Remote viewing · 12 MIN READ · 7 SOURCE QUOTES
Coordinate Remote Viewing
Coordinate Remote Viewing, abbreviated CRV and often called controlled remote viewing, is the structured method Ingo Swann developed with SRI International for training remote viewers in the U.S. Army program. The glossary in the DIA protocols credits SRI with coining the term remote viewing in the early 1970s and defines it as acquiring and describing, by mental means, information blocked from ordinary perception by distance, shielding or time. CRV tries to make that repeatable. The viewer is handed only a string of numbers standing in for a map coordinate, answers quickly, reports in a restrictive format and works through a fixed sequence of six stages while a monitor follows a limited script.
The method grew out of Swann's laboratory work with Hal Puthoff at SRI in the 1970s. Skip Atwater, who worked with the Army unit, recalls that Puthoff pressed Swann to write down what he actually did, that the Army agreed to pay SRI by contract, and that SRI hired Swann to build the program he called controlled remote viewing. Army papers date the start of CRV training at SRI to July 1982 and describe it as a way to bring new viewers up to operational performance with minimal drain on the unit's limited resources. Paul Smith, who trained under him, says Swann was the primary instructor and that colleagues described him as a strict taskmaster.
CRV was one of several approaches in the Army program. The DIA protocols also describe extended remote viewing, which aims to stretch fleeting impressions, and written remote viewing. The Army's papers show a Monroe Institute connection too: a chronology lists an operative attending Gateway training in June 1982 and another entry for November 1982, on either side of the July start of CRV training. Hemi-Sync was used to help viewers reach states conducive to psychoenergetic awareness, while CRV supplied the structure of the session itself.
The staged, number-cued method Ingo Swann developed with SRI so Army remote viewers could be trained and run under tight controls.
Key points
A staged method built to make remote viewing repeatable
The Army's 1983 briefing says CRV divides the detection and decoding of psychic impressions into discrete, achievable skill levels. The DIA protocols explain the research motive: SRI was under pressure to improve the reliability, meaning the scientific replicability, of remote viewing, and the subcontractor's answer was to control the factors that in his view add noise to a viewer's product. CRV is best understood as a discipline for running the session.
Developed with Ingo Swann at SRI
The DIA protocols credit CRV to an unnamed SRI subcontractor in the early 1980s. Atwater identifies the developer as Ingo Swann. Atwater says Hal Puthoff kept urging Swann to write down the specific things he did, the Army would pay for it, and SRI hired Swann to develop the program, which Swann called controlled remote viewing. Smith says the arrangement made Swann the primary instructor, working with Puthoff and other SRI staff, and that trainees heard stories of a taskmaster who tolerated no nonsense.
The coordinate is a focusing cue, not a clue
The protocols describe the usual starting point as encrypted geographical coordinates: a series of twelve numbers or fewer, chosen by a random program generator, that disguise the real coordinates of a point on earth. The viewer sees only the numbers. McMoneagle says the method replaced the expensive practice of sending a person to each target, and that a coordinate set says little about what is there: in his St. Louis example the patch of ground it names, about a kilometer on a side, holds fourteen or fifteen significant targets.
Three controls aimed at noise
The protocols list three basic components. The site address is presented repeatedly and the viewer responds quickly, using a restrictive reporting format meant to minimize imaginative overlays. Sessions take place in a specially designed viewing chamber, acoustic-tiled, relatively featureless and uniformly colored, to minimize environmental overlays. And the monitor speaks from a strictly prescribed, limited script to minimize monitor overlays. Each control targets a different source of added material: the viewer's own guessing, the room and the person beside the viewer.
The six stages, as the DIA protocols list them
The protocols define each stage by the kind of site a viewer works on at that level. Stage One covers islands, mountains, deserts and oceans. Stage Two covers sites with strong sensory character, describable through taste, sound, color or odor. Stage Three covers sites with significant dimensional characteristics. Stage Four covers sites requiring qualitative mental perceptions, and Stage Five the interrogation of those perceptions to produce refined information. Stage Six covers sites needing a direct three-dimensional assessment of how site elements relate to one another.
Army CRV training was a 12-to-18-month course
A February 1984 Center Lane information paper lists four ongoing training programs, including a one-to-two-month initial orientation at Fort Meade, Maryland, and CRV training at SRI International in Menlo Park, California, and New York. It gives the CRV course as twelve to eighteen months, and an October 1984 update repeats that figure, the purpose being to give personnel the skills to perform collection and counterintelligence operations. Planning papers from 1983 to 1985 list continued CRV training at enhanced levels for one viewer and new training for three, later four, more people.
