"I
spent the next few months wondering if the ET's were going
to find me and zap my brains out of existence."
The truth is stranger than
fiction, and this story is guaranteed to stretch the imagination
right back into reality. For Ingo Swann, the turning point
leading into the cloak and dagger world of deep black ops and
weird requests for psychic surveillance of the moon and beyond
began in early 1975. When Swann published his tale in 1998, most
of the CIA and DIA classified documents from the secret STAR
GATE program were still unavailable to the general public. As
this story goes to press, in the summer of 2006, more than
80,000 pages of documents are close at hand here at Starstream
Research, including the results of medical and psychological
tests conducted on Mr. Swann as a result of his CIA sponsored
testing while working with SRI: The Stanford Research Institute,
in the 1970's.
The CIA STAR GATE Program
In the early 1970's concerns began to float about the various
intelligence agencies over a psychic war gap with the Soviet
Union. Unknown to the general public, the Soviets were busy
exploring fringe science: application of the dark shadow of the
paranormal world for espionage.
Swann's abilities had been tracked for some time, but they
really attracted the powers that be in Langley with the
recording of an apparent perturbation of delicate test equipment
by Swann's mental perception. In addition to disturbing the
output of this sensitive instrument, Swann was able to produce a
rough description of the device, which he had never seen
previously.
In a letter dated June 27, 1972, Dr. Hal Puthoff of SRI
wrote, "At the suggestion of Russell Targ I am writing you about
an observation in the laboratory involving one Ingo Swann, a New
York artist ... An interesting side light of the experiment was
that Ingo was able to describe rather well what the interior of
the device looked like, apparently with some form of direct
observation." Although redacted, it is likely that the recipient
of this letter was at the CIA. Apparently sponsorship of Dr.
Puthoff's interest in Swann's mental interaction with the test
equipment followed quickly.
Among the STAR GATE files is a Stanford Research Institute (SRI)
Technical Memorandum dated 22 February, 1973, prepared by Dr.
Hal Puthoff and Russell Targ, Contract Number 1471(S)73 and
tagged by CIA/ORD # 1416-73:
"A program in biofield measurements was initiated in July, 1972
with a preliminary experiment with Mr. [Ingo] Swann. In this
work using a shielded magnetometer, Mr. Swann apparently
demonstrated an ability to increase and decrease at will the
magnetic field within a superconducting magnetic shield. This
experiment made use of an existing facility and we have
confidence that Mr. Swann had no prior knowledge of either the
apparatus or of our intended experiment."
An August, 1972 memo to the
Chief of TSD/BAB at the CIA notes that, " ... [name
redacted] and somebody named [redacted] from [CIA] Life Sciences
are planning a trip to the West Coast on 11 August, when they
will meet Ingo Swann and have a chance to watch him flex his
sphincter ... Life Sciences is planning on forming a
coordinating committee to work on ESP and the data that is
coming in ..."
When we contacted the unnamed former officer from CIA Life
Sciences, he confirmed the authenticity of the document, but
denied any knowledge of Swann's tale.
An undated draft memorandum from Deputy Director for Operations
William Colby, addressed to the "Director of Central
Intelligence," reveals the clandestine nature of CIA involvement
in research using human subjects:
"Recently, two individuals, Mr. Uri Geller and Mr. Ingo Swann,
appear to have demonstrated certain of these abilities [paraphysical
effects] under controlled laboratory conditions. The abilities
of these individuals (unwitting of Agency [CIA] sponsorship) are
being submitted to a serious scientific investigation, part of
which is being supported by the above mentioned project."
An anonymous source, working in
the alternative energy and transportation industry recently
commented that "Actually, they became interested in Swann when
he RV'ed [psychically remote viewed] some of their well-hidden
deep underground vaults, and the contents thereof. This was when
they approached SRI because they were finally truly scared about
the reality of RV [psychic remote viewing] as a tool in the
hands of the Soviets."
