that brought his psychic abilities to the attention of General Albert N. Stubblebine"; his firm's biography says that after a psychokinetic event "parts of which are still classified" in Augsburg, the INSCOM commander decided to transfer him to Fort Meade "where he planned to have Lyn affect and/or destroy enemy computer systems," a plan "aborted for funding reasons," after which Buchanan became one of the unit's controlled remote viewers.²³ Schnabel wrote that the Army's personnel command briefly rescinded Buchanan's orders as unjustified and potentially harmful to his career, and that Stubblebine telephoned and demanded they be restored.⁵

The Fort Meade unit

Schnabel described Buchanan as one of Stubblebine's handpicked recruits of early 1984, with Dawn Lutz and, later, Angela Dellafiora, chosen for supposed psychokinetic ability rather than remote viewing talent: "Whether or not Buchanan had any real PK abilities, there was just no use for them in the program." He wrote that Buchanan "didn't perform badly," and was "respected as a good monitor and a teacher of RV techniques," and that, because the budget did not allow Stubblebine's recruits to be sent to Stanford Research Institute, they were expected to learn Ingo Swann's technique from others at Fort Meade who had been taught it.⁶ In the spring of 1984 Buchanan took the Hemi-Sync course at the Monroe Institute with Lutz, Colonel John B. Alexander and Stubblebine's secretary; Schnabel recounted that during a tape he felt his arm glow and become translucent, his first out-of-body experience.⁷

Buchanan and Ed Dames ran practice sessions in Coordinate Remote Viewing for Dellafiora and others while Paul H. Smith lectured. During the unit's years under the Defense Intelligence Agency, when operational taskings dwindled, Schnabel wrote, Buchanan set up a computer database of remote viewing session data. He monitored Smith in a demonstration for officials of the Pentagon's anti-drug Joint Task Force Four in Key West, Florida, which Schnabel said both men judged was undermined by Dellafiora's being coached by the officials' answers. When the unit was asked in 1989 and 1990 to help find Manuel Noriega in Panama, Buchanan wrote on his session paper "Ask Kristy McNichol," a note that, Schnabel wrote, no one acted on. Schnabel also placed him, with Smith, Mel Riley and Gabrielle Peters, among the viewers Dames ran against a "possible event" target in 1987.⁸

When the Gulf War began in early 1991, Schnabel wrote, only four remote viewers were left at Fort Meade: Buchanan, a DIA civilian named Greg Sloan, Dellafiora and Robin Dahlgren; they received occasional taskings, including the hunt for mobile SCUD launchers in western Iraq. Buchanan later told Schnabel of the unit's last years under Fernand Gauvin: "we didn't have any customers left."⁹

David Morehouse and Psi Tech

Schnabel recorded that Captain David Morehouse, after arriving at the unit in the summer of 1988, trained with Smith, Dames and Buchanan. Schnabel listed Buchanan among his sources for the passage on Morehouse, and credited Buchanan, who he wrote was told by Morehouse, with the report that Morehouse was working on a Saturday-morning children's cartoon show for Hanna-Barbera about a team of superheroes who use psi and other non-lethal powers.¹⁰ Buchanan was among the viewers Dames said would supply raw data to Psi Tech, the private psychic investigation firm formed by Dames and Morehouse in 1990 with Stubblebine as chairman.¹¹

On September 21, 1995, Edwin May of the Cognitive Sciences Laboratory wrote, in a memorandum whose addressee is redacted, that he had obtained a tape of "an hour program that aired a few weeks ago in England," Channel 4's version of Schnabel's article in The Independent, which "features Mel Riley and Ed Dames but includes interviews with MG (ret) Edmund Thompson (former ARMY ACSI), Adm. Stansfield Turner, Dr. Hal Puthoff, Lyn Buchanan, and John Alexander"; "in my opinion, the show is sensational and makes no attempt to separate fact from fiction. By implication it attempts (and perhaps accomplishes) to raise the credibility of Dames, Riley, and Alexander by association with generals, admirals and the Intelligence community." May added that "Some of the mentioned individuals are seeking private council with regard to legal action, given that the appropriate DIA authorities are seemingly unwilling to act," and that the ABC program 20/20 was preparing a piece involving Morehouse.¹²

