disinfozone/The_Info_Web
1
0
Fork 0
Code Issues Pull requests Projects Releases Packages Wiki Activity Actions
The_Info_Web/10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/Mel Riley.md

43 KiB
Raw Blame History

created updated title aliases tags category summary location relations
2026-05-17 2026-10-09 Mel Riley
Mel Riley
Melvin C. Riley
Melvin Riley
Mel C. Riley
Person
RemoteViewer
Military
Stargate
Psi
GrillFlame
SunStreak
ImageryAnalyst
1970s
1980s
1990s
Psychics & Remote Viewers Army photo-interpreter and one of the original Fort Meade remote viewers, who signed Grill Flame agreements in February 1979, returned to the unit in 1986 and retired from the Army in July 1990. Racine, Wisconsin
type with start end role fn
employed_by United States Army 1969-07-07 1990-07 draftee, photo-interpreter, later first sergeant; retired at twenty years' service 1
type with start end role fn
participant_in Operations Security Group 1976 1977 photo analyst on opsec security tasks 6
type with start end role fn
participant_in Systems Exploitation Detachment 1977 1978 photo-interpreter in the opsec teams attached to the Systems Exploitation Team 7
type with start end role fn
participant_in Gondola Wish 1978-02 1978-12 candidate in the Fort Meade remote viewing team that Schnabel calls Gondola Wish 9
type with start end role fn
participant_in Stargate Project 1978-02 1990-07 original remote viewer 9
type with start end role fn
participant_in Grill Flame 1979-02-08 1981-06 volunteer remote viewer; one of three full-time viewers 19
type with start role fn
reported_to Murray Watt 1979-02-08 Grill Flame project officer who witnessed his agreement and consent statement 21
type with start end role fn
participant_in Rapid Deployment Force 1984-07 1986-06 first sergeant of a reconnaissance battalion company, Savannah, Georgia 39
type with start end role fn
participant_in Sun Streak 1986-07 1990-07 monitor, analyst and remote viewer at DT-S 41
type with start end role fn
reported_to Frederick Atwater 1986-07 1990-07 operations officer of DT-S 41
type with start role fn
participant_in Psi-Tech 1990 moonlighting remote viewer expected to supply raw data 49

Mel Riley (Melvin C. Riley) was a U.S. United States Army photo-interpreter and one of the original remote viewers of the Fort Meade unit that operated under the names Gondola Wish, Grill Flame, Center Lane and Sun Streak and is recorded in the Stargate Project, and he retired from the Army in July 1990 after twenty years' service.1

Early life

Riley grew up in Racine, Wisconsin, Wisconsin. He was shy and solitary, with a special love of the outdoors, and as a teenager he camped in the snow, hunted deer and canoed.2 Jim Schnabel described him as five feet eight, slim and fit, with wavy blond hair and an Irish, vaguely leprechaunish face, with an eagle tattooed on one arm, a rabbit on the other and a large winged dragon across his chest. His eyes opened widely and intensely, and he was a morning person who liked the dark calm of the predawn hours.3

Schnabel wrote that Riley had "a certain mild spaciness, a proneness to the zone." In preadolescence, in an empty field near the lake where he often found arrowheads and other Native American artifacts, Riley smelled woodsmoke and saw an Indian village with tepees, dogs, men and women, smoking meat and running children. One tall and dignified man in the village looked at him and seemed to wave.4

Army service, 1969 to 1977

Riley was working in Racine as a machine repairman, like his father, when he learned that he had been drafted. The date was July 7, 1969, and he was twenty-three. At boot camp in Kentucky an Army intelligence recruiter offered a three-year enlistment with training as a photo-interpreter. He trained at Fort Holabird in Maryland and was posted to the 7405th Operations Squadron, a joint Army and Air Force unit at Rhein-Main Air Base in Wiesbaden, West Germany.4 A 1995 newspaper article by Schnabel gives his civilian work in 1969 as apprentice machine repairman in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and describes him as an Army intelligence soldier who "eventually wound up at Fort Meade as an imagery interpreter, a specialist in the analysis of overhead reconnaissance photographs."5

The Wiesbaden unit flew covert reconnaissance missions along the air corridors through East Germany in aircraft disguised as cargo planes. Riley served as an aerial observer on some missions and as a photo analyst at his light table in Wiesbaden. Schnabel wrote that he found a new Soviet artillery piece on a flatcar in an East German rail yard, hidden under a canvas canopy, sketched it from a feeling about what it was, and that satellite photographs later confirmed the sketch. He earned a number of medals and served two three-year tours at Wiesbaden.6

