The Cold War was a battle fought on many fronts, some more conventional than others. Among the more intriguing and controversial was the Stargate Project, a top-secret U.S. Army unit established in 1978 to investigate the potential for psychic phenomena in military and domestic intelligence applications. Operating out of Fort Meade, Maryland, the project, overseen by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and SRI International, aimed to harness abilities like remote viewing to gain an edge over adversaries.
From Gondola Wish to Stargate: The Project’s Evolution
Initially known by various code names such as ‘Gondola Wish’, ‘Stargate’, ‘Grill Flame’, ‘Center Lane’, ‘Project CF’, ‘Sun Streak’, and ‘Scanate’, these initiatives were consolidated and officially christened the “Stargate Project” in 1991. This consolidation reflected a sustained interest in exploring the purported ability to psychically “see” events, sites, or information from a great distance. The genesis of these projects can be traced back to 1970 when U.S. intelligence believed the Soviet Union was heavily investing in “psychotronic” research. In response, the CIA initiated funding for SCANATE (“scan by coordinate”) in the same year, with remote viewing research beginning at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) in 1972.
The Focus: Diving Deep into Remote Viewing
At its core, the Stargate Project’s work primarily revolved around remote viewing. Proponents like Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff, who began testing psychics at SRI in 1972, claimed significant accuracy rates in their experiments. The project sought to refine this purported ability into a reliable intelligence-gathering tool. Ingo Swann, a notable psychic involved, is credited with developing a more structured approach to clairvoyance, termed “Coordinate Remote Viewing” (CRV). Participants, often referred to as “remote viewers,” were tasked with describing military installations, hidden objects, or foreign threats based on coordinates or vague clues.
Key Players in the Psychic Espionage Arena
The Stargate Project involved a diverse group of individuals, including military personnel, scientists, and those claiming psychic abilities. Some key figures included:
- Lt. Frederick Holmes “Skip” Atwater: Oversaw the project until 1987 and was known as a “psychic headhunter”.
- Maj. Gen. Albert Stubblebine: A strong internal sponsor of the research at Fort Meade, convinced of the reality of psychic phenomena.
- Harold Puthoff and Russell Targ: Physicists who initiated remote viewing research at SRI and collaborated on the project. Puthoff also served as a director of the Stargate Project and attributed some of his remote viewing skills to his involvement with Scientology.
- Edwin May: Joined the project in 1975 and became the principal investigator, overseeing contracting transfers to SAIC in 1991. He also acted as the judge for the project, a point of criticism regarding potential conflict of interest.
- Ingo Swann: Played a crucial role in developing the protocols for remote viewing.
- Pat Price: A former police officer who reportedly provided accurate descriptions of Soviet facilities based on maps and photographs.
- Joseph McMoneagle: A remote viewer who claimed success in describing hidden Soviet military bases.
- Uri Geller: An Israeli psychic tested by Targ and Puthoff, whose apparent success initially garnered interest from the Department of Defense, although Ray Hyman later deemed him a “complete fraud”.
Tales of Success and the Shadows of Skepticism
Proponents of the Stargate Project often point to instances of reported successes, such as the location of a lost Soviet spy plane in 1976 by Rosemary Smith, the identification of a Soviet weapons factory, and the alleged remote viewing of Mars in 1984, which described pyramids and signs of past civilization. In this specific instance, a remote viewer provided coordinates with no prior context and described a desolate Mars with pyramid-like structures and tall, thin intelligent beings from over a million years ago.
However, the project faced significant criticism and skepticism from the scientific community. Critics argued that the results lacked scientific rigor, were inconsistent, and could be attributed to factors like guesswork, chance, vague descriptions, or confirmation bias. A 1995 CIA report concluded that the program was never useful in any intelligence operation, with information provided being vague, irrelevant, and erroneous. Suspicions of inter-judge reliability also plagued the project.
Psychologist Ray Hyman, who had earlier debunked Uri Geller, was part of a panel that reviewed the Stargate Project. He found nothing surprising in the reported matching of reports against targets, suggesting that reasonable guessing and subjective validation were likely explanations. David Marks, in his book “The Psychology of the Psychic,” detailed flaws in the project’s design, including the possibility of cues or sensory leakage, lack of independent replication, secret experiments hindering peer review, and the problematic role of Edwin May as both principal investigator and judge.
The Sunset of Stargate: Closure and Declassification
Ultimately, after nearly two decades and an estimated $20 million in funding, the Stargate Project was terminated and declassified in 1995 following a CIA report. The report concluded that remote viewing had not been proven to work by a psychic mechanism and had not been used operationally. The American Institutes for Research (AIR) also performed a review, concluding that no remote viewing report ever provided actionable information for any intelligence operation.
Despite its termination, the CIA published records online in January 2017 as part of the CREST archive, fueling public curiosity and speculation about the project’s true nature and findings.
A Lingering Legacy: Science, Pseudoscience, and the Unknown
The Stargate Project remains a captivating and controversial chapter in U.S. intelligence history. While mainstream science largely dismisses it as pseudoscience due to the lack of reproducible results and scientific rigor, the project has undeniably left a lasting legacy. It has inspired numerous books, documentaries, and fictional works, most notably the book and film “The Men Who Stare at Goats”.
The Stargate Project serves as a potent reminder of the lengths to which governments will go in the pursuit of national security and the enduring human fascination with the unexplored potential of the mind. Whether viewed as a bold, albeit ultimately unsuccessful, exploration of psychic phenomena or a misguided venture into pseudoscience, the declassified secrets of the Stargate Project continue to spark debate and fuel our collective imagination about the boundaries of human consciousness and the mysteries of the universe.
