Ingo Swann said at the talk I attended that the government managers always hated their remote viewing program, so they had to get results right from the start. As soon as the Soviet Union was no more they said ‘thank God we can finally get rid of this awful program.’ The problem was that they liked the idea that there can be “secrets”.
It started as a threat assessment.
Two of my previous comments on Swann and the CIA’s remote viewing program: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19427917 / https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17238552