In 1976 Riley was posted to Fort Meade in the Operations Security Group, a red team whose task was to spy on U.S. military facilities in order to find and correct security lapses. He analyzed photographic intelligence on the installations from satellites, aircraft and hand-held cameras. One target was the Army's experimental XM-1 tank, then in gunnery trials at Aberdeen Proving Ground at the head of Chesapeake Bay; his team took a United States Coast Guard boat fitted with long-range cameras into the bay to observe the trials.6

Selection, 1977 to 1979

Down the hall from Riley's office in building 4554 was the Systems Exploitation Team, set up by Brigadier General Edmund Thompson of the Army Intelligence Agency. In early 1977 a fellow sergeant there, who kept books on extrasensory perception, psychokinesis and out-of-body experiences on his shelf, told Riley that the Soviets and some Eastern European countries were using psychics to spy on U.S. intelligence targets. Riley asked whether the Army would ever undertake such a project and said that if it did he wanted to be involved.7 The 1995 article states that in 1977 Riley "heard about plans for a remote-viewing unit, and got himself selected as one of its founder members."5

Frederick Atwater arrived at Fort Meade in the summer of 1977 and was assigned to one of the opsec teams, which became part of the Systems Exploitation Detachment. Schnabel wrote that Atwater proposed a small remote viewing team to the head of the detachment, that the proposal was approved by General Thompson, then the Army's assistant chief of staff for intelligence, and that the project was initially given the code name Gondola Wish, with Major Murray Watt as its commanding officer.8

Atwater and Watt generated a list of a few hundred candidates, including photo-interpreters from the National Photographic Interpretation Center, and interviewed them, telling them that the questions were a general survey on psi that the United States Army Intelligence and Security Command commander had ordered. Riley recognized that he was being considered for Gondola Wish. After a first round the officers cut the list to about twenty, and at a second interview Riley was told that the Army was considering a team to be trained as psychic spies for opsec missions. He said he was interested. In early 1978 he was ordered to a secure room across from Colonel Robert Keenan's office in building 4554, where ten or eleven candidates, Atwater and Watt gathered for a short briefing: the unit was experimental, its members would serve part-time and remain attached to their old units, and there was interest at high levels.9 The group included several photo-interpreters, among them Hartleigh Trent, who had been Riley's instructor at Fort Holabird eight years earlier, as well as Ken Bell, Fernand Gauvin and Joe McMoneagle.9

Riley's first session was an outbound exercise in a makeshift room in building 4554, with Atwater as monitor and holding a portable cassette recorder and Watt as the target at a guest house for visiting officers. Riley saw a manhole cover, a sidewalk and a few other vaguely defined items, and Schnabel reports that the session was not accurate. Before further sessions could be held, word came down that remote viewing was a form of "human use experimentation" requiring informed consent and review by the Army's human use board, and Riley and the others filled out the consent paperwork. A restart was authorized after a few months.10 An INSCOM psychologist, Dr. Dick Hartsell, interviewed and tested the viewers early in 1978 and did not see them again.11 The six most promising members of the team (Riley, McMoneagle, Bell, Gauvin, Trent and a sixth viewer) were then sent to Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, California for about two weeks as subjects in outbound remote viewing experiments. Schnabel wrote that they were told they were going to learn SRI's methods but that Atwater and Watt wanted SRI to evaluate them, and that SRI sent all six back with the comment that they seemed good enough to use in operations.10

In a later session in which Watt was again the target, Riley reported tasting chocolate and seeing a glass jar of coins and then a road and a group of cars. Watt drove Riley and Atwater to a Volkswagen dealership a few miles from Fort Meade and said that he had arrived late, having stopped at a 7-Eleven where he bought a chocolate bar next to a jar of coins for the March of Dimes.12 When General Thompson decided to try a session himself, Watt brought Riley, by then regarded as a good monitor as well as a viewer, to the Pentagon, where Riley guided Thompson as he tried to describe the location of Major Stone, an outbound experimenter who had gone to the Alexandria train station.13

The INSCOM chronology of the program lists "GONDOLA WISH established" under September 1977 with the comment "Designed as an OPSEC support mission to mimic HOIS remote viewers to determine US vulnerability." It lists "Selection of remote viewers and interviewers" under December 1978 to January 1979 with the comment "Of the 251 personnel considered for GRILL FLAME, 117 were interviewed and six individuals were actually selected for training," "Beginning of orientation training at SRI-International" under April 1979 with the comment "Six INSCOM personnel begin training at SRI-International in Remote Viewing," and the "First operational Remote Viewing session" under September 4, 1979.14 The 902d Military Intelligence Group's assessment of August 25, 1978 describes Gondola Wish as a plan to train military intelligence personnel at the Monroe Institute,15 and a memorandum of May 18, 1978 records interviews by the institute on May 17 of "selected trainee volunteers for project Gondola Wish."16 A 902d memorandum of September 25, 1978 states that "the 902d's concept, unclassified title GONDOLA WISH, is cancelled."17

