---
aliases:
- Tom McNear
- Captain Tom McNear
category: Military
created: 2026-05-15
summary: Tom McNear was a U.S. Army military intelligence captain who became one of
  the first two soldiers trained by Ingo Swann in Coordinate Remote Viewing beginning
  in 1981, authored the 1985 DoD CRV manual declassified in 2000, and was assessed
  by Swann as surpassing his own abilities before requesting transfer from the Fort
  Meade unit.
tags:
- Person
- RemoteViewer
- Military
- PSI
- Stargate
- 1980s
title: Tom McNear
updated: 2026-05-17
---

Tom McNear was a Captain in military intelligence and one of the two original [Ingo Swann](/people/ingo-swann/) trainees in [CRV](/concepts/coordinate-remote-viewing/), starting in 1981. He immediately showed considerable talent in remote viewing, though his training progressed slowly[^1].

It took McNear two and a half years to reach Stage Six of CRV, the level where viewers learn to remote view a target and then create a three-dimensional model of it out of clay. His clay models were so accurate in both concept and scale that photographs of them, alongside pictures of the target, were used in [National Security Council](/organizations/national-security-council/) briefings[^1].

By the end of his training, which included all seven stages, McNear had become so proficient at identifying training targets that Ingo Swann confided in colleagues that McNear was "better than me"[^1].

Despite his proficiency, McNear did not want to remain part of the viewer unit at [Fort Meade](/places/fort-meade/). He cited the program's inconsistent funding and the deaths of two members from cancer, as well as the medical retirement of his fellow trainee and friend, [Rob Cowart](/people/rob-cowart/), due to cancer. He also noted that he had become very withdrawn and introverted. McNear requested a transfer, which the [U.S. Army](/organizations/us-army/) granted, and he went on to build a successful career in Army intelligence[^1].

In 1985, the [Department of Defense](/organizations/department-of-defense/) published a forty-one-page how-to manual, "Coordinate Remote Viewing, Stages I–VI and Beyond." The author of this manual, declassified in 2000, was Tom McNear[^1].

[^1]: Jacobsen, Annie. *Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis*. Little, Brown and Company, 2017.