INGO SWANN

To the Moon and Back, With Love
Gary S. Bekkum
August 3, 2006

Government consultant Ingo Swann's tale of covert extraterrestrial activity on the moon takes on a new twist, now that the CIA STAR GATE documents support many of his claims. This is the bizarre true tale of Ingo Swann's psychic work for the U.S Government, at various agencies including the CIA and the DIA (now substantiated by the CIA release of roughly two thirds of the existing STAR GATE documents) and his personal allegations of a mysterious black operation that first contacted him during the peak of CIA sponsored testing at the Stanford Research Institute.

If Ingo Swann is to be believed, and this coming from a man with top secret clearance that in his day briefed and trained officers from the USAF, the Defense Intelligence Agency, INSCOM, and many others too numerous to mention, then there is some truth to the rumors of an otherworldly intelligence working behind the scenes here on Earth. Not only are they already here, according to Swann's testimony from a rare out-of-print book, self-published in 1998, but they are building something on the far side of the moon. And they are not friendly.

The truth is stranger than fiction, and this story is guaranteed to stretch the imagination right back into reality. For Ingo Swann, the turning point leading into the cloak and dagger world of deep black ops and weird requests for psychic surveillance of the moon and beyond began in early 1975. When Swann published his tale in 1998, most of the CIA and DIA classified documents from the secret STAR GATE program were still unavailable to the general public. As this story goes to press, in the summer of 2006, more than 80,000 pages of documents are close at hand here at Starstream Research, including the results of medical and psychological tests conducted on Mr. Swann as a result of his CIA sponsored testing while working with SRI: The Stanford Research Institute, in the 1970's.

The CIA STAR GATE Program

In the early 1970's concerns began to float about the various intelligence agencies over a psychic war gap with the Soviet Union. Unknown to the general public, the Soviets were busy exploring fringe science: application of the dark shadow of the paranormal world for espionage. Swann’s abilities had been tracked for some time, but they really attracted the powers that be in Langley with the recording of an apparent perturbation of delicate test equipment by Swann's mental perception. In addition to disturbing the output of this sensitive instrument, Swann was able to produce a rough description of the device, which he had never seen previously.

In a letter dated June 27, 1972, Dr. Hal Puthoff of SRI wrote, "At the suggestion of Russell Targ I am writing you about an observation in the laboratory involving one Ingo Swann, a New York artist ... An interesting side light of the experiment was that Ingo was able to describe rather well what the interior of the device looked like, apparently with some form of direct observation." Although redacted, it is likely that the recipient of this letter was at the CIA. Apparently sponsorship of Dr. Puthoff's interest in Swann's mental interaction with the test equipment followed quickly.

Among the STAR GATE files is a Stanford Research Institute (SRI) Technical Memorandum dated 22 February, 1973, prepared by Dr. Hal Puthoff and Russell Targ, Contract Number 1471(S)73 and tagged by CIA/ORD # 1416-73:"A program in biofield measurements was initiated in July, 1972 with a preliminary experiment with Mr. [Ingo] Swann. In this work using a shielded magnetometer, Mr. Swann apparently demonstrated an ability to increase and decrease at will the magnetic field within a superconducting magnetic shield. This experiment made use of an existing facility and we have confidence that Mr. Swann had no prior knowledge of either the apparatus or of our intended experiment."

An August, 1972 memo to the Chief of TSD/BAB at the CIA notes that, " ... [name redacted] and somebody named [redacted] from [CIA] Life Sciences are planning a trip to the West Coast on 11 August, when they will meet Ingo Swann and have a chance to watch him flex his sphincter ... Life Sciences is planning on forming a coordinating committee to work on ESP and the data that is coming in.” When we contacted the unnamed former officer from CIA Life Sciences, he confirmed the authenticity of the document, but denied any knowledge of Swann's tale. An undated draft memorandum from Deputy Director for Operations William Colby, addressed to the "Director of Central Intelligence," reveals the clandestine nature of CIA involvement in research using human subjects:"

Recently, two individuals, Mr. Uri Geller and Mr. Ingo Swann, appear to have demonstrated certain of these abilities [Para physical effects] under controlled laboratory conditions. The abilities of these individuals (unwitting of Agency [CIA] sponsorship) are being submitted to a serious scientific investigation, part of which is being supported by the above mentioned project.” An anonymous source, working in the alternative energy and transportation industry recently commented that "Actually, they became interested in Swann when he RV'ed [psychically remote viewed] some of their well-hidden deep underground vaults, and the contents thereof. This was when they approached SRI because they were finally truly scared about the reality of RV [psychic remote viewing] as a tool in the hands of the Soviets."