Grill Flame, 1979 to 1981

Schnabel wrote that late in 1978, citing "preliminary results and high level interest" from General Thompson and others at the Pentagon and Central Intelligence Agency, the Fort Meade unit began to move away from its opsec function, that Thompson gave it three slots for full-time remote viewers, Riley, Bell and McMoneagle, and that the unit became known as the Special Action Branch. In Schnabel's account the code name Gondola Wish disappeared at that point and Grill Flame, a Pentagon code name covering both the Fort Meade unit and the work at SRI, took its place.18

Riley signed a Grill Flame volunteer security agreement dated February 8, 1979. In it he swore never to divulge Grill Flame information and acknowledged that his possession of psychic abilities was classified and could not be divulged. He signed as an E-6 of the 902d Military Intelligence Group with the position "Senior Image Interpreter," and the Grill Flame project officer at HQ INSCOM witnessed the form.19 A second Grill Flame security agreement dated February 8, 1979 has a continuation page witnessed by Atwater of the 902d, on which Riley's position is given as imagery interpreter.20 A volunteer consent statement in his name, in which he consents to "training designed to enhance inherent psychic abilities" and to participate in INSCOM intelligence projects using his psychic abilities, is witnessed by Watt.21

On April 20, 1979 Riley signed a statement that he had received the explanation in "Information About Remote Viewing for Participants." The sheet states that the maximum frequency at which a viewer may be asked to perform is two sessions per day and no more than three sessions per week, and that "There is no evidence of any adverse physical, psychological and/or social effects on the remote viewer from participation in this activity."22

An undated draft INSCOM protocol for Applied Remote Map Sensing is signed "Melvin C. Riley, SFC," as "Grill Flame Training NCO." The draft defines remote map sensing as a process by which a person identifies the location of a remote object or person by focusing attention on the target while concentrating on a map, possibly using a pendulum as a focusing aid, and states that no drugs, hypnosis or stimuli would be used.23

In late summer 1979 Riley remote-viewed a new Chinese nuclear device at Lop Nor. Schnabel wrote that on the first morning of the tasking Riley spent an hour on the couch and sketched a shape that looked like a basketball with two large funnels sticking out of opposite ends, "an hourglass on its side," and that McMoneagle later drew a detailed diagram with the same hourglass-shaped object at its center. U.S. Air Force officials who received Atwater's summary told him he lacked the clearance to be told what the object was, a Critical Nuclear Weapons Design Information clearance. Schnabel wrote that the device turned out to be a design element the Chinese had not been thought capable of incorporating into their bombs. In an afternoon session on the same day Riley sensed a broad desert, concentric rings and a tower, an airplane and a bomb being dropped, and then nothing; McMoneagle's later session described an explosion that had not gone nuclear.24

Schnabel wrote of an opsec tasking in which an Air Force security team gave Atwater a blurry photograph. Riley described "a strange batlike flying-wing shape" with a bulbous cockpit and control mechanisms that looked like strings with light inside them. Atwater passed the sketches to the Air Force team, which asked for the photograph back and for the targeting to stop. Years later Atwater saw the B-2 Stealth bomber rolled out on television, and Schnabel wrote that the Air Force had used fiber-optic control lines in the bomber to reduce its radar signature.25

Schnabel also wrote that Riley was run against a Soviet T-72 tank that U.S. intelligence had bought through an international arms merchant from an Eastern European general. Riley sensed a heavy, dark vehicle on a rail car and sketched it; Atwater gave the session data to Watt, who telephoned the Defense Department officials who had brought the tasking. Atwater recalled the general as Polish and Riley as Romanian.26

Schnabel wrote that Bell was first run against a KGB illegal under interrogation, in a session that Atwater monitored and that the CIA officer Schnabel calls Norm Everheart heard from the control room, and that Bell learned of a pocket calculator among the man's possessions. Riley was later run against the same target and also came up with a pocket calculator. Everheart took the information to CIA headquarters and gave it to the counterintelligence officer Schnabel calls Jim Morris, who contacted the South African counterintelligence officials running the interrogation. Asked about the calculator, they first said they had found no such thing, and a few days later admitted that one of their group had found a calculator among the man's possessions and taken it home.27 In 1995 Riley described the tasking himself: his unit was asked to remote-view a KGB colonel caught spying and under interrogation by South Africa counterintelligence officers, a "hard nut to crack" whose method of passing information out of the country could not be determined, and Riley said he "saw" the man playing with "a pocket calculator-type thing." Riley said that the calculator turned out to be a covert communications device and that when the South Africans presented the data to their captive he "broke down and co-operated."28

Riley described the aftereffects of an intense session as a high. Schnabel quoted him in a chapter epigraph: "It's like a high, only it's a natural high." Schnabel wrote that after a long session Riley once walked across the parking lot at building 2560 and threw his car keys into a trash dumpster while the other viewers watched, and that Riley compared the state to his first parachute jump in the Army, when so much adrenaline was in his system that he almost did not feel his feet touch the ground.29

