Project Stargate: The CIA's Secret Psychic Spy Program

During the height of the Cold War, while satellites and spy planes mapped Soviet territories from above, a different kind of intelligence gathering was taking place behind closed doors. This program relied not on technology, but on the human mind itself. For over two decades, the United States government funded research into psychic phenomena, attempting to harness the power of remote viewing for military and intelligence operations. This was Project Stargate, one of the most unusual and controversial programs in American intelligence history.

The Mind as a Spy Tool: Project Stargate explored the possibility of using psychic abilities for intelligence gathering, with remote viewers attempting to perceive distant locations and events.

Origins: The Race for Inner Space

The story of Project Stargate begins in 1970, when U.S. intelligence sources received alarming reports about Soviet research into psychic phenomena. American officials believed the USSR was spending approximately 60 million rubles annually on what they called psychotronic research, with estimates rising to 300 million rubles by 1975. The trigger that spurred American action into high gear was the 1970 publication of Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain by Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder. This book suggested the Soviets had made significant breakthroughs in parapsychology, prompting what one journalist dubbed the Race for Inner Space.

Whether the Soviet program was as advanced as feared remains unclear to this day. What matters is that American intelligence agencies believed it was real, and they were determined not to fall behind. In response to these concerns, the CIA initiated funding for a new program known as SCANATE, short for scan by coordinate, marking the official beginning of government-funded research into psychic espionage.

The Stanford Research Institute Years

Remote viewing research officially began in 1972 at the Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, California. The program was led by two physicists, Harold Puthoff and Russell Targ, who coined the term remote viewing to describe the practice of psychically perceiving distant locations, objects, or events. The term itself was suggested by Ingo Swann, a New York artist and self-described psychic who would become central to the program's development.

Swann, who had reported out-of-body experiences since childhood, proved to be a pivotal figure. He didn't simply participate as a test subject but actively shaped the research methodology. Frustrated by the traditional approach where subjects were treated as passive guinea pigs, Swann documented his own psychic processes and worked with the researchers to develop what became known as Coordinate Remote Viewing. In this protocol, viewers were given only geographical coordinates and asked to describe what existed at those locations, with no other information provided.

One of the early experiments that captured attention involved Uri Geller, the Israeli psychic famous for spoon-bending. Puthoff and Targ tested Geller at SRI in the early 1970s, and their apparently positive results generated interest from the Department of Defense. However, the Geller experiments would later become controversial, with critics pointing to inadequate controls and Geller's known use of stage magic techniques. Ray Hyman, a psychology professor brought in to evaluate Geller, concluded he was a complete fraud, leading to the loss of government funding for further Geller research.

More compelling to the intelligence community were experiments with other subjects. Pat Price, a former police officer from Burbank, California, demonstrated abilities that impressed CIA handlers. In one notable 1974 test, Price was given only geographical coordinates for a suspected Soviet nuclear testing site at Semipalatinsk. Without any other information, he described lying on the roof of a brick building with a gigantic crane moving overhead on rails, along with structures resembling oil well derricks. His descriptions included specific details about the facility that reportedly aligned with classified intelligence.

The Operational Phase: Fort Meade

In the late 1970s, the program transitioned from pure research to operational intelligence work, moving from California to Fort Meade, Maryland. The Defense Intelligence Agency took control, and the initiative evolved through various code names including GRILL FLAME, CENTER LANE, and SUN STREAK, before being consolidated as the Stargate Project in 1991.

The Fort Meade unit employed military and civilian remote viewers who were tasked with intelligence gathering operations. Joseph McMoneagle, a U.S. Army Chief Warrant Officer, became known as Remote Viewer 001 and is considered by supporters to be one of the most successful practitioners. McMoneagle participated in thousands of remote viewing sessions and claimed accuracy rates of 65 to 75 percent for his work. He received the Legion of Merit for his contributions to various intelligence operations, with official documents citing his provision of information on 150 targets that were unavailable from other sources.

