SCANATE

SCANATE (Scan by Coordinate) was the CIA's code name for its remote viewing research program at SRI International in Menlo Park, California, from 1972 until the program transitioned to Army management under the code name Gondola Wish in 1977. The SCANATE program was the direct institutional precursor to the entire series of government remote viewing programs that culminated in the STAR GATE program declassified in 1995.

Origins and Initiation

The SCANATE program grew from Hal Puthoff's contact with the CIA following his initial experiments with Ingo Swann at Stanford University's Varian Hall in 1972. On June 27, 1972, Puthoff wrote formally to Kit Green at the CIA's Life Sciences Division, proposing government-funded research at SRI to investigate whether anomalous cognition could be produced and measured under controlled conditions. This letter, subsequently declassified and available in the CIA FOIA Reading Room (document CIA-RDP96-00791R000200030006-8), established the institutional relationship between SRI and the CIA.

The CIA provided initial funding by October 1972, designating the program SCANATE - reflecting Swann's method of using geographic coordinates (scanning by coordinate) as target specification for remote viewing sessions. The program was housed within the CIA's Office of Technical Services and managed through Green's Life Sciences Division liaison function.

Experimental Protocol

The SCANATE protocol that Puthoff and Russell Targ developed at SRI required a subject to remain at the SRI facility while a second experimenter traveled to a randomly selected target location. The subject attempted to describe the target through verbal narration and drawings. An independent panel of judges then blindly matched the transcripts and drawings to the set of possible target locations, with statistical assessment of the matching accuracy.

Swann's proposal to use geographic coordinates alone as targeting information - without an outbound experimenter - was tested under SCANATE and proved to generate results the SRI team assessed as anomalous. This Coordinate Remote Viewing (CRV) approach became the program's core methodology.

Key Results and Pat Price

Pat Price, a retired Burbank police commissioner, produced the most operationally significant SCANATE results. His remote viewing session targeting the Soviet URDF-3 facility near Semipalatinsk, tasked by CIA officer Peter Maris, generated descriptions of a large crane structure, spherical metal objects under construction, and unusual welding techniques that CIA analysis subsequently assessed as substantially accurate against classified satellite photography. His remote viewing of the NSA signals intelligence facility at Sugar Grove, West Virginia, was sufficiently accurate to trigger an NSA security investigation into whether classified facilities were vulnerable to psychic penetration.

Puthoff and Targ published SCANATE-era results in two peer-reviewed venues: "Information Transmission Under Conditions of Sensory Shielding" in Nature (October 1974) and "A Perceptual Channel for Information Transfer over Kilometer Distances" in Proceedings of the IEEE (March 1976).

The Reports

SRI's SCANATE report described a training mode of "100 targets on the earth's surface, ten per day for ten days," scored H, N, or M by its own key (a response of "volcano to southwest, I think I'm over ocean" for Hudson Bay was a hit), and concluded that "a channel exists whereby information about a remote location can be obtained," that "the information channel appears to be imperfect, containing some noise along with the signal," and that "for security and logistical reasons, the results obtained with the double-blind sponsor coordinates are being evaluated separately at the sponsor agency." The final report of December 1, 1975, Perceptual Augmentation Techniques, 153 pages, SRI Project 3183 (the progress reports carry the line "Client Private"), said the West Virginia coordinates had come from "the OSI group responsible for threat analysis in this area," that "one subject drew a detailed map of the building and grounds layout, the other provided information about the interior including codewords, data subsequently verified by sponsor sources," and that the three reports "were verified by personnel in the sponsor organization as being substantially correct." Its executive summary claimed drawing reproduction, random-number-generator readings, and remote viewing "all at levels of statistical significance," a magnetometer perturbation at p = 0.004 "implying that the information channel under investigation may sustain energy transfer in either direction," and that "its characteristics are compatible with both quantum theory and information theory." Its conclusions cited a New Scientist reader survey in which "67 percent of nearly 1500 responding readers considered paranormal perception to be an established fact or a likely possibility."¹

An outside reviewer of the first three progress reports in 1974 found "the impression that the research was done on a pragmatic and perhaps 'catch-as-catch-can' basis," "too many unexplained variables here for a proper review," and "the feeling that the prevailing philosophy is to 'prove' the existence of an information channel beyond those customarily postulated." A CIA memorandum of mid-1974 recorded that "after reviewing SRI's spotty performance thus far, we stressed that we had explicitly told SRI that they had to make significant progress" on five points by mid-August, and that OTS would write "so that, should termination eventually be necessary, our case would be well-documented." On February 20, 1976, the director of OTS, David Brandwein, wrote: "I directed that OTS support of this effort be terminated. I continue to believe that it would be inappropriate for us to continue it; however, if ORD desires to pick it up, be my guest," and on October 7, after a subcommittee had recorded that "enough empirical evidence existed to warrant further research in this area": "OTS will not support any further research in parapsychology." In April 1976 the Air Force Foreign Technology Division asked him for the SRI study for its own assessment of the Soviet threat. OTS briefed the House intelligence committee's staff on November 16, 1977, giving "a short oral history of OTS efforts in the field, dating back to 1961."²

Transition to Army Management

In 1977, the Army established its own remote viewing unit at Fort Meade, Maryland, under the initiative of Frederick Atwater and the command sponsorship of Major General Edmund Thompson. The Army program, designated Gondola Wish, contracted SRI for training and protocol guidance but operated as a separate military intelligence program with its own personnel and operational structure. The CIA's direct management of the SCANATE research at SRI ended as the Army unit became operational, though CIA continued as a consumer and occasional sponsor of the broader program through subsequent code name cycles.