Schnabel wrote that the viewers were tasked "literally hundreds of times" in late 1979 and early 1980 on the American hostages in Iran Hostage Crisis, and that for Riley and the others it was gratifying to be part of the effort but that the relentless taskings on similar targets led to burnout. Schnabel described the barrier as one at which a viewer's data turned to garbage and the viewer became emotionally fragile and acquired "a certain vacant stare." In April 1980 Riley ran Hartleigh Trent in a session in which Trent described American soldiers rappelling from helicopters in a desert, and a few days later Watt told the six full- and part-time members of the unit to pack, and they were sequestered in a motel in Laurel, Maryland, Maryland, for the rescue attempt. Riley monitored Trent there; on the morning of April 25 the unit watched President Jimmy Carter announce the failure at Operation Eagle Claw.30

A memorandum for the record dated April 17, 1980 and signed by the training officer records that at 1515 hours on April 16, 1980 the undersigned made contact "as directed by LTC Watt" with a person whose name is redacted, who requested information relating to remote viewing sessions conducted against the Iran hostage situation and asked specifically about fortifications and the "boat incident." Arrangements were made to have SFC Riley contact him at 1630 hours that afternoon with the information requested, and SFC Riley's notes concerning the conversations were attached as an enclosure. A second paragraph records that at 0900 hours on April 17, 1980 the same person called SFC Riley once again to confirm some information discussed the previous afternoon.31

Two versions of a memorandum dated June 1, 1981 and titled "Location of UH-1H," addressed to Major O'Keefe and signed "Melvin C. Riley, Project Analyst," record the debriefing of an "undeveloped source" about a missing UH-1H helicopter. The first, based on debriefings of March 27 and May 30, 1981, describes an unidentified town with an old Spanish mission, a loaf-shaped mountain, a possible Indian village, a landmark called "Piedra Blanca" and a possible microwave tower to the northwest of the crash site.32 The second gives azimuths and distances from reference points at about 4 degrees south and 79 degrees west and places the crash site within three kilometers of "Piedra Blanca." Each states that the information is "unconfirmed and unevaluated."33 Schnabel described a tasking to find a U.S. helicopter that had gone down in a remote corner of Peru, after a Pentagon satellite picked up what seemed to be its locator beacon, with Bell as the viewer in his account and Riley named in his notes as a source.34

Germany, Savannah and the closing of the Army unit

Schnabel wrote that Grill Flame's managers kept a nucleus of the original members at the unit in 1981 and that when orders came sending Riley to a posting near Wiesbaden, his old station, Atwater and officials higher in the program could have changed them, but Riley did not want them changed. He saw that the unit was on "relatively firm ground" with an increasing budget and a new generation of recruits coming, and promised himself he would return when the tour ended.35

In Germany Riley returned to his old reconnaissance unit and kept up informal remote viewing. Schnabel wrote that in 1984 he applied for transfer back to the unit and was accepted, and that in the summer of 1984, shortly before he was to leave Germany, Brian Buzby telephoned from Fort Meade to say that the unit he was returning to was about to become extinct.36 An INSCOM approval sheet prepared by Buzby as action officer records the origin of the action as the decision of the commanding general of INSCOM and subsequent approval by the Army assistant chief of staff for intelligence and the Secretary of the Army to discontinue the INSCOM Center Lane Project and transfer its operational and research efforts, and records a meeting between Buzby and Major General Garrison Rapmund on August 1, 1984.37 A Center Lane-series access roster lists "RILEY Melvin C." with the rank SFC.38

Riley was instead assigned to the Pentagon's Rapid Deployment Force in Savannah, Georgia, Georgia, where he was first sergeant of a company of about forty soldiers in a battalion that flew reconnaissance missions over Central America, mostly from Honduras, using a Mohawk aircraft with a side-looking radar pod.39

Sun Streak, 1986 to 1990

Schnabel wrote that when it became clear that the Defense Intelligence Agency would keep the unit alive, Atwater arranged Riley's transfer; the Army's Personnel Command, which wanted to keep him in the Rapid Deployment Force, was overridden by the office of Jack Vorona at the DIA, and in the summer of 1986, after a five-year absence, Riley arrived back at Fort Meade.39 A DIA memorandum of September 19, 1985 set the objectives of the Sun Streak Prototype Operational Group for January 1986 to January 1988: approximately 80 percent of its operational effort for a remote viewing intelligence utility assessment and 20 percent for response to current intelligence collection requirements, with tasking the exclusive responsibility of the office of the Assistant Deputy Director for Scientific and Technical Intelligence, DIA.40

