---
title: "Is there a contemporaneous (1971-72) record independently corroborating Ingo Swann's account of proposing \"remote viewing\" on December 8, 1971?"
type: "question"
status: "open"
date_raised: "2026-09-15T00:00:00.000Z"
tags: ["remote-viewing","stargate","priority-dispute","cold-war-science","single-witness"]
---


[[claim-swann-1971-aspr-memoir-self-credits-remote-viewing-coinage]] rests entirely on Ingo Swann's own self-published memoir — a single witness recounting his own decades-later memory of a dated event, with an evident motive to inflate his own role in a widely told story. Per `00-meta/specs/sources.md`'s oral-history guidance, "dates, priority claims, and figures drawn from oral history need a contemporaneous record before they carry a quantitative or priority-bearing claim" — and this is exactly that shape: a priority claim (who first proposed a now-famous term) resting on retrospective self-testimony.

What would resolve it: any 1971-72 document independent of Swann's own later memoir — ASPR meeting minutes or session notes from December 1971, a contemporaneous letter or publication by Karlis Osis or Gertrude Schmeidler describing the naming session, or Russell Targ's own primary writing making the same attribution in his own words (Wikipedia currently reports Targ's admission only secondhand — see [[claim-wikipedia-remote-viewing-infobox-contradicts-own-body-on-coining-credit]] — not as a direct quote from Targ). Targ's own memoir (*The Reality of ESP*, 2012) or SRI's internal program records are the most likely places to check first.

Until then, the claim stays `seedling` — well-sourced as an account of what Swann says, not yet verified as an account of what happened.

---

**Progress — 2026-09-19** (partial; question stays `open`). A batch capture targeted directly at this question located exactly one genuinely contemporaneous (1971–72) document from the actual research program: the *ASPR Newsletter*, Number 14 (Summer 1972), a bylined article by Karlis Osis, surviving as a CIA-declassified scan — see [[claim-aspr-newsletter-1972-corroborates-swann-program-not-remote-viewing-term]]. It independently corroborates the *surroundings* of Swann's account (Swann as ASPR's principal OOBE subject in 1971–72; the experimental setup; that Janet Mitchell ran his sessions) but (a) never uses "remote viewing" or "remote sensing" anywhere in its ~1,400 words, and (b) does not document the December 8, 1971 session or the naming itself. So the core question — a contemporaneous record naming the *coinage* — remains unanswered: no ASPR minutes, session notes, or 1971–72 publication documenting the naming was found. Two avenues stay open: (1) Russell Targ's 2012 memoir *The Reality of ESP* (archive.org/details/realityofespphys0000targ) is borrow-restricted and could not be read this session — the most likely place for Targ's attribution in his own words; (2) earlier *ASPR Newsletter* issues (Numbers 12–13, referenced internally by No. 14 but not located online) might cover late-1971/early-1972 events more directly. A sub-doubt now sits alongside the main one: secondary retellings place Mitchell at the naming session, but no primary corroborates her presence there.