Reading the Enemies Mind

Reading the Enemy’s Mind by Paul H. Smith offers an in-depth, historically accurate account of the U.S. military’s “Star Gate” program, which explored the use of remote viewing for intelligence purposes. As a former Army intelligence officer and remote viewer within the program, Smith provides a detailed narrative grounded in firsthand experience and extensive documentation.

Smith’s credentials make him an authoritative source on this controversial psychic espionage effort. He served for seven years in the government’s remote viewing unit at Fort Meade, Maryland from 1983–1990. In 1984, he became one of only a handful to be personally trained in coordinate remote viewing (CRV) by Ingo Swann himself. Smith went on to serve as the primary author of the CRV training manual, the theory instructor for new CRV trainees, and critically, as the official unit historian – a role that establishes him as a reliable source on the history of military remote viewing.

The book meticulously traces the Stargate program’s origins back to the 1970s amid concerns about Soviet psychic research advances. Smith’s account draws from a wealth of sources including declassified documents, transcripts, and case studies. He presents a balanced perspective, including successes where remote viewing produced inexplicable results, as well as the inconsistencies and limitations that plagued the effort.

A particular strength is the nuanced, insider’s look at the key players involved—the remote viewers, the scientists who championed the program, and the revolving door of skeptics and supporters in leadership roles who determined its fate. Smith’s skilled storytelling brings these complex personalities to life.

With over a thousand remote viewing sessions under his belt, Smith is uniquely positioned to recount this fascinating chapter of intelligence history. Reading the Enemy’s Mind is an exhaustively researched, comprehensive record that demands acknowledgment of the Stargate program and its implications.

If you thought The Manchurian Candidate was fiction or John Farris’s The Fury, which featured a CIA mind-control program run amok, was the stuff of an overheated imagination, you were sorely mistaken.

From behind the cloak of U.S. military secrecy comes the story of Star Gate, the project that for nearly a quarter of a century trained soldiers and civilian spies in extra-sensory perception (ESP). Their objective: To search out the secrets of America’s cold war enemies using a skill called “remote viewing.” Paul H. Smith, a U.S. Army Major, was one of these viewers. Assigned to the remote viewing unit in 1983 at a pivotal time in its history, Smith served for the rest of the decade, witnessing and taking part in many of the seminal national-security crises of the twentieth century.

With the Star Gate secrets declassified and the program mothballed by the Central Intelligence Agency, the story can now be told of the ordinary soldiers drafted onto the battlefield of human consciousness. Using hundreds of interviews with the key players in the Star Gate program, and gathering thousands of pages of documents, Smith opens the records on this remarkable chapter in American military, scientific, and cultural history. He reveals many secrets about how remote viewing works and how it was used against enemy targets. Among these stories are the search for hostages in Lebanon; spying on Soviet directed energy weapons; investigating the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland; tracking foreign testing of weapons of mass destruction; combating narco-trafficking off America’s coasts; aiding in the Iranian hostage situation; finding KGB moles in the CIA; pursuing Middle East terrorists; and more.

Between the lines in the official records are revelations about unrelenting attempts from within and without to destroy the remote viewing program, and the efforts that kept Star Gate going for more than two decades in spite of its enemies. This is a story for the believer and the skeptic—a rare look at the innards of a top secret program and an eye-opening treatise on the power of the human mind to transcend the limitations of space and time.

• “One of the most important books about human potential you’ll ever read.”
  —George Noory, host of Coast to Coast AM, Premiere Radio
• “The more pragmatic you think you are, the more you should read this fascinating book. It illustrates with unmistakably real examples just how effective psychic espionage can be, and offers tremendous hope for the future.”
  —Col. Walter J. Boyne (USAF, ret.), New York Times bestselling author of The Wild Blue
• “At last, a hard-hitting, comprehensive insider’s view of the Star Gate program. Paul H. Smith names names and provides a much-needed unique and unvarnished history lesson. It is a must read for everyone interested in remote viewing.”
  —Colonel John B. Alexander, US Army (Ret.), author of Winning the War: Advanced Weapons, Strategies, and Concepts for the Post-9/11 World
• “So you thought the CIA was microwaving messages into your fillings. Boy, were you naïve. They don’t need black helicopters or microwave mind snatchers or psychotropic drugs. All they need is Paul H. Smith. He will do it all himself. Smith’s nonfiction The Manchurian Candidate will make mind readers of us all!”
  —David Hagberg, USA Today bestselling author of Soldier of God
• “Star Gate warrior Major Paul H. Smith gives us an up-close-and-personal look behind the scenes of the government’s psychic spy program as only an insider can. A must read!”
  —Harold E. Puthoff, Ph.D., founder and former director of Stanford Research Institute’s CIA-initiated Remote Viewing Program
• “I have covered the CIA since before its inception—back when it was still the OSS—and I thought I knew everything about it. Paul Smith opened my eyes to the most electrifying, inside-the-CIA expose ever. I was worried about the Company reading our mail. I was naive. I should have feared them reading our minds!”
  —Jack Anderson, Pulitzer-Prize journalist
• In Reading the Enemy’s Mind, Smith reveals that the military and intelligence communities performed hundreds of experiments and operational intelligence assignments using “remote viewing,” the government’s term for ESP. The program’s first big success came in 1979 when a viewer found a downed Soviet bomber in Africa after other intelligence operatives had failed—a coup praised by President Jimmy Carter. The psychics received target assignments from virtually every U.S. national-security agency, and Smith says they produced numerous positive results. Smith’s biggest revelation, however, is that the government research found that almost all people—not merely a gifted few—seem to have the potential of developing ESP skills, with enough practice and a few tips from a pro like Smith. Many readers will no doubt find it hard to know what to make of Reading the Enemy’s Mind and whether to believe any of it, but Smith writes with both color and a measured tone that together produce a captivating yarn even for the non-believers out there.
  —Alex Roslin, Amazon.com review