Based upon the available records in STAR GATE, no one seems to have seriously considered that all of these manifestations of the impossible were strong indications of interference in human affairs by higher intelligence with more powerful technologies at their disposal. Or did they? Swann's account in his book suggests that someone lurking in the shadows was paying very close attention; someone whose reach included the often super-secret work done at SRI.

Starstream Research was able to uncover Swann's medical and psychological test results from SRI documents, even though the test subjects were referred to only as S1 through S6. One of the CIA memos failed to redact the names of the participants, and it was simple enough to use the process of elimination of sex and age to determine the identity of Ingo Swann and Pat Price, two of SRI's early star performers.

According to the official record, Swann was in almost every way perfectly normal. He certainly wasn't delusional, as the tests confirmed. [SRI data on medical and psych tests can be viewed at www.starstreamresearch.com]

During the early days the CIA funded SRI research team harbored concerns that the Soviet KGB would be interested in the work they were doing, and always held in the back of their minds that they might someday be kidnapped, or worse. Cold war paranoia was still in full bloom during the early days of psychic-spy research.

MR. AXELROD

Swann's departure from psychic experiments funded by the CIA, into the mysterious black unknown, began with his recruitment by a man who called himself "Mr. Axelrod.” A CIA memorandum for the record dated 21 January, 1975, documents the status of the SRI program just prior to Axelrod's appearance:"

In 1972 reports of paranormal activities being documented at SRI by Dr. H. Puthoff and Mr. R. Targ reached the Agency. The original contracts were [redacted] OTS/APB and [redacted] ORD/TC. A small work order type contract (approximately $10,000) was initiated by [redacted] with the permission of Dr. S. Gottlieb, D/OTS. This contract arranged for SRI to administer controlled laboratory testing of Mr. Ingo Swann, a New York City artist, with claimed paranormal abilities. Mr. Swann was tested and produced significant data under controlled conditions.” We will only mention that Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, D/OTS was heavily involved in the notorious CIA experimentation on human subjects using LSD, under a project called MKULTRA.

In late February 1975, Swann's affair with the mysterious operation interested in extraterrestrial activity was initiated by a phone call from a well-placed acquaintance, which alerted Swann to a forthcoming contact with a real-life man in the black. Weeks later the call came in at 3AM, requesting Swann's presence in Washington, D.C.The mysterious contact from Mr. Axelrod directed Swann through a series of covert meetings at various locations. In the first meeting Swann was instructed to wait at the Museum of Natural History at the Smithsonian, until he was contacted by Axelrod's operatives. In a scene worthy of a Hollywood movie, Swann was subjected to a full body search while en-route to the clandestine meeting. To prevent Swann from knowing the location of Axelrod's secret underground lair, a black hood was placed over his head.

Needless to say, by this point Swann's mind was spinning, wondering what on Earth he had gotten himself into. The strange twists and turns of Swann's recruitment into black ops psychic spying would eventually culminate in a close physical encounter with what appeared to be an alien machine.

Who was this Mr. Axelrod?

One legendary group of alleged deep black government insiders, brought into the limelight by a series of 'leaked' papers (unlike the STAR GATE files, which were officially released by the CIA) is known as MAJESTIC. Our anonymous source questioned the likelihood of Swann's mysterious Mr. Axelrod being involved with the so-called MJ-12 MAJESTIC group, which the FBI has declared as originating from bogus UFO documents. Although the FBI has stated that the various MAJESTIC documents are fakes, one of our other intelligence sources recently suggested that the bogus documents may have been used to pass real intelligence to the Russians.

Mr. Axelrod's mission statement to recruit Swann was purely verbal: there was to be no paper trail; no secrecy statement; lending some evidence that Axelrod's people might have been working under non-official-cover (NOC) -- they would be denied by those in charge if their activities were ever revealed.

Swann soon learned Axelrod's primary interests were less than Earthly. In addition to the potential of remote viewing the lunar surface, Axelrod also had a fascination with the concept of telepathy, the sharing of thoughts in a conscious interface. Confirmation that the human race had fallen under the finger of higher intelligence with advanced technology was also a strong indication of the correctness of the simulation argument: Any interaction between a 'natural' reality and a much more developed intelligence automatically meant that simulation had entered the picture. The interface of human-mind with alien-mind as a complex simulation scenario had not yet been fully evaluated in the available CIA-sponsored research literature of the time.

The personal mental environment is largely an assembled experience or simulation based upon millions of years of development. The idea of 'telepathy' or the mind-to-mind interface is an artifice introduced to bridge many individual simulations, each with their unique point of view of the same natural environment: The world 'out there' in a telepathic network merges the individual with an undivided whole.