Remote Viewer 001: Joseph McMoneagle became the most famous participant in Project Stargate, claiming high accuracy rates in thousands of intelligence gathering sessions.

Among the operational successes claimed by the program was the location of a downed Soviet aircraft in Zaire in 1979. Rosemary Smith, a young administrative assistant recruited into the program, reportedly pinpointed the crash site of a Soviet plane carrying an atomic bomb after conventional reconnaissance had failed. Map technicians converted her descriptions into geographical coordinates, and two days later, the aircraft was discovered at the predicted location, allowing CIA operatives to retrieve valuable Soviet technology.

Another notable case involved the 1981 kidnapping of U.S. Army General James Dozier by the Red Brigade in Italy. Remote viewers reportedly sketched the location where Dozier was being held and described details about his captivity. McMoneagle also claimed to have accurately described the interior of a top-secret Soviet manufacturing facility and predicted the construction of the Typhoon Class submarine, which was unknown to Western intelligence at the time. Additionally, he stated he correctly predicted when Skylab would leave orbit and where it would impact on Earth's surface, eleven months before the event occurred.

The program expanded its scope beyond terrestrial targets. In one of the most extraordinary experiments, Ingo Swann was tasked with remote viewing the planet Jupiter before the NASA Pioneer 10 flyby in 1973. To the surprise of researchers, Swann described seeing rings around Jupiter. At the time, this seemed like an error, as Jupiter was not known to have rings, and researchers wondered if Swann had accidentally viewed Saturn instead. However, when Pioneer 10 conducted its flyby, it confirmed the existence of Jovian rings that had been previously undiscovered. Later sessions involved attempted remote viewing of Mars, with multiple viewers describing pyramidal structures, ancient cities, and evidence of past civilizations on the Red Planet.

Methods and Techniques

The Stargate Project employed several different remote viewing techniques over its operational lifetime. Coordinate Remote Viewing, the original method developed at SRI with Ingo Swann's input, required viewers to work with geographic coordinates alone. Extended Remote Viewing incorporated relaxation and meditative techniques to achieve altered states of consciousness. A third approach, Written Remote Viewing, combined elements of automatic writing and channeling, though this proved controversial and was considered less reliable by many within the program.

The standard operational procedure involved strict double-blind protocols to prevent contamination of results. Remote viewers were kept isolated from information about the target, and the results were documented before any feedback was provided. Sessions were typically conducted in controlled environments, often in shielded rooms designed to eliminate electromagnetic interference. An interviewer would guide the remote viewer through the process, helping them describe mental impressions without leading them toward specific conclusions.

Training protocols emphasized the development of a specific mental state that remote viewers called the signal line, a focused awareness that allowed them to perceive distant targets. Trainees learned to distinguish between actual psychic impressions and imagination or analytical overlay. The process required viewers to report raw sensory data, colors, textures, temperatures, and spatial relationships, before attempting to analyze or identify what they were perceiving.

At its peak during the mid-1980s, the program included as many as seven full-time viewers along with analytical and support personnel. Over forty people served in the program at various times, with about 23 individuals working as remote viewers throughout its history. By 1995, when the program was terminated, only three remote viewers remained active, and according to McMoneagle, one of them was using tarot cards rather than the established protocols.

Scientific Scrutiny and Controversy

From its inception, Project Stargate faced significant skepticism from the scientific community. The early SRI experiments with Puthoff and Targ came under intense criticism for methodological flaws. Psychologists David Marks and Richard Kammann attempted to replicate the SRI remote viewing experiments in a series of 35 studies during the 1970s. They could not reproduce the positive results and discovered what they considered to be serious problems with the original research design.

When Marks and Kammann examined the transcripts from the SRI experiments, they found numerous cues that could have influenced the judging process. The transcripts contained references to previous targets, dates written at the top of pages, and other information that could allow judges to match descriptions to targets through normal deduction rather than psychic ability. When they requested the unpublished transcripts from Targ and Puthoff to verify their findings, the researchers initially refused to provide them, an unusual stance in scientific research where data transparency is expected. Eventually, Marks and Kammann obtained the transcripts through a judge involved in the experiments and found what they described as a wealth of cues. When these cues were eliminated, they argued, the results fell to chance levels.