Based upon the available records in STAR GATE, no one seems to
have seriously considered that all of these manifestations of
the impossible were strong indications of interference in human
affairs by higher intelligence with more powerful technologies
at their disposal. Or did they? Swann's account in his book
suggests that someone lurking in the shadows was paying very
close attention; someone whose reach included the often
super-secret work done at SRI.
Starstream Research was able to uncover Swann's medical and
psychological test results from SRI documents, even though the
test subjects were referred to only as S1 through S6. One of the
CIA memos failed to redact the names of the participants, and it
was simple enough to use the process of elimination of sex and
age to determine the identity of Ingo Swann and Pat Price, two
of SRI's early star performers.
According to the official
record, Swann was in almost
every way perfectly normal. He
certainly wasn't delusional, as
the tests confirmed.
[SRI
data on medical and psych tests]
During the early days the CIA
funded SRI research team
harbored concerns that the
Soviet KGB would be interested
in the work they were doing, and
always held in the back of their
minds that they might someday be
kidnapped, or worse. Cold war
paranoia was still in full bloom
during the early days of
psychic-spy research.
Axelrod warned, "I feel obliged to tell you that she is
really dangerous."
MR. AXELROD
Swann's departure from psychic experiments funded by the CIA,
into the mysterious black unknown, began with his recruitment by
a man who called himself "Mr. Axelrod."
A CIA memorandum for the record dated 21 January, 1975,
documents the status of the SRI program just prior to Axelrod's
appearance:
"In 1972 reports of paranormal activities being documented at
SRI by Dr. H. Puthoff and Mr. R. Targ reached the Agency. The
original contracts were [redacted] OTS/APB and [redacted] ORD/TC.
A small work order type contract (approximately $10,000) was
initiated by [redacted] with the permission of Dr. S. Gottlieb,
D/OTS. This contract arranged for SRI to administer controlled
laboratory testing of Mr. Ingo Swann, a New York City artist,
with claimed paranormal abilities. Mr. Swann was tested and
produced significant data under controlled conditions."
We will only mention that Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, D/OTS was heavily
involved in the notorious CIA experimentation on human subjects
using LSD, under a project called MKULTRA.
In late February, 1975, Swann's affair with the mysterious
operation interested in extraterrestrial activity was initiated
by a phone call from a well placed acquaintance, who alerted
Swann to a forthcoming contact with a real-life man in the
black.
Weeks later the call came in at 3AM, requesting Swann's presence
in Washington, D.C.
The mysterious contact from Mr. Axelrod directed Swann through a
series of covert meetings at various locations. In the first
meeting Swann was instructed to wait at the Museum of Natural
History at the Smithsonian, until he was contacted by Axelrod's
operatives. In a scene worthy of a Hollywood movie, Swann was
subjected to a full body search while en-route to the
clandestine meeting. To prevent Swann from knowing the location
of Axelrod's secret underground lair, a black hood was placed
over his head.
Needless to say, by this point Swann's mind was spinning,
wondering what on Earth he had gotten himself into.
The strange twists and turns of Swann's recruitment into black
ops psychic spying would eventually culminate in a close
physical encounter with what appeared to be an alien machine.
Who was this Mr. Axelrod? One legendary group of alleged deep
black government insiders, brought into the limelight by a
series of 'leaked' papers (unlike the STAR GATE files, which
were officially released by the CIA) is known as MAJESTIC. Our
anonymous source questioned the likelihood of Swann's mysterious
Mr. Axelrod being involved with the so-called MJ-12 MAJESTIC
group, which the FBI has declared as originating from bogus UFO
documents. Although the FBI has stated that the various MAJESTIC
documents are fakes, one of our other intelligence sources
recently suggested that the
bogus documents may have been used to pass real intelligence to
the Russians.
[See "Trickster Tales" by Caryn Anscomb]
Mr. Axelrod's mission statement to recruit Swann was purely
verbal: there was to be no paper trail; no secrecy statement;
lending some evidence that Axelrod's people might have been
working under non-official-cover (NOC) -- they would be denied
by those in charge if their activities were ever revealed.
