Keith Harary - remote-viewing researcher, subject, and later critic

Type: named-figure source of record
Subject: Keith Harary, formerly known as Stuart "Blue" Harary
Fields: psychology, parapsychology, remote viewing, altered states
Credibility: ~50 composite; documented career ~85, personal and operational psi evidence ~30, claim handling ~70
Active in the government-funded SRI program: 1980-1982; SAIC Cognitive Sciences Laboratory: 1990-1991

Keith Harary is a psychologist who began as an experimental subject in out-of-body-experience research, became a researcher and remote-viewing consultant, and worked on the Defense Intelligence Agency-funded SRI program. His unusual value as a source is that he later publicly corrected inflated versions of work he had helped promote. The documented career is real. The evidence that his anomalous experiences or remote-viewing work demonstrated a reliable information channel is much weaker.

Career record

A resume included in a 1992 government technical proposal records a Duke University psychology BA in 1975 and a Union Institute psychology PhD in 1986, with emphases in experimental psychology and clinical counseling. It also records research positions at the American Society for Psychical Research, Psychical Research Foundation, Maimonides Medical Center, SRI International, and Science Applications International Corporation. The proposal describes his 1990-1991 SAIC work as participation in "anomalous cognition experiments." See the resume extract and scanned source.

The same record lists conventional work outside parapsychology, including psychological consulting for Atari and crisis counseling. Harary later coauthored a conventional personality study published in the 1998 volume of Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, "The Patterned Inconsistency of Traits: Mapping the Differential Effects of Social Roles on Self-Perceptions".

Harary described himself as president and research director of the Institute for Advanced Psychology. Public nonprofit records identify it as a small independent 501(c)(3), not a university institute or large research center.

Early out-of-body-experience experiments

Harary entered psychical research at 17 under the nickname "Blue." He learned to produce a vivid out-of-body sensation through deep relaxation and focused imagination. In his 2004 retrospective, he described it as an altered subjective state rather than proof that consciousness literally leaves the body.

The main published report was Robert Morris, Keith Harary, Janis, Hartwell, and Roll, "Studies of Communication During Out-of-Body Experiences," Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research 72 (1978), pages 1-21. Carlos Alvarado's 1982 review of ESP during out-of-body experiences summarizes its information-transfer tests:

Colored-letter targets produced some partial matches but no statistically significant result.
A person-location task had one significant session but was not significant overall.
Two three-dimensional-object trials produced one judged hit and one no-choice result, with no statistical analysis and targets that were not randomly selected.
The human-observer and most animal or physical-detector tests did not give consistent evidence of a distant presence.
Harary's kitten showed a statistically significant reduction in vocalization and movement during assigned projection periods. It was an isolated result under conditions that were not reproduced.

Harary later acknowledged the central limitation himself: the kitten grew older, relationships between owners and animals varied, and the conditions could not simply be recreated. In 1987 he also wrote that his Duke work found no consistent electromagnetic radiation or light effect associated with the experiences. See ../raw/papers/harary-comments-on-slawinski-1987.

SRI and Project Grill Flame

Harary worked at SRI from 1980 to 1982 as a research consultant and remote viewer. This is supported by his resume, declassified reports, Edwin May's account, and Hal Puthoff's later history.

He coauthored the May 1982 Targeting Requirements Task for the Defense Intelligence Agency. Four coded, relatively inexperienced viewers completed 12 trials each under four targeting conditions: a beacon person, geographic coordinates, an abstract targeting method, and coordinates with mid-session feedback. The report says three of four viewers produced reliable remote-viewing data and found no group-level difference among the targeting methods.

That conclusion is weaker than it sounds. The central finding used subjective 0-to-7 correspondence ratings and an internally chosen reliability threshold. The report's statistics mainly compared targeting modes; it did not report a direct inferential test showing that the viewers' descriptions exceeded chance matching. The four viewers were coded, so the report does not establish which data came from Harary or how he performed individually.

The 1995 American Institutes for Research review of the wider government program found disagreement over whether laboratory results established an anomaly and concluded that operational remote viewing had not produced consistently accurate, specific intelligence of actionable value. That program-level finding is context for Harary's work rather than an individual performance assessment. See the full AIR evaluation.

The unexplained 1982 removal and later return

In a 1995 letter, program manager Edwin May wrote that an onsite representative from Jack Vorona's organization asked for Russell Targ and Harary to be removed from the project. May called the reasons "complex" but did not state them. The letter records a removal decision, not misconduct or its cause. See ../raw/reports/may-harary-targ-removal-letter-1995.

Harary's 1992 resume says he later worked at SAIC's Cognitive Sciences Laboratory in 1990-1991. The record therefore shows that he was removed from the SRI project in 1982 and later rehired within its successor research lineage. Any explanation that treats the 1982 event as a permanent professional rejection is incomplete.

Richard Queen claim

Harary's strongest operational anecdote concerns Richard Queen, one of the US hostages in Iran. In his 2004 account, Harary said an otherwise unidentified SRI monitor asked him in July 1980 to describe a person. Harary recalled impressions of severe illness, nausea, injury on one side, and the person soon being on an airplane. He said SRI contacts later identified the target as Queen and told him his input partly caused President Jimmy Carter to send an aircraft to retrieve him.