Perhaps there was a general subconscious discomfort level and fear induced by the knowledge that a higher intelligence appeared to have developed a means of interacting directly with the human brain and higher conscious mind functions as a form of communication, or worse, as mind-control. Once a form of direct to brain communication was accepted, a network of minds linked in a cosmic Internet was the next logical assumption.

Recent research using functional MRI technology to read the state of a human brain and correlate that state with behavior is an example of a primitive means of interfacing mind and machine. The idea floating around in government circles today is to use the MRI to spot terrorists intending to cause mayhem and destruction, by detecting their thoughts.

In a related story, the American Civil Liberties Union has raised concerns that such devices are an invasion of privacy and may have been used to interrogate suspected terrorists. Given a few million or more years to advance their technology, one might ask what kind of device might be evolved into the brain-mind of an alien civilization?

Axelrod debriefed Swann about his work at SRI, in particular the psychic method that later came to be known as coordinate remote viewing. How did it work? At first Axelrod limited discussions to the power of the group mind, and discussion of 'memory' addressing. Were remote viewers accessing the universal mind-computer? Thirty years prior to recent serious discussions that humanity might exist in a simulation of reality, Axelrod was probing Swann about a stored memory of all possible worlds and outcomes, and a means of accessing this potential database underlying reality. Dinner conversation also included discussion of telepathy: mind-to-mind communication, something that the DIA would become very interested in later, as shown by the STAR GATE files.

Soon the discussion turned to Swann's experimental remote viewing of the planet Jupiter which had yielded apparent hits, like the existence of rings around the planet. Axelrod was interested in Swann's 'trip' to Jupiter, an attempt to see if he could psychically discover unknown details about the gas giant that might later be confirmed by the NASA Pioneer spacecraft.

And then he asked, "Ingo, what do you know about the moon?"

MOON BASE: OCULAR LUNA

Swann had quickly agreed to accept $1000-a-day compensation to remote view the moon. Axelrod tasked Ingo with a series of moon coordinates. Unknown to Swann, the targeted moon coordinates, about ten different locations, would bring him mind-to-mind with what he soon realized was an unearthly extraterrestrial presence. Swann 'saw' with his mind's eye craters in darkness, and decided that he must be seeing the hidden side of the moon, the side that always faces away from the Earth.

Upon achieving psychic 'contact' with the lunar surface, Swann first came upon what looked like trails of tractor-tread marks. Confusion set in until Swann realized that he was 'seeing' intelligent activity and structures on the moon.

In the depths of a crater he viewed a green, dusty haze lit by banks of artificial lights mounted on very large, tall towers. Swann was stunned by the realization that 'someone' or 'something' appeared, under the aegis of his mind's eye, to be building a base on the moon.

He had been inducted into an interplanetary operation and brought to Mr. Axelrod's underground facility by the need to monitor extraterrestrial activities in an unconventional way. Swann decided that Axelrod and company had been given the task of psychically spying on the alien moon base because the extraterrestrials had been less than friendly about conventional human curiosity. When Ingo sensed that he had been psychically 'spotted' by two of the humanoid-looking inhabitants of the moon base, he questioned whether or not he was at risk.

Axelrod was less than forthcoming.” I spent the next few months wondering if the ET's were going to find me and zap my brains out of existence.” After being released from his work at the underground facility, Swann returned home and sketched what he could recall of the Axelrod sessions, and locked them away until the late 1990's. They are reproduced in his book. The sketch is dated March 14, 1975.

A recent TV documentary, "Apollo 11: The Untold Story," may have added additional support to Swann's moon-base tale. Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin reported they had seen a UFO during their historic flight to land the first man on the moon. "There was something out there, close enough to be observed, and what could it be? Now, obviously the three of us weren't going to blurt out, Hey, Houston, we've got something moving alongside of us and we don't know what it is, you know? Can you tell us what it is?"

Mr. Axelrod's reach even extended within SRI. At the time of first contact, STAR GATE records prove that Swann was still officially unaware that the experiments and tests at SRI were being conducted under the auspices of the CIA. Taken at face value Swann's account could be interpreted as the passing of information about CIA sponsored research to a organization of unknown origin for an extended period of at least a couple of years.

At one point Swann was instructed to relay to Axelrod the status of the SRI psychic results. In a classic example of the spy art, Swann was instructed to write the number 65 on a piece of paper to alert Axelrod when they had achieved a 65 percent hit rate using remote viewing. One might wonder if this was an indication of a security breach at SRI, or merely a means of checking Swann's loyalty.