Swann soon learned Axelrod's primary interests were less than
Earthly. In addition to the potential of remote viewing the
lunar surface, Axelrod also had a fascination with the concept
of telepathy, the sharing of thoughts in a conscious interface.
Confirmation that the human race had fallen under the finger of
higher intelligence with advanced technology was also a strong
indication of the correctness of the simulation argument: Any
interaction between a 'natural' reality and a much more
developed intelligence automatically meant that simulation had
entered the picture. The interface of human-mind with alien-mind
as a complex simulation scenario had not yet been fully
evaluated in the available CIA-sponsored research literature of
the time.
The personal mental environment is largely an assembled
experience or simulation based upon millions of years of
development. The idea of 'telepathy' or the mind-to-mind
interface is an artifice introduced to bridge many individual
simulations, each with their unique point of view of the same
natural environment: The world 'out there' in a telepathic
network merges the individual with an undivided whole.
Perhaps there was a general
subconscious discomfort level and fear induced by the knowledge
that a higher intelligence appeared to have developed a means of
interacting directly with the human brain and higher conscious
mind functions as a form of communication, or worse, as
mind-control. Once a form of direct to brain communication was
accepted, a network of minds linked in a cosmic internet was the
next logical assumption.
Recent research using functional MRI technology to read the
state of a human brain and correlate that state with behavior is
an example of a primitive means of interfacing mind and machine.
The idea floating around in government circles today is to use
the fMRI to spot terrorists intending to cause mayhem and
destruction, by detecting their thoughts. In a related story,
the American Civil Liberties Union has raised concerns that such
devices are an invasion of privacy and may have been used to
interrogate
suspected terrorists.
Given a few million or more years to advance their technology,
one might ask what kind of device might be evolved into the
brain-mind of an alien civilization?
Axelrod debriefed Swann about
his work at SRI, in particular the psychic method that later
came to be known as coordinate remote viewing. How did it work?
At first Axelrod limited discussions to the power of the group
mind, and discussion of 'memory' addressing. Were remote viewers
accessing the universal mind-computer? Thirty years prior
to recent serious discussions that humanity might exist in a
simulation of reality, Axelrod was probing Swann about a stored
memory of all possible worlds and outcomes, and a means of
accessing this potential database underlying reality. Dinner
conversation also included discussion of telepathy: mind-to-mind
communication, something that the DIA would become very
interested in later, as shown by the STAR GATE files.
Soon the discussion turned to Swann's experimental remote
viewing of the planet Jupiter which had yielded apparent hits,
like the existence of rings around the planet. Axelrod was
interested in Swann's 'trip' to Jupiter, an attempt to see if he
could psychically discover unknown details about the gas giant
that might later be confirmed by the NASA Pioneer spacecraft.
And then he asked, "Ingo, what do you know about the moon?"
MOON BASE: OCULAR LUNA
Swann had quickly agreed to accept $1000-a-day compensation to
remote view the moon.
Axelrod tasked Ingo with a series of moon coordinates. Unknown
to Swann, the targeted moon coordinates, about ten different
locations, would bring him mind-to-mind with what he soon
realized was an unearthly extraterrestrial presence.
Swann 'saw' with his mind's eye craters in darkness, and decided
that he must be seeing the hidden side of the moon, the side
that always faces away from the Earth. Upon achieving psychic
'contact' with the lunar surface, Swann first came upon what
looked like trails of tractor-tread marks. Confusion set in
until Swann realized that he was 'seeing' intelligent activity
and structures on the moon.
In the depths of a crater he
viewed a green, dusty haze lit by banks of artificial lights
mounted on very large, tall towers. Swann was stunned by the
realization that 'someone' or 'something' appeared, under the
aegis of his mind's eye, to be building a base on the moon. He
had been inducted into an interplanetary operation and brought
to Mr. Axelrod's underground facility by the need to
monitor extraterrestrial activities in an unconventional way.