After the Army

In 1992, with twenty years of service, Buchanan retired and, Schnabel wrote, joined Stubblebine, who had moved in with a psychiatrist in New York who specialized in "UFO abductions"; he held remote viewing workshops at UFO enthusiast and New Age conferences for the general, and after a falling-out returned with his wife to Maryland, did computer work for the government and set up his own company, Problems Solutions Innovations (PSI).¹³ The firm's biography says he settled in Mechanicsville, Maryland, worked for a Washington-area computer consulting company while building PSI as a data analysis business, and continued to train people within the intelligence community; that after the declassification of the program in late 1995, PSI "moved into the remote viewing field full time"; and that it holds a database of its trained viewers' work.² Coast to Coast AM's guest biography says he worked as a computer systems analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency after his retirement, and that when the existence of the unit became public in 1994 he "was quickly overwhelmed with applications for training," which led him to start the Assigned Witness Program, in which trained viewers do pro bono work for police and other public service organizations, originally to help police find missing children.¹⁴

The Seventh Sense: The Secrets of Remote Viewing as Told by a "Psychic Spy" for the U.S. Military, with a foreword by Jim Marrs, was published by Paraview Pocket Books in 2003. In it Buchanan wrote that remote viewing was used during the Iran hostage crisis, the Chernobyl disaster disaster and the Gulf War. Booklist's reviewer wrote "The more you read, the more you wonder if this exposé is really a put-on. But ... the author, at least, seems to believe what he is saying," and Publishers Weekly wrote "Skeptics will vigorously debate Buchanan's claims for the efficacy of remote viewing, but true believers in search of government certification for their views will be greatly reassured by this odd and interesting book."³ Buchanan was a member of the board of directors of the International Remote Viewing Association, and his firm describes its work with police and other agencies, with corporate clients and in training.¹⁵ Coast to Coast AM has hosted him repeatedly, most recently on February 4, 2026, when he discussed his involvement in Project Stargate, and in 2023 he described a "Remote View Ranch" as a haven for remote viewers.¹⁴

Footnotes

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1. Problems>Solutions>Innovations, "Lyn Buchanan," https://www.crviewer.com/lyn.php; Schnabel, Jim, Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies, Dell, 1997, "Characters" list ("First Sergeant Leonard 'Lyn' Buchanan, USA (Ret.). Remote viewer, Fort Meade unit, 1984-92"). ↩︎

2. Problems>Solutions>Innovations, "Lyn Buchanan," https://www.crviewer.com/lyn.php. ↩︎

3. "Buchanan, Leonard (Lyn Buchanan)," Contemporary Authors, Gale, reproduced at Encyclopedia.com, https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/buchanan-leonard-lyn-buchanan, quoting Ilene Cooper, Booklist, February 15, 2003, p. 1020, and Publishers Weekly. ↩︎

4. Schnabel, Remote Viewers, Dell, 1997, chapter on Stubblebine's recruits. ↩︎

5. Schnabel, Remote Viewers, Dell, 1997, footnote to the chapter on Stubblebine's recruits. ↩︎

6. Schnabel, Remote Viewers, Dell, 1997, chapters on Stubblebine's recruits and the decline of the unit. ↩︎

7. Schnabel, Remote Viewers, Dell, 1997, chapter on the Monroe Institute and Stubblebine. ↩︎

8. Schnabel, Remote Viewers, Dell, 1997, chapters on the Sun Streak unit, its demonstrations and its operations of the late 1980s. ↩︎

9. Schnabel, Remote Viewers, Dell, 1997, chapters on the Gulf War and the unit's last years. ↩︎

10. Schnabel, Remote Viewers, Dell, 1997, chapters on Morehouse, with source notes. ↩︎

11. Schnabel, Remote Viewers, Dell, 1997, chapter on Dames's activities after leaving the unit. ↩︎

12. May, Edwin, Cognitive Sciences Laboratory, "Re: Publicity and things," September 21, 1995, CIA-RDP96-00791R000100030077-1, read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection, https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp96-00791r000100030077-1. ↩︎

13. Schnabel, Remote Viewers, Dell, 1997, chapter on the end of the program. ↩︎

14. Coast to Coast AM, "Lyn Buchanan," guest biography and appearances, https://www.coasttocoastam.com/guest/buchanan-lyn-6275/. ↩︎

15. "Buchanan, Leonard (Lyn Buchanan)," Encyclopedia.com (member of the board of directors, International Remote Viewers Association); Problems>Solutions>Innovations, https://www.crviewer.com/crv/. ↩︎