Origins (Remote) Read Online Free Page B

well as separating the wheat from the chaff. It Clues could be right in front of an analyst, yet lost in the sheer volume of information.
    Stargate was run under full scientific control using blind studies and hidden subjects. Vague results were keyed to known elements in the real world and seemed to reveal something. Possibly.
    The man in charge, Major General Aaron Merlin promoted his program relentlessly, a true believer in the method and the cause. If the United States government could gain even the slimmest of advantages, it could leverage the knowledge into huge gains. In full swing, Stargate had generated results, but knowledge was seen only in hindsight, and heavily subject to interpretation.
    The other branches of the system turned to Merlin and their remote viewers only when all other methods had been exhausted and every attempt to procure information had either been thwarted or proven impossible. Stargate used rigid science and produced results statistically more accurate than pure chance but not revealing enough or clear enough on which to base decisions or make predictions.
    While the results of Stargate were suspect, the implications were not, and the project had not gone unnoticed by those in power. Like most government operations, there was the open, the secret, the Top Secret, and the completely black. Stargate may have been Top Secret, but it was not the only operation of its kind.
    The United States was engaged in what those in power believed to be a battle for life and death, or at least world supremacy. Stargate cruised along under a silent banner but operated operated under certain restraints. The remote viewers used came primarily from within the military and the Signal Corps, volunteers willing to take a career risk for what they believed to be a viable alternative to traditional intelligence gathering. But it was not the only remote viewing project.
    Within the CIA, there was considerable scepticism regarding the value of remote viewing. But having been burned more than once, the agency wasn’t willing to overlook any possibility. General Dennis Archer, retired from regular dutties and running one of the blackest organizations in the CIA, was one of those willing to take a risk, with full knowledge that failure could be buried, but success could be exploited. He appointed Thorne to look into the subject.
    Thorne operated with few restraints. It was not an unknown point of view. The agency had been involved in other projects, that had they been made public, would have outraged American citizens.
    In the early 1950s the U.S. government, concerned about the possibility of chemical and biological weapons warfare by the Soviet Union, had used the city of San Francisco as a testing ground for studying the spread of contagious germs by a foreign power. The results had been uninteresting, except to those who either got sick and recovered or the citizens— (merely a handful) —who died. Those in charge deemed the knowledge gained as marginal but worth the risk and continued the controlled release of bacteria in continuing studies. Not many years later it was deemed necessary to test the use of psychedelic drugs on soldiers and in some cases students, without their knowledge. Again, the results were somewhat inconclusive and important only to the families of the affected, including a prominent scientist who ended up throwing himself out of a hotel window after being given a potent dose of acid in his wine.
    Of course, in the nuclear age and with the constant threat of atomic warfare, it was important to understand the effects of radiation. Secret tests were run, involving the direct injection of plutonium into unsuspecting subjects. The American public was not informed of those or any of hundreds of projects deemed necessary for the protection of freedom and the good of the public in general. Into that malaise and flying under the radar, a twin remote- viewing project was conceived that would run concurrently