Swann decided that Axelrod and company had been given the task
of psychically spying on the alien moon base because the
extraterrestrials had been less than friendly about conventional
human curiosity.
When Ingo sensed that he had been psychically 'spotted' by two
of the humanoid-looking inhabitants of the moon base, he
questioned whether or not he was at risk.
Axelrod was less than forthcoming.
"I spent the next few months wondering if the ET's were going to
find me and zap my brains out of existence."
After being released from his
work at the underground facility, Swann returned home and
sketched what he could recall of the Axelrod sessions, and
locked them away until the late 1990's. They are reproduced in
his book. The sketch is dated March 14, 1975.
A recent TV documentary, "Apollo 11: The Untold Story," may have
added additional support to Swann's moon-base tale. Apollo 11
astronaut Buzz Aldrin reported they had seen a UFO during their
historic flight to land the first man on the moon. "There was
something out there, close enough to be observed, and what could
it be? Now, obviously the three of us weren't going to blurt
out, Hey, Houston, we've got something moving alongside of us
and we don't know what it is, you know? Can you tell us what it
is?"
Mr. Axelrod's reach even extended within SRI. At the time of
first contact, STAR GATE records prove that Swann was still
officially unaware that the experiments and tests at SRI were
being conducted under the auspices of the CIA. Taken at face
value Swann's account could be interpreted as the passing of
information about CIA sponsored research to a organization of
unknown origin for an extended period of at least a couple of
years.
At one point Swann was
instructed to relay to Axelrod the status of the SRI psychic
results. In a classic example of the spy art, Swann was
instructed to write the number 65 on a piece of paper to alert
Axelrod when they had achieved a 65 percent hit rate using
remote viewing. One might wonder if this was an indication of a
security breach at SRI, or merely a means of checking Swann's
loyalty.
"Then one morning when I lifted
the blotter the hair on my arms once again stood up. The
signal (the piece of paper with 65 written on it) was gone.
In its place was some dust-like powder in which a finger had
scrawled two words. Expect contact."
FROM THE MOON, WITH LOVE
Sometime in the late summer of
1976, Swann made several trips between SRI and Los Angeles to
spend time with friends. Little did he know, but he was about to
encounter Axelrod's operatives again. During an ordinary trip to
a Hollywood supermarket he was attracted to a super-sexy woman.
As he stood near the scantily clad beauty, he experienced an
'electric-shock' that sent waves of goosebumps over his entire
body, and stood his hair on end. Swann interpreted this psychic
alert as a warning that all was not right with this woman.
In fact, he decided that she
must be an extraterrestrial.
Swann's 'shocking' experience is far from unusual. It has been
reported in many cases that lead to paranormal activity.
Starstream Research was recently contacted about what appeared
to be an animal mutilation that produced a similar 'shocking'
effect upon physical contact with the carcass. We know of other
cases involving telephone calls from weird mechanical sounding
voices, and from personal contact with another human being that
has had paraphysical experiences.
Swann had little time to react, however, as his shock turned to
panic.
Looking down the aisle he saw
both of Mr. Axelrod's operatives, real-life men in black;
dressed not like the character played by Will Smith, in suit and
tie, but more like Arnold Schwarzenegger in "The Terminator,"
dressed in black jeans, boots and tank tops. They were watching
the strange, unearthly woman. Swann quickly left, knowing that
Axelrod would soon be calling.
The renewed phone contact by Axelrod was far from ordinary.
First Swann received a mysterious phone call from a female
operative, directing him to a different phone. The call
ended in dead silence, suggesting that the phone line had been
cut and spliced into.
Once he reached the designated phone, Swann engaged in a
scrambled conversation with Axelrod, asking about the strange
sexy woman in the supermarket.
Axelrod warned, "I feel obliged to tell you that she is really
dangerous."
Apparently Swann believed that Axelrod's warning had confirmed
his worst fear. Not only were extraterrestrials on the moon, but
they had operatives here on Earth, among the ordinary people. If
Axelrod was to be believed, they were to be avoided at all
possible cost.