By then the unit was part of the Scientific and Technical Intelligence Directorate at DIA as DT-S, with the DIA code name Sun Streak replacing the Army's Center Lane. Riley was hired back only as a monitor and analyst, working under Atwater with Ed Dames and Fern Gauvin as assistant operations officers, alongside Paul H. Smith; the only faces he recognized from before were Atwater's and Gauvin's.41 Schnabel wrote that Riley and the others who arrived after Ingo Swann's training program ended learned Coordinate Remote Viewing from those Swann had trained and used it alongside the deeper altered-state methods, and that early in 1987 Riley, Smith and other CRV viewers described lasers at a satellite-tracking and communications facility at Dushanbe in the Soviet Union and, eight to nine months in the future, large igloos or domes that began to be constructed six months later.42 Schnabel wrote that Riley and Smith also supplied data on Iranian weapons emplacements, especially Chinese-made Silkworm anti-ship missiles along the Persian Gulf in the later stages of the Iran-Iraq War, and that DT-S worked on the Lebanon hostage crisis and on counternarcotics taskings.43

Schnabel wrote that Dames arranged "advanced training" targets chosen for their effect on the viewer and that on one of them Riley, in a deep trance, described a stadium whose roar turned out to be the Colosseum in Rome around 100 A.D., after which Dames pulled him out and Riley was in a "zombie mood."44 When someone brought the unit a photograph from the National Photographic Interpretation Center of an object that the Pentagon considered an "enigma," Riley, monitored by Dames and given only random-number coordinates, sketched a disk-shaped craft with a rounded bottom and was then shown an overhead reconnaissance photograph of an object flying or hovering at low altitude near a large lake.45

In late 1987 Dames ran Riley, Smith, Lyn Buchanan and another viewer against a "possible event" target supplied by the branch chief, and Schnabel wrote that their descriptions converged on an aerial vehicle with a large payload, red and white colors, an obese pilot, sled-like runners, and, in Riley's sketch, eight objects out in front of it. Dames concluded that a terrorist nuclear attack was planned and set out to find a secure telephone; the branch chief and the others, waiting for him, told him that the target was Santa Claus and his sleigh. Schnabel wrote that the prank was Riley's, in retaliation for the bilocations he had endured on advanced training targets.46

In 1988 a Defense Department Inspector General team arrived at the DT-S offices. Schnabel wrote that Riley and the other viewers were ordered by their bosses to make themselves scarce whenever IG personnel were around and that one of the unit's senior members used the document shredder for months before the team arrived and after it left, and that the IG report concluded that DT-S was not ready to become an operational intelligence-gathering unit and recommended that it be shut down.47 The 1995 article states that Dames and Riley both claimed that some of those responsible for the unit responded "very much in the spirit of Oliver North." "A lot of things," Riley said, "were being shredded and disposed of which probably would not have been appropriate had the IG team come across them."48

Dames left DT-S in the late summer of 1988, and Riley and the others gave him a party and a plaque citing his "untiring, selfless, dedication to the study of, and understanding of, alternate universes and parallel dimensions."47

Retirement, 1990

Vorona announced his retirement at the end of 1989 and SRI's Pentagon contract was not renewed. Riley, who by Schnabel's account had been in "retirement mode" for some time, decided he had had enough. His twenty years were up, and he put in his papers and left the Army in July 1990, shortly before the Gulf War. He moved to a small town in Wisconsin among woods and lakes.1

Schnabel wrote that after Dames and David Morehouse formed Psi-Tech to use moonlighting remote viewers as a psychic investigation team for private clients, Morehouse, Smith, Riley, Buchanan and others were to provide the raw data and Dames to analyze it.49

Wisconsin

Schnabel wrote that Riley kept in touch with the Fort Meade unit from Wisconsin as it declined and was not much disturbed by it, since it had long been clear what was going to happen, and that Riley worked at a museum in a town near his home as assistant curator, maintaining exhibits of Native American and pioneer life, organizing new exhibits and guiding tourists and schoolchildren. He lived in a house whose backyard bordered a branch of the Wolf River (Wisconsin).50 The 1995 article states that Riley "helps run a local museum," canoes, fishes and hunts deer, and is "an expert on local Indian lore."51

Schnabel wrote that Riley had always been fascinated by Indian lore and read more deeply on it after retiring, practiced Native American dances and handicrafts, and was treated by some local tribes almost as one of their own. He made or was given ornate costumes and headdresses, built a large tepee in his backyard and was invited to festivals and ritual dances from which white men were normally excluded; a local medicine society of Indian healers gave him an otter-skin medicine bag. Schnabel wrote that when something difficult needed doing, such as a change in the weather or the healing of a sick relative, Riley would sequester himself and focus his "Indian medicine" on the situation.50 The 1995 article states that Riley has "not a drop of Native American blood in him" and belongs to a "medicine society," described there as a kind of club for properly initiated Native American seers and healers.51