The psychologist C.E.M. Hansel evaluated the experiments and noted a lack of proper controls and inadequate reporting of experimental design. He concluded the studies were too loosely controlled to serve any useful scientific function. The 1988 report by the United States National Research Council stated bluntly that there should remain little doubt that the Targ-Puthoff studies are fatally flawed.

Other criticisms focused on the involvement of individuals with connections to Scientology. Both Harold Puthoff and Ingo Swann had been active Scientologists, having reached high levels within the organization. Pat Price had also been a Scientologist. Critics suggested this connection raised questions about the objectivity of the research and the potential influence of Scientology concepts on the development of remote viewing protocols.

The 1995 AIR Review: The End of Stargate

The decisive moment for Project Stargate came in 1995 when the program was transferred from Defense Intelligence Agency control to the CIA. The CIA commissioned the American Institutes for Research to conduct an external evaluation of the program's effectiveness and value to the intelligence community. To ensure a balanced assessment, AIR recruited two researchers with opposing views on parapsychology to write the report.

Jessica Utts, a statistician and professor at the University of California, Irvine, approached the review with an open mind toward psychic phenomena. Ray Hyman, a psychologist at the University of Oregon, was a noted skeptic and critic of parapsychology research. Their task was to evaluate both the scientific validity of the research and the operational usefulness of remote viewing for intelligence gathering.

The reviewers reached different conclusions about the statistical evidence. Utts found the results compelling, noting that subjects scored 5 to 15 percent above chance expectation, and that similar results had been obtained across different laboratories. She believed this consistency across multiple studies was difficult to explain by chance, fraud, or coincidence alone. Utts concluded that a statistically significant effect had been demonstrated in laboratory settings, suggesting that remote viewing represented a genuine human capability deserving further study.

Hyman agreed that something unusual appeared in the data, stating that the contemporary findings along with the output of the program do seem to indicate that something beyond odd statistical hiccups is taking place. However, he found what he considered to be potential flaws in the experimental methods and determined that the results were not consistent enough with experiments conducted outside the program. Hyman argued that even if the laboratory results were valid, they did not prove the existence of psychic functioning because the evidence was entirely negative, based on the inability to explain results through normal means rather than demonstrating a positive mechanism for how remote viewing worked.

The second component of the AIR review examined operational utility. Two psychologists evaluated whether remote viewing had provided useful intelligence that could inform decisions or actions. Their assessment was unequivocal. They concluded that the information provided by remote viewing was consistently vague and ambiguous, making it difficult or impossible to yield actionable intelligence. The report noted that in the well-publicized cases of dramatic hits, there was reason to suspect the remote viewers might have had substantially more background information than was initially apparent.

The final AIR report concluded that even if a paranormal phenomenon occurred under laboratory conditions, these conditions had limited applicability to real-world intelligence operations. The nature of remote viewing targets in controlled experiments was vastly different from operational intelligence requirements, and the information produced was too imprecise to be useful. The report explicitly stated that no remote viewing report ever provided actionable information for any intelligence operation.

Based on these findings, the CIA terminated the 20 million dollar project in 1995, citing a lack of documented evidence that the program had any value to the intelligence community. The decision was also influenced by broader post-Cold War budget considerations and a general reassessment of classified programs that seemed less critical in the new geopolitical environment.

The Legacy and Continuing Debate

The declassification of Project Stargate documents in 1995, with additional materials released through the CIA's CREST archive in 2017, opened a window into one of the strangest chapters of Cold War intelligence history. The program's existence confirmed that at the highest levels of government, officials were willing to explore unconventional approaches to intelligence gathering, even those that seemed to defy conventional scientific understanding.

