Remote viewing started with the government's SCANATE Program. Other names it has been known by are INSCOM, CENTER LANE, STAR GATE PROGRAM, SUN STREAK OR GRILL FRAME, all of which were similar programs by mostly different agencies. Basically the U.S. Government got scared when it heard that the Russians were training telepaths to be used in spying. We decided to start our own program and try and use it to assess the progress of other governments using remote viewing.

During a remote viewing training session a student was told to draw a picture of the picture the instructor had looked at. He drew almost the exact picture that was viewed by the instructor. Judging by the amount of money the Russians were spending on their remote viewing program, the U.S. Government really began to worry. It looked to our government that the Russians must be meeting with some amount of success or they wouldn't spend such large sums. We didn't really believe in remote viewing in the beginning but we couldn't take the chance and let the Russians get ahead of us in this area.

During a remote viewing session the viewer draws several pictures over a period of time to refine his vision. An exercise was conducted using Stonehenge as the target picture which was viewed by someone and the drawings by the viewer who never saw the picture. An English Remote Viewer was able to draw Stonehenge using the thoughts of the viewer.

SCANATE stands for scan by coordinate and it was funded by the CIA in 1970. Research began a couple of years later in 1972 at Stanford Research Institute in California. The researchers had decided to focus on a few really gifted people. The best of the best was Ingo Swann. A footnote here, many of the telepaths were from the Church of Scientology. An accuracy rate of 85% was considered as the minimum with a rate of up to 95% being reached. By the mid 1970s all of the branches of the service were using remote viewers. In 1978 the US Army established GRILL FLAME, their own remote viewing project at Fort Meade, Md. In 1983 the program was renamed INSCOM CENTER LANE PROJECT. Ingo Swann and Harold Puthoff developed methods of training that they insisted would allow anyone to learn remote viewing. In 1984 reporter Jack Anderson broke the story. The US Army funding ended in 1985 and the program was transferred to the DIA and renamed SUN STREAK. In 1991 the program was again transferred but this time to Science Applications International Corporation and renamed STAR GATE.

The Rendlesham Forest UFO Incident where a ufo landed and was seen by US military forces was the focus of this remove viewing session. The remote viewers were able to draw the area and the ufo.

The program had 23 remote viewers total that were known and a total of $20 million was spent on STAR GATE. Other government agencies could request telepaths and they were made available.

There were 3 known types of viewing:
Coordinate Remote Viewing (CRV) - the SRI-developed technique in which viewers were asked what they "saw" at specified geographic coordinates
Extended Remote Viewing (ERV) - a meditative method
Written Remote Viewing (WRV) - automatic writing and channeling was introduced in 1988, though it proved controversial and was regarded by some as much less reliable.

There were some successes but most of the data could not be verified. Some of the successes were:
Descriptions of Russian Subs being built that were sited 4 months later, Joe McMoneagle's (retired intelligence officer) success rate at finding targets, the sighting at Semipalatinsk, the Russian nuclear testing area, locating kidnapped BG James L. Dozier, who had been kidnapped by the Red Brigades in Italy in 1981. Marine Corps Col. William Higgins was being held in Lebanon. A remote viewer stated that Higgins was in a specific building in a specific South Lebanon village, and a released hostage later said to have claimed that Higgins had probably been in that building at that time. During the Gulf War remote-viewers were reported to have suggested Saddam Hussein's location.

In the 1990 the program produced very poor results and in 1995 it was transferred to the CIA which was ordered to review it. A recommendation of termination of the program saw the end of the program.