A Find a Grave memorial records a 1SGT Melvin C. Riley, born April 10, 1946 and died April 25, 2020, buried at the Central Wisconsin Veterans Memorial Cemetery at King, Waupaca County, Wisconsin, with the inscriptions 1SG US Army, SSG US Army and PVT1 US Army Vietnam. Schnabel states that the remote viewer was twenty-three on July 7, 1969, thirty-three and a staff sergeant in September 1979, and first sergeant of a Rapid Deployment Force company from 1984 to 1986. Records found do not establish whether the man buried at King is the remote viewer.52

Statements to Schnabel, 1995

In August 1995 The Independent on Sunday published Schnabel's article on the Fort Meade unit, and the Foreign Broadcast Information Service transmitted it on the wire in five takes the same day. Riley is the named source for the KGB colonel episode above, and said of the unit's end that "The word is that they're going to kill it."48

The article states that Ed Dames and Riley considered that Angela Dellafiora had achieved an undue influence on the unit when she began giving personal channeling sessions to Vorona and other officials. "Their eyes would be shining when they came out of those sessions," Riley recalled. "They were told all the nice things they wanted to hear, which reinforced Angela's position within the unit." Of Dames, Riley said: "Everybody sort of looked at Ed as a loose cannon."53 Riley told Schnabel: "There are no lasting side-effects to remote-viewing," "other than the fact that it may change your whole life..."51

Riley also told Schnabel that other viewers had heard laughter in the "Deep-Mind" sessions associated with Dames: "It reminded me of a bunch of little gremlins in the background."54

Ed May, director of the Cognitive Sciences Laboratory in Palo Alto, wrote on September 21, 1995 that he had obtained a videotape of an hour-long program that had aired a few weeks earlier in England on British Channel 4, which presented Schnabel's piece in video form and featured Riley and Dames with interviews of Thompson, Admiral Turner, Hal Puthoff, Lyn Buchanan and John Alexander. In May's opinion "the show is sensational and makes no attempt to separate fact from fiction," and 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."55

Footnotes

  1. Schnabel, Jim. Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies. Dell, 1997, chapter 22, "A Haunted House.". Schnabel's notes give Riley as the source for his departure. ↩︎

  2. Schnabel, Jim. Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies. Dell, 1997, chapter 2, "The Dream Team.". Schnabel's notes give Riley as the source for the passages on his youth. ↩︎

  3. Schnabel, Jim. Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies. Dell, 1997, chapter 1, "The Zone.". Schnabel's notes give Riley as the source for the opening passage. ↩︎

  4. Schnabel, Jim. Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies. Dell, 1997, chapter 2, "The Dream Team.". ↩︎

  5. Schnabel, Jim. "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Psi." The Independent on Sunday (London), August 27, 1995, The Sunday Review, pp. 10-13, as transcribed in the FBIS wire "UK: U.S. Use of 'Psychic Spies' Reported," August 27, 1995, CIA-RDP96-00791R000100030073-5, PDF p. 7. https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00791R000100030073-5.pdf ↩︎

  6. Schnabel, Jim. Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies. Dell, 1997, chapter 2, "The Dream Team.". ↩︎

  7. Schnabel, Jim. Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies. Dell, 1997, chapter 2, "The Dream Team.". ↩︎

  8. Schnabel, Jim. Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies. Dell, 1997, chapter 2, "The Dream Team.". Schnabel's notes credit Riley for the name Gondola Wish and state that Atwater "vaguely remembers it." ↩︎

  9. Schnabel, Jim. Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies. Dell, 1997, chapter 2, "The Dream Team.". Schnabel's notes state that the account of the screening and selection process comes from the recollections of Atwater, Riley and McMoneagle. ↩︎

  10. Schnabel, Jim. Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies. Dell, 1997, chapter 2, "The Dream Team.". ↩︎

  11. Schnabel, Jim. Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies. Dell, 1997, chapter 5, "Bouncing Off the Walls.". ↩︎

  12. Schnabel, Jim. Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies. Dell, 1997, chapter 2, "The Dream Team.". ↩︎

  13. Schnabel, Jim. Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies. Dell, 1997, chapter 2, "The Dream Team.". ↩︎

  14. US Army Intelligence and Security Command, "List of Events from September 1977 to January 1986," p. 1, CIA-RDP96-00788R001100020001-8. https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00788R001100020001-8.pdf ↩︎

  15. 902d Military Intelligence Group, GONDOLA WISH assessment report, August 25, 1978, CIA-RDP96-00788R002000160001-3. https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00788R002000160001-3.pdf ↩︎