One of several methods the unit used
The DIA protocols describe an eclectic approach in which CRV is one of three named methods the unit used for training, proficiency enhancement and operational projects, alongside others such as dowsing and psychometry. Extended Remote Viewing aims at the subjective temporal extension of subliminally brief psychic impressions, so that fleeting imagery can be controlled, observed and reported. Written Remote Viewing uses pen and paper to capture verbal, detailed information. CRV is the approach built around disguised coordinates, a prescribed report format and staged skills.
What participants report about results
McMoneagle says the early SRI work with Swann and a second psychic, Pat Price, under CIA auspices impressed people because so much information could be produced on areas deep inside the Soviet Union and on classified facilities. Atwater calls CRV a wonderful way to capture how Swann did what he did. McMoneagle is harsher about the Army's own version of the training: he says the training was terminated, Swann would not hand over all his materials, and the Army's new staff, who he says understood little about remote viewing, finished the package themselves in a way SRI considered improper.
In their own words
Quotes are checked word for word against the recordings and documents they come from. Bracketed words correct transcription errors; “…” marks an omission.
“Hal started kind of pestering [Ingo], you know, “You really can, you kind of write down what are the specific things that you do. The Army would pay for that, you know, if you do that.” And so they eventually talked [Ingo] into doing that, and … then we paid. We had the pipeline to create contracts through General Thompson to pay SRI for stuff, and if we said we'd like to pay them to have this happen, and then SRI hired Ingo to develop the program, which he called controlled remote viewing, or sometimes people call it coordinate remote viewing.”
“Inherent in his contract is: Ingo Swann was going to do the training. In … conjunction with Hal Puthoff and some of the other folks at SRI, but Ingo was the primary instructor. And so, I heard all kinds of stories once I joined the program … they started talking about Ingo Swann and … what a strict taskmaster he was, and he didn't put up with nonsense and all of this stuff.”
“The basic components of CRV consist of: 1) Repeated site-address (coordinate) presentation, with quick-reaction response by the remote viewer, coupled with a restrictive format for reporting perceived information which minimizes imaginative overlays. 2) The use of a specially-designed, acoustic-tiled, relatively featureless, homogeneously-colored “viewing chamber” which minimizes environmental overlays. 3) The adoption of a strictly-prescribed, limited monitor patter which minimizes monitor overlays.”
“Stage Two: Sites of quality sensory value; sites which are uniquely describable through taste, sound, color or odor. 3) Stage Three: Sites possessing significant dimensional characteristics. 4) Stage Four: Sites requiring qualitative mental perceptions. 5) Stage Five: Sites requiring the interrogation of qualitative mental perceptions to produce refined information. 6) Stage Six: Sites requiring direct, three-dimensional assessment of site elements to one another.”
“In mid-1982, we began a new training program in Coordinate Remote Viewing (CRV) with SRI. This new CRV training process subdivides the detection and decoding of psychic impressions into discrete, achievable skill levels. This process holds great promise for refining RV and gives us a method by which we can bring new source personnel up to an operational performance level with minimal drain on our limited in-house resources.”
“And within that [1,000] meter square area, you probably would have 14 or 15 significant targets. So it really doesn't say much about [the] target. It's just a method for getting the person the focus, the coordinate system, and any of that was altered somewhat. To satisfy the skeptics, we just started putting the coordinates inside sealed envelopes so that no one could see them.”
“So the Army was stuck with having to finish the training package because Ingo refused to turn over all his materials. So he was released from the Army and told to go home, took everything with him. So the people who had just come in, and the boss at the time, who none of them really understood much about the remote viewing, decided to finish the training themselves. So they drew it up the way they thought [Ingo] was intending to do it. In fact, according to [SRI] International, the training was not kosher.”
Important things to consider
The stage list names sites, not step-by-step actions
In the DIA protocols each stage is identified by the kind of site a viewer is working on, from islands and mountains at Stage One to three-dimensional relationships at Stage Six, and the document calls the stages discrete, achievable skills. It does not spell out what a viewer does step by step at each stage, and other teachers may word the stages differently, so this page repeats only what the DIA protocols state.
A fixed format makes a session inspectable
Because CRV prescribes the viewer's report format and limits what the monitor says, an outsider can see what was said, in what order, and what the monitor contributed. That makes a session easier to examine, but the format does not by itself show accuracy. Blinding, careful handling of feedback and independent judging carry that weight.
