Ingo Swann was an American artist and psychic credited with helping develop the systematic methodology behind Remote Viewing (RV). According to Joseph McMoneagle, Swann suggested using map coordinates to identify a remote-viewing target, an approach that gave rise to the coordinate targeting system,1 and he is separately credited with originating Controlled Remote Viewing (CRV) while working at SRI International.2 Joseph McMoneagle also stated that Swann did not leave behind an all-inclusive document describing the training system he developed.3 Swann worked with the SRI International laboratory4 and was one of the original participants in Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) evaluations of remote viewing in the early 1970s.5 He is described as a renowned artist and psychic often credited with developing the first systematic approach to remote viewing in the 1970s.6
Swann was approached by scientists at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) to take part in research into psychic phenomena,7 where he worked alongside Harold E. Puthoff and Russell Targ.8 There he developed Coordinate Remote Viewing.9 In 1973 he began working with SRI scientists to explore the possibility of remote viewing planetary objects,10 and was tasked with remote viewing the planet Jupiter.11 During that 1973 session he described a previously unknown ring around the planet.12 Luis Elizondo said that Swann claimed to have remote viewed Jupiter and described its thin rings before they were confirmed by unmanned space probes years later.13 NASA’s Pioneer 10 spacecraft later confirmed Swann’s remote-viewing findings about Jupiter when it flew past the planet in the 1970s.14 Swann recalled that Puthoff told him he was the first to find a ring around the planet.15
Swann was also asked by the CIA to remote view a secret facility in the Soviet Union believed to be used for manufacturing nuclear weapons,16 and his descriptions of the facility were later confirmed by satellite imagery.17
Within Project STARGATE, Swann trained personnel for the United States Army. Ed Dames was selected as one of five prototype Army members trained by Swann during 1983 and 1984.18 Dames described Swann as his mentor and said he later became Swann’s protege.19 Dames also said that Swann asked Puthoff who was funding the training, because it was classified.20 One of the first training targets Swann set for Dames was the Washington Monument.21
Eric Davis told Thomas Wilson about Swann’s story.22 According to Swann’s memoir, as described in “Hair of the Alien: DNA and Other Forensic Evidence for Alien Abductions”, the writer recounts covert meetings between 1975 and 1977 with a shadowy group of individuals that led to Swann’s participation in remote-viewing evidence of intelligence on the moon, an account associated with Ingo Swann’s 1975-1977 remote viewing episodes.23 His planetary work is also associated with the Jupiter remote viewing session.