FROM THE MOON, WITH LOVE

Sometime in the late summer of 1976, Swann made several trips between SRI and Los Angeles to spend time with friends. Little did he know, but he was about to encounter Axelrod's operatives again. During an ordinary trip to a Hollywood supermarket he was attracted to a super-sexy woman. As he stood near the scantily clad beauty, he experienced an 'electric shock' that sent waves of Goosebumps over his entire body, and stood his hair on end. Swann interpreted this psychic alert as a warning that all was not right with this woman. In fact, he decided that she must be an extraterrestrial.

Swann's 'shocking' experience is far from unusual. It has been reported in many cases that lead to paranormal activity. Starstream Research was recently contacted about what appeared to be an animal mutilation that produced a similar 'shocking' effect upon physical contact with the carcass. We know of other cases involving telephone calls from weird mechanical sounding voices, and from personal contact with another human being that has had Para physical experiences.

Swann had little time to react, however, as his shock turned to panic. Looking down the aisle he saw both of Mr. Axelrod's operatives, real-life men in black; dressed not like the character played by Will Smith, in suit and tie, but more like Arnold Schwarzenegger in "The Terminator," dressed in black jeans, boots and tank tops. They were watching the strange, unearthly woman. Swann quickly left, knowing that Axelrod would soon be calling.

The renewed phone contact by Axelrod was far from ordinary. First Swann received a mysterious phone call from a female operative, directing him to a different phone. The call ended in dead silence, suggesting that the phone line had been cut and spliced into. Once he reached the designated phone, Swann engaged in a scrambled conversation with Axelrod, asking about the strange sexy woman in the supermarket. Axelrod warned, "I feel obliged to tell you that she is really dangerous.” Apparently Swann believed that Axelrod's warning had confirmed his worst fear. Not only were extraterrestrials on the moon, but they had operatives here on Earth, among the ordinary people. If Axelrod was to be believed, they were to be avoided at all possible cost.

EXPECT CONTACT

Axelrod inquired about how the remote viewing work at SRI was going. Axelrod told Ingo, "We have a special task." He needed to know when Swann had reached 65 percent accuracy. Axelrod instructed Ingo to place an ordinary sheet of paper with the number 65 written on it under his ink blotter on his desk, in a secure office at SRI, once the goal had been achieved. In his book Swann mused about the possibilities: "Who were this Axelrod and his henchmen / operatives anyway? CIA, KGB, Mossad, M-5, some ultra-secret military goings-on?" "Then one morning when I lifted the blotter the hair on my arms once again stood up. The signal (the piece of paper with 65 written on it) was gone. In its place was some dust-like powder in which a finger had scrawled two words." "Expect contact."Swann continues: "The result of the promised 'contact' was that if I had any doubts about whether they existed, such doubts were shortly to be resolved. I almost got killed in the process."

"The expected contact came in July, 1977, a few days after I discovered the message in the dust." Swann was surprised to see Mr. Axelrod standing in the dining hall at SRI. After a brief meet-up with Axelrod in the men's room, Swann was directed to Axelrod's Jeep, waiting outside in the parking lot. Axelrod drove Swann to a Lear Jet waiting at the San Jose airport, and informed him that they might have an opportunity to see a UFO, "rather close up.” After several hours of flight the plane made a covert landing without any lights onto a dark runway. This was followed by a two-hour drive into cold, dark mountains. Swann noticed that the van moved even after the van's motor appeared to go silent. Once they reached their destination, Axelrod, Swann and Axelrod's two operatives hiked their way to the intended location. Axelrod instructed Ingo, "Just observe, we'll debrief later ... Do not move unless I tell you to. They detect heat, noise, motion like mad."Swann, Axelrod and the two operatives watched, and waited.

Above a small lake, a gray fog began to rise. Swann was startled as the fog was suddenly awash in luminous colors. Purple, red and yellow lightning bolts silently shot out in all directions. Then, suddenly an object appeared, fading into view over the lake waters. Swann described the object as triangular, almost diamond shaped.” As I remember it, the thing did not 'transport' itself. It GREW in place right where it appeared.” With the appearance of the object a wind passed overhead, causing pinecones and branches to fall to the ground. Swann writes that "ruby-red laser beams" began shooting out from the object, which still appeared to be growing in size, even though it remained stationary over the same location above the lake. Swann estimated the fully visible object at ninety feet wide. Laser beams hit the trees, and in the commotion of blasting pine and low-frequency pulsations, Swann was dragged out of harm's way by Axelrod's operatives. A beam cracked the branches at the location they had only moments before abandoned in urgent haste. Looking back for a final glimpse, Swann noticed that the water of the lake was being sucked up into the weird object.