The papers are plans, not scorecards
The training, funding and chronology papers record what the program intended and did; they give no accuracy rate for CRV. The DIA protocols concede that some viewer information cannot be verified or rejected through follow-up and stays only plausible until an operation ends. The CIA-commissioned 1995 review by the American Institutes for Research concluded that the remote viewing reports failed to produce the concrete, specific information valued in intelligence gathering, and the program ended that year.
Accounts of the training differ
Smith describes Swann as the primary instructor, a man with a reputation as a strict taskmaster who proved nice and engaging over lunch. McMoneagle describes a course that was terminated and then completed by Army staff who, in his words, did not understand much about remote viewing. Both are recollections told long afterward. The records that show what the training was meant to contain are the Army papers, not either memory.
CRV is not a week-long course
The Monroe Institute's first Remote Viewing Practicum, led by Atwater and Carol Sabick, lasted one week, and the Hemi-Sync Journal reported Atwater telling participants he could teach them about remote viewing but could not train them as expert viewers in that time. The Army's CRV course was listed at twelve to eighteen months and contracted to SRI. A short program is a different thing from the full Army training.
Common questions
What is Coordinate Remote Viewing (CRV)?
CRV is a structured method for training remote viewers and running their sessions. It was developed with Ingo Swann at SRI International and taken up by the U.S. Army in 1982. The viewer receives only a disguised set of numbers standing in for a map coordinate, responds quickly, reports in a restricted format and works through six stages, each defined by the kind of information being gathered. A monitor records the session and speaks from a limited script. The DIA protocols say the aim was to improve the reliability of remote viewing by controlling the factors that add noise to the viewer's product.
Is controlled remote viewing the same as coordinate remote viewing?
Yes. Both abbreviate to CRV and describe the same approach. The Army and DIA papers in the archive say coordinate remote viewing, since sessions started from coordinates as the targeting cue. Skip Atwater says SRI hired Ingo Swann to develop a program that Swann called controlled remote viewing, and that people sometimes call it coordinate remote viewing. One podcast conversation describes controlled remote viewing as the version most people are familiar with. Neither name changes the method: a disguised target reference, a prescribed report format, a limited monitor script and staged skills.
Who created CRV, and what was Ingo Swann's role?
The DIA protocols credit an unnamed SRI subcontractor working in the early 1980s. Atwater identifies him as Ingo Swann. Swann had worked with Hal Puthoff at SRI since the early 1970s, and Atwater says Puthoff urged him to write down the specific things he did so the Army could pay for a training program, which SRI then hired Swann to develop. Smith says Swann was the primary instructor, alongside Puthoff and others. McMoneagle tells a more troubled story: he says the training was terminated, Swann would not hand over all his materials, and the Army finished the course itself in a way SRI called improper.
What are the six stages of CRV?
The DIA protocols name them by the kind of site each stage addresses. Stage One: islands, mountains, deserts and oceans. Stage Two: sites with sensory value, uniquely describable through taste, sound, color or odor. Stage Three: sites with significant dimensional characteristics. Stage Four: sites requiring qualitative mental perceptions. Stage Five: sites requiring the interrogation of those perceptions to produce refined information. Stage Six: sites requiring a direct three-dimensional assessment of site elements to one another; the paper adds that as Stage Six is engaged, an assessment of relative, temporal and spatial dimensional elements, along with further qualitative elements, evolves into the viewer's consciousness. The paper lists the stages without describing the viewer's step-by-step actions.
Why does CRV use coordinates, and does the viewer know where the target is?
The viewer does not know. The protocols describe encrypted geographical coordinates: up to twelve numbers chosen by a random program generator to disguise the real coordinates of a point on earth. McMoneagle explains why coordinates came into use: sending a person to each target was expensive, and a coordinate set works as a focus rather than a description, since the area it names holds many possible targets. When skeptics objected that viewers might memorize the world's coordinates, the numbers were sealed inside envelopes so that no one could see them.
Did the Monroe Institute and Hemi-Sync play a part in the Army's CRV training?
The papers treat them as separate streams that ran side by side. A 1983 Army briefing says that by the end of 1980 the unit had begun an advanced training program using the hemispheric synchronization process developed by Robert Monroe, as used at the Monroe Institute of Applied Science in Virginia, to help viewers reach states conducive to psychoenergetic awareness. CRV training with SRI began in mid-1982. A chronology in the 1985 papers lists an operative attending Gateway training in June 1982 and another entry for November 1982, with the July 1982 start of CRV training between them. The papers place the CRV course at SRI, not at the Institute.
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