Queen was released on July 11, 1980 because of serious health concerns, as contemporary diplomatic records confirm. See the State Department's memorandum on Queen's release and medical condition and Carter administration discussion of the release.

The public record does not currently connect Harary's session to the decision. No contemporaneous named session record, tasking sheet, transcript, or Carter administration record was located. Harary also acknowledged that the hostage crisis and reports of Queen's health, including a "lame shoulder," were already in the news and could have influenced him unconsciously. The health-and-airplane description is an interesting retrospective account, but its operational effect remains an unsupported secondhand attribution from unnamed SRI contacts.

Delphi silver forecasts and Harary's correction

Harary, Russell Targ, and Anthony White formed Delphi Associates and used remote viewing to forecast movements in silver futures. Targ and Harary's 1984 book The Mind Race presented a run of successful predictions as support for practical psi. Ray Hyman's contemporary review of the book argued that it omitted necessary context, mixed formal and informal material, and drew conclusions the reported procedures could not support.

Harary later supplied a more damaging correction. In Skeptical Inquirer in 1994, he wrote that the first 12 correct predictions, including pilot trials, used optional stopping and changing probabilities and were therefore statistically meaningless. He said Targ inaccurately described the judging, could not produce underlying data, and repeatedly described a later formal nine-trial series that never occurred. Harary also said he sued to prevent Targ from using his name to promote a public market-prediction venture.

Harary shares responsibility for the claims made in a book he coauthored. His later correction nevertheless carries substantial weight because it is specific, adverse to his own earlier public position, and supplies testable methodological reasons rather than a vague change of belief.

His public position became more cautious

Harary's published language changed in a traceable direction:

In 1987, he treated reliable remote viewing across distance, shielding, and time as demonstrated and speculated that consciousness might not be confined to the body.
In 1994, he rejected claims that he literally left his body and described out-of-body experiences as inducible subjective psychological phenomena.
In 2004, he rejected the identity of a person with special psychic powers, emphasized chance, inference, unconscious cues, and failures to reproduce results, while remaining open to an unresolved anomaly.
In 2005, he wrote that parapsychology had not produced a single consistently repeatable experimental pattern and foregrounded the need to exclude normal explanations.

This does not erase his earlier overstatement. It does distinguish him from figures who preserve or enlarge extraordinary claims after their evidential basis weakens.

UAP relevance

No substantial first-person UAP claim by Harary was found in the reviewed record. His relevance to UFOpedia is historical and network-based: he participated in the SRI program led by Puthoff and Targ, a research lineage that later fed into parts of the Bigelow, AAWSAP, AATIP, and modern UAP ecosystem. His record is useful for testing how claims from that lineage were generated, promoted, challenged, and corrected.

Credibility assessment

What raises Harary's credibility

His education and SRI, SAIC, and parapsychology research roles are supported by contemporaneous or declassified records.
He coauthored a substantive government-funded experimental report rather than relying only on later interviews.
He publicly corrected the Delphi story in detail, including flaws that weakened a claim he had helped promote.
His later writing openly considers ordinary explanations for his own best anecdotes and emphasizes replication failure.
He separates the subjective out-of-body experience from the literal claim that a mind or body traveled elsewhere.

What lowers Harary's credibility

The early OBE information-transfer results were nonsignificant or methodologically weak apart from an isolated kitten result that was not reproduced.
The 1982 SRI report's claimed reliable remote viewing was not supported by a clear chance-baseline test, and its coding prevents attribution of any result to Harary.
His Richard Queen account appeared retrospectively and lacks a contemporaneous record connecting it to the release decision.
He coauthored The Mind Race and helped publicize the Delphi result before later explaining that the apparent success was statistically meaningless.
His 1987 claims about remote viewing across distance, shielding, and time were stronger than the later operational evidence supported.

Net assessment

Harary rates about ~50 overall. His documented career and program participation rate around ~85. The evidence for his personal and operational psi performance rates around ~30. His handling of claims rates around ~70 because he made unusually specific public corrections and applied ordinary explanations to his own experiences, tempered by his role in the earlier overstatement. The composite reflects a credible witness to the history and methods of the SRI circle, but a weak source for establishing that remote viewing or out-of-body information transfer worked.

Position relative to other UAP figures

Harary sits above Hal Puthoff (~35) and Lyn Buchanan (~35) on public correction, restraint, and willingness to weaken his own earlier claims. He sits near Richard Dolan and John Mack in composite score for different reasons: Harary has stronger direct program documentation and better later self-correction, but his central anomalous-performance evidence remains weak. He remains below Robert Jahn (~58), whose research program produced a larger formal record even though its interpretation remains disputed.

Role-category placement

Harary belongs among analysts and researchers. His most useful contribution is now methodological and historical: he provides an insider account of how ambiguous effects, publicity, subjective scoring, and retrospective storytelling can turn into stronger paranormal claims than the underlying record supports.

Followup items

Retrieve the complete 1978 Morris-Harary OBE paper and verify every target, detector, randomization, and statistical detail against the original.
Locate a contemporaneous record naming Harary in the Richard Queen tasking or documenting any use of his report in the release decision.
Retrieve Harary's 1992 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research paper on the Delphi trials and the original 1985 Psi Research report.
Determine the stated reason for the 1982 removal from SRI from a documentary record or attributable firsthand account.