Long-time military remote viewer Major Paul Smith (U.S. Army-retired) shared his insider view into how RV works and what went on in the military's psychic espionage program called Star Gate. He wrote his new book Reading the Enemy's Mind, in part to fill-in holes and correct misperceptions about remote viewing, which he said might be more accurately called remote perception.

Smith credited legendary psychic Ingo Swann with creating CRV (Coordinate Remote Viewing) back in the 1970's, which was used by Star Gate in order to learn more about operational targets. He noted that the CIA recently released 90,000 pages of documents related to the Star Gate project. Some of the material related to readings of anomalous targets done by Smith such as one about the planet Mars. Interestingly, in this reading, Smith (who did not know the target when he did the reading) said he saw structures and people along with activity that was reminiscent of an archaeological dig.

Both psychics and remote viewers share similar faculties, Smith explained. But psychics tend to have an innate gift, whereas RV is a taught skill. He described one study comparing the work of psychics and remote viewers in police cases. While both groups yielded useable results, he said, RVers tended to present incidents in the correct timeframe, while psychics' impressions had a more jumbled order. Smith shared with us his chronology of events in the history of Remote Viewing. Click here to view the timetable which runs from 1971 through 2004.