Mel Riley

Melvin (Mel) Riley is now associated with P>S>I as a viewer, monitor and technical advisor. Mel may also be teaching certain new post graduate courses that P>S>I may offer.

As a youth, Mel found himself experiencing visions of being part of a Native American village in a previous time. During his visions, he was given "wisdom" by his Native American brothers and sisters. These visions were so vivid that Mel describes them as bi-locational experiences. Mel is the only non-Native American heritage person to be given the honor of being accepted as a Medicine Man of the Native American people. He has been given his own medicine pouch to be used in times of need.

Mel's original assignment in the military was that of an imagery interpreter. As an aerial observer, his job was to ride in airplanes, looking out the window, telling the crew when to turn the cameras on and off for intelligence gathering. Mel had the intuitive knack for getting the right information at the right time. He then graduated to work as an image interpreter specialist for the US military's "spy in the sky", U2, SR71, and other aerial surveillance programs.

During the early 1970's, the US military effort learned that the Russians had a "psychic spying" program, which had two specific and undeniable aspects: 1) it worked very well for them, and 2) we had no defense against it.

Because of this potential threat, a special project, code named Scanate, was set up to identify and enlist the aid of people within the US military who had talents along these lines. The purpose was to have them spy on US targets, to test and document whether or not it could be done with any accuracy. Dummy psychological tests were set up to identify such people.

Mel's introduction into this process happened when an agent on the ground had taken a picture of a piece of military machinery that was completely covered by canvas. Mel told his comrades that he could draw what was under the canvas. He proceeded to draw what he pictured and in his terms, the feedback he received was, "It totally freaked them out". Immediately thereafter, Mel was asked to go to Ft. Meade by Col. D. Press. There he met "Skip" Atwater, who had devised the dummy testing, and who at the time, ran Project Scanate.

Mel Riley was identified as perfect for the program, and became the U.S. Government's first official remote viewer. Five other people were identified and enlisted for the project, which proved to have an accuracy rate high enough to qualify it as a very necessary intelligence-gathering tool. From Project Scanate, a new project was started, code named Gondola Wish. It was this project which began using "psychic spying" in actual, real-world tasking, on foreign military and political targets.

Work during the unit's early years was developmental as well as operational. Mel's work played a huge role in developing policies, standards and techniques around which the government's "psychic spying" or "remote viewing" program was later based. He also participated in a scientific research program the US had going on the West Coast with Stanford Research International, to work with Drs. Hal Puthoff, Russell Targ and Charles Tart.

Mel then went on with his military career, resuming his photo interpreter position and becoming a First Sergeant in a "rapid deployment" unit. Then, in 1986, he returned to the remote viewing unit. He was the only person assigned to the unit twice. During his assignments, he worked as Viewer, Project Officer, Monitor, and Analyst.

From there, he retired in 1990. He and his wife, Edith, settled in Scandinavia, Wisconsin, where he became the Director of the New London Public Museum, specializing in Native American folklore. He also continued to do private remote viewing work for special projects conducted by other ex-military members of the unit. Mel kept an on-going relationship with Lyn Buchanan during this time and decided in 2001 that the time was right to end his job at the museum and join Problems>Solutions>Innovations on a full-time basis.

Mel believes the future of remote viewing is in the discipline of Controlled Remote Viewing - the highly structured, researched, documented and proven method used by the US military. He also believes his work at P>S>I may help solve some of the problems that Mankind faces today. For the first time, Mel Riley is admitting that he is what is termed a "natural". Mel is glad to be back in the everyday world of remote viewing and P>S>I is excited and overjoyed to have him.