Richard Kennett

Richard Kennett was a CIA analyst in the Office of Scientific Intelligence in the early 1970s. In his early thirties, with a wife and two young sons, he held a Ph.D. in neurophysiology and was pursuing an M.D., making him uniquely qualified to evaluate the scientific aspects of psychic research. Kennett was a man of eclectic interests, drawn to the wild extremes of human behavior and fascinated by religion and mysticism. He spent some of his CIA time monitoring the fringes of medicine and psychology, looking for unconventional approaches that might be useful in the Cold War. By the time of the Remote Viewers narrative, Kennett was slated to become the assistant national intelligence officer for chemical and biological warfare issues, indicating his rising prominence within the intelligence community.¹

In May 1973, Hal Puthoff contacted Kennett regarding Ingo Swann's coordinate-based clairvoyance scheme. Initially skeptical of the concept of using geographical coordinates for psychic targeting, Kennett challenged Puthoff to remote-view a location unknown even to Kennett himself. This led to the famous Sugar Grove incident, where Swann and Pat Price accurately described a secret NSA facility in West Virginia, despite being given coordinates for Kennett's friend's cabin. This incident, while causing a security investigation, ultimately impressed Kennett and the NSA with the accuracy of remote viewing.¹

Kennett became a key figure in the CIA's oversight of the Grill Flame program, monitoring the work at Stanford Research Institute (SRI) and later at Fort Meade. He was involved in tasking remote viewers with sensitive intelligence problems and evaluating their results. He was also the recipient of unusual psychic phenomena himself, including a precognitive experience related to Uri Geller that involved a shattered glass globe and a white bulldog, and a strange encounter with a one-armed man in a gray suit.¹

The released CIA collection on the program carries no legible mention of Kennett.²