Supporters of remote viewing point to specific successful cases and argue that the program was prematurely terminated due to stigma and the giggle factor that McMoneagle described, where intelligence officials wanted to use the results but were unwilling to be publicly associated with psychic research. They suggest that the 1995 evaluation emphasized negative findings while downplaying operational successes, and that statistical evidence from laboratory studies demonstrates a real phenomenon that deserves continued investigation.

Skeptics counter that the claimed successes can be explained by a combination of factors including general and vague descriptions that can be retrofitted to match targets after the fact, a phenomenon known as subjective validation. They note that humans are naturally inclined to remember hits and forget misses, and that anecdotal success stories do not constitute scientific evidence. The failure to produce consistently useful intelligence over more than two decades of operation, they argue, demonstrates that whatever statistical anomalies might exist in laboratory settings, remote viewing has no practical value for intelligence work.

The scientific consensus remains that remote viewing has not been demonstrated to work under properly controlled conditions. Recent experiments have consistently failed to replicate the positive findings of the early SRI studies when adequate controls are implemented. The phenomenon is generally regarded as pseudoscience by mainstream researchers, with explanations for apparent successes ranging from methodological flaws to the psychological tendency to find meaningful patterns in random or ambiguous information.

Cultural Impact

Project Stargate's influence extended beyond intelligence circles into popular culture. The program inspired numerous books, documentaries, and films. The most notable fictional adaptation was the 2009 film The Men Who Stare at Goats, starring George Clooney and Jeff Bridges, based on Jon Ronson's 2004 book of the same name. While the film took considerable creative liberties and focused on more bizarre aspects of military paranormal research, it introduced millions of viewers to the basic concept that the U.S. military had seriously investigated psychic phenomena.

Several participants in the program wrote memoirs and books describing their experiences. Joseph McMoneagle published multiple works including The Stargate Chronicles and Mind Trek, detailing his time as Remote Viewer 001. Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff wrote about their research at SRI, and various journalists and researchers have produced histories of the program from different perspectives. These accounts range from strong advocacy for the reality of psychic phenomena to critical examinations of the flaws in the research.

The declassification also spawned a commercial remote viewing industry. Several individuals who participated in or were trained by the program now offer remote viewing courses, consulting services, and training programs to the public. Thousands of people have studied remote viewing techniques, and organizations like the International Remote Viewing Association promote research and applications of the practice. Whether these commercial ventures represent the continuation of a legitimate human capability or the exploitation of public fascination with the paranormal remains a matter of intense debate.

Conclusions: What Project Stargate Reveals

Project Stargate represents a fascinating case study in how governments respond to perceived threats and the limits of what institutions are willing to explore when national security is at stake. The program demonstrates that during the Cold War, American intelligence agencies were willing to investigate even highly unconventional approaches if they believed adversaries might be doing the same. The fear of a psychic gap with the Soviet Union proved sufficient to sustain funding for more than two decades, despite persistent questions about the program's scientific validity and operational value.

The debate over Project Stargate also illuminates the challenges of investigating phenomena that exist at the boundaries of scientific understanding. The program operated in a space where anecdotal successes competed with experimental failures, where statistical anomalies clashed with theoretical implausibility, and where true believers faced hardened skeptics with neither side able to definitively prove their case to the other's satisfaction. The question of whether remote viewing represents a real human capability or an elaborate example of wishful thinking, flawed methodology, and subjective validation remains unresolved in the minds of those who continue to debate the legacy of this unusual program.

What is certain is that Project Stargate consumed significant resources, involved dedicated personnel who genuinely believed in their mission, and ultimately failed to produce intelligence that the organizations funding it found valuable enough to continue. Whether this represents the abandonment of a promising avenue of research or the overdue termination of a program that never had scientific merit depends largely on one's prior beliefs about the possibility of psychic phenomena. The documents declassified from Project Stargate provide evidence that both sides continue to mine in support of their positions, ensuring that the debate over America's psychic spies will continue for years to come.