Swann writes "I was virtually petrified with a kind of terror for which there are few words to describe.” Upon returning to the airfield, Swann observed an USA-Alaska mail plane. He surmised that they had been in far northern Alaska. Axelrod explained, "Our mission will be disbanded shortly and the work picked up by others, because of strategic security reasons involved..." "Next week you will be summoned for a complete physical examination, ostensibly in line with overseeing the health status of the people on your project. We just want to be sure you experienced no physical damage. The physicians performing the examination will be ordinary doctors who have no knowledge of our existence."

Swann mentions that he sustained a leg injury while viewing the UFO. We have yet to find any mention of this in the STAR GATE files. According to Swann, "The last I saw of Mr. Axelrod was at the San Jose airport, and so there ends the tale of my encounters with him and his ultra-subterranean covert mission."

GRILL FLAME and BEYOND

A CIA released memo on SRI stationary, dated November 2, 1978, from Hal [Puthoff] states that, "Just a quick note. For what it's worth, Swann now has a T/S [top secret] clearance with DoD [Dept. of Defense]."Indeed, Swann was ushered into the inner sanctum of many top secret, limited access military programs, coming as a result of the success of the SRI psychic research. The turning point was the move from experimental work into operational programs, and Swann's knowledge and ability was to become the reference point for many. By 1984 he was personally training military personnel to become working psychic spies. The CIA's role had been moved from cutting edge research sponsor to "tasking customer," with the various Department of Defense military service elements taking the lead.

A summary of activity requested by Senate Appropriations Committee via Congressionally Directed Action states:” During the period between 1975 and 1979, the following DoD Service elements supported psi [psychic] research: [Note: The various programs were grouped together under a project titled GRILL FLAME]

The U.S. Navy program was to evaluate an individual's ability to perceive remote visual stimuli ... The U.S Air Force National Air Intelligence Center, formerly the Foreign Technology Division (FTD), initiated its program by asking whether the phenomena existed and whether it could be used to collect intelligence ... [redacted service or agency] research effort focused on the use of RV [remote viewing] to collect intelligence data ... "

Of potential interest to the Ingo Swann tale, the report continues with:” The U.S. Army's Missile Research and Development Command (MIRADCOM) had Stanford Research Institute (SRI) under contract from August 1977 to 1978. The work was done under the sponsorship of the Missile Intelligence Agency (MIA). The object of the MIA program was to determine whether selected individuals could interact and influence, by mental means only, sensitive electronic equipment...”

Curiously, the MIRADCOM program began in August 1977, one month following Swann's alleged encounter with the alien machine in Alaska. The implication was that remote perturbation, commonly called psycho kinesis, or mind over matter, could somehow be used to sabotage our nuclear missile deterrent. Of the subjects tested at SRI, it was Swann that had allegedly perturbed sensitive test equipment, and remote viewed the interior of the device.

The report continues: "From May 1979 to September 1979, SRI assisted MIRADCOM in developing sensitive measurement equipment for the experiment [to test for remote perturbation by mind over matter] ... the Army Material Systems Analysts Activity (AMSAA) extended the applications-oriented research lines begun by other organizations ... During this same period of time the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command (USA INSCOM) was also asked whether RV [remote viewing] could be used to collect intelligence data.” The report also notes that, "During the period that DoD Service organizations were involved, DIA also pursued some aspects of psychoenergetics [remote viewing and perturbation, mind over matter]. Its activities were restricted, however, to aspects clearly related to threat assessment and intelligence data collection. DIA contracted research with SRI to train individuals to do RV [remote viewing] and supported attempts by experienced remote viewers to collect intelligence on former Soviet sites of operational interest."

Is there anything to be gleaned by looking closer at the various agencies involved in the official record that might help to identify Mr. Axelrod and his black operation? One possibility involves the numerous reports of nuclear missiles going off-line when UFO's have buzzed the launch field. This clearly registers as a major breach of the national security.

Perhaps there was concern that the UFO's buzzing air bases might be related to sightings during various space missions, like the recent revelation that a UFO had shadowed the Apollo 11 mission?

It is possible that target locations on the moon were selected based upon observations of UFO's by the astronauts. It is also quite conceivable that someone might have decided it was worth a try to have Swann, notable for his Earthly remote viewing of super-secret installations here on Earth, take a minds-eye view of the moonscape to see what was going on in the darkness.

Fans of the hit television series, "The X-Files," will tell you that, "The truth is out there.” For real-life psychic operative Ingo Swann, the truth is still in his head, and he isn't talking anymore.

Note: Additional information and documentation are available at the Starstream Research
Web site: www.starstreamresearch.com