ESP and Espionage. CBS piece on Project Stargate.

https://www.cbs.com/shows/cbs-sunday-mor...overnment/

Appearances by Radin and Carroll.

This is a fairly typical piece on Project Stargate by the media. In this kind of coverage it's rare to get much further than a few talking heads, old photocopies of declassified documents and a skeptic to provide balance. Talking of which, what the hell was Sean Carroll talking about? Something about putting a receiver next to your head should pick up ESP? He didn't mention remote viewing at all. But in his defence, he might not have been asked about it. It felt like his bit was edited in from an entirely different story.

We've written about Uri Geller in some detail already http://psiencequest.net/forums/thread-ur...-you-think , but the CBS also spoke about the Charlie Jordan case in some detail, so I thought I should put things in a bit of context.

Charles Jordan was a customs official who helped smuggle drugs into the US. He went on the run in 1986. On 4 December, 1988 his case was covered on America's Most Wanted (series 2, episode 43). The remote viewers were asked to focus on him in April 1989. 

The sessions were pretty typical except that each remote viewer was given the opportunity to use whatever method they preferred. This lead to all the sessions being carried out solo (ie, no monitor to prompt them) and a range of techniques, using written remote viewing, coordinates and dowsing over maps. How blind the remote viewers were to the target is not clear. In the original declassified documents Charlie Jordan is referred to as “the felon” or “the fugitive,” but Lyn Buchanan wrote in his book The Seventh Sense that the team were given a full debriefing on Charles Jordan.

There were about nineteen sessions on this target and five remote viewers contributed sessions. Angela Ford only did two: the one in which she mentioned an Indian reserve and the name “Lowel” and then a second session two months later but more on that in a bit.

I can't find the actual notes from Angela's first session, but in an undated report  (that must be before 17 April 1989 because certain results from an RV session run on that date are missing, described as “pending”) there is a list of the team's findings to date.

The other three remote viewers who had completed sessions on this target put the fugitive in Mexico or south Florida. Angela's conclusion, now pinpointed as “Lovell, Wyoming” was definitely the odd one out.

The others continued to remote view Charlie Jordan but Angela did not. The other findings did not start to converge on Wyoming, but remained in the fairly typical idiom of places where fugitives might hide: farmhouses, Central America, the Everglades. One dowsing session by Mel Riley ended on Minnesota, but that was as close as anyone else got.

Meanwhile, the FBI had been going through leads generated by the America's Most Wanted episode and had probable cause to search the property of Jordan's parents. There they found a videotape made by Jordan of his wife and their newborn baby in a hospital that they were able to identify as being in Denver.

They had already begun a search in Colorado around June 1989 when an eyewitness account of Charles Jordan in Yellowstone Park came in. He was found and arrested in Pinedale, WY on 16 June 1989.

What's interesting is that, in the CBS piece, Angela described how the remote viewers kept getting the Wyoming feeling and when they went back to tell their client they were told “As we're speaking we're apprehending Charles Jordan 100 miles west of Lovell.”

That's interesting because the project on Charlie Jordan had closed on 28 April, so there were no extra findings in June for them to pass on to their clients. Instead there is one final session dated 16 June at 9.00am run by Angela Ford. In the tasking document it is made clear that this session was prompted by the recent eyewitness account placing Jordan in Yellowstone Park. Angela is asked to describe his movements for the next two weeks. She reported that he was heading towards Biddle, Montana, via camp sites.

Charles Jordan was indeed found in a camp site (albeit nowhere near Biddle and actually about 250 miles south-west of Lowell) so that much is a hit but Angela doesn't seem to know that Charles would be arrested that day. I wonder if this could be where the “as we're speaking...” quote she gave comes from: when they passed on the session notes to their client later that same day.

As to where the original guess of “Lowell” came from, I don't know. Maybe a brief moment of psychic clarity. But I'd also like to know more about what was in that episode of America's Most Wanted.

Courtesy of the SPR Facebook page, here's a sceptical comment on this case from Joe Nickell, published three weeks ago:
http://www.centerforinquiry.net/blogs/sh...e_so_well/

It follows on from a previous online article by Nickell from 2001:
https://www.csicop.org/sb/show/remotely_...ordan_case

It doesn't sound as though he was aware of the document mentioned in ersby's post above, specifying "Lovell, Wyoming". I'm not sure that's consistent with Nickell's suggestion that the details of the remote viewing were "retrofitted" after Angela Ford was told about Wyoming.

I'm not sure that's consistent with Nickell's suggestion that the details of the remote viewing were "retrofitted" after Angela Ford was told about Wyoming.

Bear in mind that we don't know when Angela was told about Wyoming. 

I've found it difficult to establish just how much was known about the Charlie Jordan case publicly before these sessions took place. There's not much in the newspaper archives I have access to. As it stands, the only two prior sources of information Angela could've used were the episode of America's Most Wanted (assuming she'd seen it) and the briefing that took place before the remote viewing sessions. If we knew what was in that, we'd have a better idea about how much of a leap the Wyoming statement was.

Bear in mind that we don't know when Angela was told about Wyoming. 

I've found it difficult to establish just how much was known about the Charlie Jordan case publicly before these sessions took place. There's not much in the newspaper archives I have access to. As it stands, the only two prior sources of information Angela could've used were the episode of America's Most Wanted (assuming she'd seen it) and the briefing that took place before the remote viewing sessions. If we knew what was in that, we'd have a better idea about how much of a leap the Wyoming statement was.

I don't really find Nickell's piece very clear, but "retrofitted" makes it sound as though he thinks she later found out about Wyoming and reinterpreted what she'd said as a result of that. I was thinking that sounded less plausible if there was an official document identifying "Lovell, Wyoming". 

I wondered whether the Indian reserve/burial ground was mentioned in that document, or only the place.