"As I
remember it, the thing did not 'transport' itself. It GREW
in place right where it appeared."
"EXPECT CONTACT"
Axelrod inquired about how the remote viewing work at SRI was
going.
Axelrod told Ingo, "we have a special task." He needed to know
when Swann had reached 65 percent accuracy.
Axelrod instructed Ingo to place an ordinary sheet of paper with
the number 65 written on it under his ink blotter on his desk,
in a secure office at SRI, once the goal had been achieved.
In his book Swann mused about the possibilities: "Who were this
Axelrod and his henchmen / operatives anyway? CIA, KGB, Mossad,
M-5, some ultra-secret military goings-on?"
"Then one morning when I lifted the blotter the hair on my arms
once again stood up. The signal (the piece of paper with 65
written on it) was gone. In its place was some dust-like powder
in which a finger had scrawled two words."
"Expect contact."
Swann continues: "The result of the promised 'contact' was that
if I had any doubts about whether they existed, such doubts were
shortly to be resolved. I almost got killed in the process."
"The expected contact came in
July, 1977, a few days after I discovered the message in the
dust."
Swann was surprised to see Mr. Axelrod standing in the dining
hall at SRI. After a brief meet-up with Axelrod in the men's
room, Swann was directed to Axelrod's Jeep, waiting outside in
the parking lot.
Axelrod drove Swann to a Lear Jet waiting at the San Jose
airport, and informed him that they might have an opportunity to
see a UFO, "rather close up."
After several hours of flight the plane made a covert landing
without any lights onto a dark runway. This was followed by a
two-hour drive into cold, dark mountains. Swann noticed that the
van moved even after the van's motor appeared to go silent.
Once they reached their destination, Axelrod, Swann and
Axelrod's two operatives hiked their way to the intended
location.
Axelrod instructed Ingo, "Just observe, we'll debrief later ...
Do not move unless I tell you to. They detect heat,
noise, motion like mad."
Swann, Axelrod and the two operatives watched, and waited. Above
a small lake, a gray fog began to rise. Swann was startled as
the fog was suddenly awash in luminous colors. Purple, red and
yellow lightning bolts silently shot out in all directions.
Then, suddenly an object appeared, fading into view over the
lake waters. Swann described the object as triangular, almost
diamond shaped.
"As I remember it, the thing did not 'transport' itself. It GREW
in place right where it appeared."
With the appearance of the object a wind passed overhead,
causing pine cones and branches to fall to the ground. Swann
writes that "ruby-red laser beams" began shooting out from the
object, which still appeared to be growing in size, even though
it remain stationary over the same location above the lake.
Swann estimated the fully visible object at ninety feet wide.
Laser beams hit the trees, and in the commotion of blasting pine
and low-frequency pulsations, Swann was dragged out of harm's
way by Axelrod's operatives. A beam cracked the branches at the
location they had only moments before abandoned in urgent haste.
Looking back for a final glimpse, Swann noticed that the water
of the lake was being sucked up into the weird object.
Swann writes "I was virtually petrified with a kind of terror
for which there are few words to describe."
"The last I saw of Mr. Axelrod was
at the San Jose airport, and so there ends the tale of my
encounters with him and his ultra-subterranean covert
mission."
Upon returning to the airfield, Swann observed an USA-Alaska
mail plane. He surmised that they had been in far northern
Alaska.
Axelrod explained, "Our mission will be disbanded shortly and
the work picked up by others, because of strategic security
reasons involved ..."
"Next week you will be summoned for a complete physical
examination, ostensibly in line with overseeing the health
status of the people on your project. We just want to be sure
you experienced no physical damage. The physicians performing
the examination will be ordinary doctors who have no knowledge
of our existence."
Swann mentions that he sustained a leg injury while viewing the
UFO. We have yet to find any mention of this in the STAR GATE
files.
According to Swann, "The last I saw of Mr. Axelrod was at the
San Jose airport, and so there ends the tale of my encounters
with him and his ultra-subterranean covert mission."