  16. 902d Military Intelligence Group, memorandum for Chief, OPSEC Support Division, "GONDOLA WISH (U)," May 18, 1978, signed Frederick H. Atwater, 2LT, MI, CI Studies Section, CIA-RDP96-00788R002000160007-7. https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00788R002000160007-7.pdf ↩︎

  17. 902d Military Intelligence Group memorandum, "GRILL FLAME," September 25, 1978, signed Robert E. Keenan, CIA-RDP96-00788R001200240011-2. https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00788R001200240011-2.pdf ↩︎

  18. Schnabel, Jim. Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies. Dell, 1997, chapter 2, "The Dream Team.". Schnabel's notes cite an INSCOM memorandum of 1981 for the Army memo quoted and give Atwater, Riley and the INSCOM papers as sources for the code name Grill Flame. ↩︎

  19. Grill Flame Volunteer Security Agreement, Melvin C. Riley, dated 8 FEB 79, witnessed by the Grill Flame project officer, HQ INSCOM, CIA-RDP96-00789R002100150051-7. https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00789R002100150051-7.pdf ↩︎

  20. Grill Flame Security Agreement, Melvin C. Riley, dated 8 February 79, with continuation page dated 8 Feb 79 witnessed by Frederick Atwater, 902d MI Gp, CIA-RDP96-00789R002100150052-6, pp. 1-2. https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00789R002100150052-6.pdf ↩︎

  21. Grill Flame Volunteer Consent Statement, Melvin C. Riley, witnessed by Murray B. Watt, undated, CIA-RDP96-00789R002100150050-8. https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00789R002100150050-8.pdf ↩︎

  22. "Information About Remote Viewing for Participants," signed by Melvin C. Riley and a witness on 20 Apr 79, CIA-RDP96-00789R002100150052-6, pp. 3-4. https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00789R002100150052-6.pdf ↩︎

  23. INSCOM, "Proposed Grill Flame Protocol" and "Applied Remote Map Sensing Protocol," undated, signature block on p. 4, CIA-RDP96-00788R001100200001-8. https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00788R001100200001-8.pdf ↩︎

  24. Schnabel, Jim. Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies. Dell, 1997, chapter 2, "The Dream Team.". Chapter 1, "The Zone," opens on the morning of the tasking in September 1979. Schnabel's notes give Riley, Atwater, McMoneagle, Graff (1995) and two researchers formerly associated with the program as sources for the Chinese nuclear device. ↩︎

  25. Schnabel, Jim. Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies. Dell, 1997, chapter 3, "Psi-INT.". Schnabel's notes give Atwater as the source for the approach by the Air Force team and add that Riley remembers also drawing an angular, sparrowlike plane, which he later recognized as the F-117. ↩︎

  26. Schnabel, Jim. Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies. Dell, 1997, chapter 4, "Joe of Arc.". Schnabel's notes give Atwater and Riley as the sources. The seller's nationality is given differently by Atwater and Riley. ↩︎

  27. Schnabel, Jim. Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies. Dell, 1997, chapter 3, "Psi-INT.". Schnabel's notes give a former CIA official, Riley, Atwater and Graff (1995) as sources for the KGB illegal. ↩︎

  28. Schnabel, Jim. "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Psi." The Independent on Sunday (London), August 27, 1995, The Sunday Review, pp. 10-13, as transcribed in the FBIS wire "UK: U.S. Use of 'Psychic Spies' Reported," August 27, 1995, CIA-RDP96-00791R000100030073-5, PDF p. 6. https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00791R000100030073-5.pdf ↩︎

  29. Schnabel, Jim. Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies. Dell, 1997, chapter 5, "Bouncing Off the Walls.". Schnabel's notes give Riley as the source for the dumpster anecdote and for the aftereffects. ↩︎

  30. Schnabel, Jim. Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies. Dell, 1997, chapter 5, "Bouncing Off the Walls.". Schnabel's notes give Riley and Atwater as sources. ↩︎

  31. Memorandum for the record, 17 April 80, subject "Conversations With" (name redacted), signed by the Training Officer, IAFM-OPS-HU-SA, CIA-RDP96-00788R002000270008-4. The second paragraph reads "At 0900 hours, 17 Apr 1980." https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00788R002000270008-4.pdf ↩︎

  32. "Location of UH-1H," memorandum for Major O'Keefe, June 1, 1981, signed Melvin C. Riley, Project Analyst, with debriefing dates of March 27 and May 30, 1981, CIA-RDP96-00788R000600300002-2. https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00788R000600300002-2.pdf ↩︎

  33. "Location of UH-1H," second version of the memorandum of June 1, 1981, signed Melvin C. Riley, Project Analyst, CIA-RDP96-00788R000600300018-5. https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00788R000600300018-5.pdf ↩︎

  34. Schnabel, Jim. Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies. Dell, 1997, chapter 3, "Psi-INT.". Schnabel's notes give Riley as the source for the helicopter in Peru. ↩︎

