Tom McNear

Tom McNear was a Captain in military intelligence and one of the two original Ingo Swann trainees in CRV, starting in 1981. He immediately showed considerable talent in remote viewing, though his training progressed slowly¹.

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 briefings¹.

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. 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, due to cancer. He also noted that he had become very withdrawn and introverted. McNear requested a transfer, which the U.S. Army granted, and he went on to build a successful career in Army intelligence¹.

In 1985, the 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 McNear¹.