GRILL FLAME and BEYOND
A CIA released memo on SRI stationary, dated November 2, 1978,
from Hal [Puthoff] states that, "Just a quick note. For what
it's worth, Swann now has a T/S [top secret] clearance with DoD
[Dept. of Defense]."
Indeed, Swann was ushered into the inner sanctum of many top
secret, limited access military programs, coming as a result of
the success of the SRI psychic research. The turning point was
the move from experimental work into operational programs, and
Swann's knowledge and ability was to become the reference point
for many. By 1984 he was personally training military personnel
to become working psychic spies.
The CIA's role had been moved from cutting edge research sponsor
to "tasking customer," with the various Department of Defense
military service elements taking the lead.
A summary of activity requested by Senate Appropriations
Committee via Congressionally Directed Action states:
"During the period between 1975 and 1979, the following DoD
Service elements supported psi [psychic] research:
[Note: The various programs were grouped together under a
project titled GRILL FLAME]
The U.S. Navy program was to evaluate an individual's ability
to perceive remote visual stimuli ...
The U.S Air Force National Air Intelligence Center, formerly
the Foreign Technology Division (FTD), initiated its program by
asking whether the phenomena existed and whether it could be
used to collect intelligence ... [redacted service or agency]
research effort focused on the use of RV [remote viewing] to
collect intelligence data ... "
Of potential interest to the Ingo Swann tale, the report
continues with:
"The U.S. Army's Missile Research and Development Command (MIRADCOM)
had Stanford Research Institute (SRI) under contract from August
1977 to 1978. The work was done under the sponsorship of the
Missile Intelligence Agency (MIA). The object of the MIA program
was to determine whether selected individuals could interact and
influence, by mental means only, sensitive electronic equipment
..."
Curiously, the MIRADCOM program began in August 1977, one month
following Swann's alleged encounter with the alien machine in
Alaska. The implication was that remote perturbation, commonly
called psychokinesis, or mind over matter, could somehow be used
to sabotage our nuclear missile deterrent. Of the subjects
tested at SRI, it was Swann that had allegedly perturbed
sensitive test equipment, and remote viewed the interior of the
device.
The report continues: "From May 1979 to September 1979, SRI
assisted MIRADCOM in developing sensitive measurement equipment
for the experiment [to test for remote perturbation by mind over
matter] ... the Army Material Systems Analysts Activity (AMSAA)
extended the applications-oriented research lines begun by other
organizations ... During this same period of time the U.S. Army
Intelligence and Security Command (USA INSCOM) was also asked
whether RV [remote viewing] could be used to collect
intelligence data."
The report also notes that, "During the period that DoD Service
organizations were involved, DIA also pursued some aspects of
psychoenergetics [remote viewing and perturbation, mind over
matter]. Its activities were restricted, however, to aspects
clearly related to threat assessment and intelligence data
collection. DIA contracted research with SRI to train
individuals to do RV [remote viewing] and supported attempts by
experienced remote viewers to collect intelligence on former
Soviet sites of operational interest."
Is there anything to be gleaned by looking closer at the various
agencies involved in the official record, that might help to
identify Mr. Axelrod and his black operation? One possibility
involves the numerous reports of nuclear missiles going off-line
when UFO's have buzzed the launch field. This clearly registers
as a major breach of the national security. Perhaps there was
concern that the UFO's buzzing air bases might be related to
sightings during various space missions, like the recent
revelation that a UFO had shadowed the Apollo 11 mission?
It is possible that target locations on the moon were
selected based upon observations of UFO's by the astronauts. It
is also quite conceivable that someone might have decided it was
worth a try to have Swann, notable for his Earthly remote
viewing of super-secret installations here on Earth, take a
minds-eye view of the moonscape to see what was going on in the
darkness.
Fans of the hit television series, "The X-Files," will tell you
that, "The truth is out there."
For real-life psychic operative Ingo Swann, the truth is still
in his head, and he isn't talking anymore.
Copyright (c) 2006 Starstream Research
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