  35. Schnabel, Jim. Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies. Dell, 1997, chapter 5, "Bouncing Off the Walls.". ↩︎

  36. Schnabel, Jim. Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies. Dell, 1997, chapter 20, "Flameout.". ↩︎

  37. Command Group approval/release sheet, "Transfer of the CENTER LANE Project," INSCOM (LTC Buzby, action officer), 1984, CIA-RDP96-00788R001500090026-0. https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00788R001500090026-0.pdf ↩︎

  38. Alphabetical access roster (names, rank, organization), CIA-RDP96-00788R001200330005-9, PDF p. 6, entry "RILEY Melvin C. SFC." The roster belongs to the same document series as the CENTER LANE Access Rosters dated April 10, April 20 and June 28, 1984. https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00788R001200330005-9.pdf ↩︎

  39. Schnabel, Jim. Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies. Dell, 1997, chapter 21, "The Witches.". Schnabel's notes give Riley as the source for the Rapid Deployment Force period and Atwater and Riley for the transfer. ↩︎

  40. Defense Intelligence Agency memorandum, "SUN STREAK Ops/Tng Objectives, JAN 86 - JAN 88 (U)," September 19, 1985, CIA-RDP96-00789R002100300004-2. https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00789R002100300004-2.pdf ↩︎

  41. Schnabel, Jim. Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies. Dell, 1997, chapter 21, "The Witches.". ↩︎

  42. Schnabel, Jim. Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies. Dell, 1997, chapter 21, "The Witches.". Schnabel's notes give Atwater, Dames, Riley and another source for the ERV, CRV and random-number passages and Graff (1995), Dames and two other program sources for the high-technology weapons sites. ↩︎

  43. Schnabel, Jim. Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies. Dell, 1997, chapter 21, "The Witches.". Schnabel's notes give Dames and Riley as sources for the Silkworm missile and Lebanon taskings. ↩︎

  44. Schnabel, Jim. Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies. Dell, 1997, chapter 22, "A Haunted House.". ↩︎

  45. Schnabel, Jim. Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies. Dell, 1997, chapter 22, "A Haunted House.". Schnabel's notes give Riley, Dames and another program source for the session. ↩︎

  46. Schnabel, Jim. Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies. Dell, 1997, chapter 22, "A Haunted House.". Schnabel's notes give Riley, Buchanan and another program source for the prank. ↩︎

  47. Schnabel, Jim. Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies. Dell, 1997, chapter 22, "A Haunted House.". Schnabel's notes give Dames, Riley, Buchanan and another program source for the shredding and Riley and Dames for the plaque. ↩︎

  48. Schnabel, Jim. "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Psi." The Independent on Sunday (London), August 27, 1995, The Sunday Review, pp. 10-13, as transcribed in the FBIS wire "UK: U.S. Use of 'Psychic Spies' Reported," August 27, 1995, CIA-RDP96-00791R000100030073-5, PDF pp. 12-13. https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00791R000100030073-5.pdf ↩︎

  49. Schnabel, Jim. Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies. Dell, 1997, Epilogue. ↩︎

  50. Schnabel, Jim. Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies. Dell, 1997, Epilogue. Schnabel's notes give Riley as the source for the Epilogue passages on him. ↩︎

  51. Schnabel, Jim. "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Psi." The Independent on Sunday (London), August 27, 1995, The Sunday Review, pp. 10-13, as transcribed in the FBIS wire "UK: U.S. Use of 'Psychic Spies' Reported," August 27, 1995, CIA-RDP96-00791R000100030073-5, PDF pp. 7-8. https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00791R000100030073-5.pdf ↩︎

  52. Find a Grave, memorial 217006791, "1SGT Melvin C. Riley (1946-2020)," birth April 10, 1946, death April 25, 2020, burial Central Wisconsin Veterans Memorial Cemetery, King, Waupaca County, Wisconsin; inscription "1SG US ARMY / SSG US ARMY / PVT1 US ARMY VIETNAM." https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/217006791/melvin-c-riley ↩︎

  53. Schnabel, Jim. "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Psi." The Independent on Sunday (London), August 27, 1995, The Sunday Review, pp. 10-13, as transcribed in the FBIS wire "UK: U.S. Use of 'Psychic Spies' Reported," August 27, 1995, CIA-RDP96-00791R000100030073-5, PDF p. 10. https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00791R000100030073-5.pdf ↩︎

  54. Schnabel, Jim. Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies. Dell, 1997, Epilogue. ↩︎

  55. May, Edwin C., memorandum "Publicity and things," The Cognitive Sciences Laboratory, Palo Alto, September 21, 1995, p. 2, CIA-RDP96-00791R000100030077-1. https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00791R000100030077-1.pdf ↩︎