Fernand Gauvin

Fernand "Fern" Gauvin was a civilian counterintelligence specialist working at Arlington Hall, a military/civilian intelligence complex, home to some of the more "James Bond-ish" elements of the U.S. espionage community. He was among the initial group of ten or eleven candidates selected by Skip Atwater and Scotty Watt for the Gondola Wish (later Grill Flame) remote viewing unit in 1977, and one of the original six soldier psychics. A dark-haired, handsome Rhode Islander in his late forties, Gauvin had a long history of psychic experiences and transcendental yearnings dating back to his childhood; he practiced yoga and meditation, experimented with altered states, and read books about spirit-mediums and auras. In 1975 he had an unusual out-of-body experience, an encounter with a "benevolent, luminous, loving entity" that profoundly affected him.¹

Gauvin was one of the six most promising members of the team sent to SRI for two weeks of outbound remote-viewing experiments. He participated in the intense, round-the-clock remote viewing sessions during the Iran hostage crisis (1979-1981). Like Nancy Stern, he was deeply affected by the failure of the rescue mission in April 1980 and subsequently left the unit, vowing never to remote-view again.¹

The released personnel file of the Grill Flame unit holds a volunteer consent statement of October 4, 1979, another of February 28, 1980, and a statement of consent of April 22, 1980, whose signature lines the scan renders as "Eepatae A Caucie," "LEAUAWD F. GARVIN" and "FESVAML A. CAUCI," with an organization fragment reading "SSO, 902d MI Gp"; the body of one reads "Fernand A. Gauvin." No item title in the collection carries his name.²