Sages, mystics, and psychic researchers of all stripes have been exploring paranormal phenomena for millennia, cataloguing their journeys through realms that are not limited to time, space, or the physical body. But one of history’s most unlikely (and most discreet) proponents of psi research has to have been the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, which for more than two decades during the Cold War funded a team of remote-viewers at the Stanford Research Institute to use their extrasensory perceptions to locate and describe strategic enemy positions on the other side of the globe.

In this interview, editor Tom Huston speaks to one of the founding members of this highly classified program, Russell Targ—a legally blind remote-viewing expert who describes himself as “one of the rare people who had their spiritual development paid for by the CIA.” Targ chronicles his fascinating life, which took him from the magic shops and Theosophical Society meetings of New York City as a youth to the laser laboratories of Columbia University to his career as a parapsychology consultant for the world’s most powerful military. Along the way he explains the subtle art of remote viewing and shares some mind-boggling stories about how he and his team of “psychic police” used their mysterious capabilities to discover a Soviet weapons factory, detect Chinese atomic bomb tests, and even cheat the stock market.

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