The Stargate Project was a secret group created in 1977 by the United States Army at Fort Meade, Maryland. It was run by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and a research company called Stanford Research Institute (SRI) in California. The goal was to study whether psychic abilities, such as seeing distant events or objects, could be used for military or intelligence work. Before being called the Stargate Project, it had many other names, including "Gondola Wish," "Grill Flame," and "Center Lane" under INSCOM, "Sun Streak" and "Star Gate" under the DIA, "Star Gate" and "SCANATE" under the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and "Project CF." In 1991, all these projects were combined and officially named the Stargate Project.
The Stargate Project focused on remote viewing, which is the claimed ability to see places, events, or information from far away using psychic powers. Until 1987, the project was managed by Lt. Frederick Holmes "Skip" Atwater, who worked for Maj. Gen. Albert Stubblebine and later became president of the Monroe Institute. The group was small, with about 15 to 20 people, and operated from a small, old wooden building.
In 1995, the Stargate Project was officially ended and made public after a review by the CIA found that it had not been helpful for intelligence work. While some experiments showed results that seemed meaningful, the reviewers were unsure if these results were due to mistakes. The information the program provided was often unclear, included unimportant details, or was incorrect. The project was later mentioned in the 2004 book and 2009 movie The Men Who Stare at Goats, though neither used the name "Stargate Project."
Background
According to Joseph McMoneagle, the CIA and DIA responded to reports that the Soviets were studying parapsychology by creating and funding their own research programs. McMoneagle stated that these programs were reviewed every six months by Senate and House select committees. He explained that the standard procedure for remote viewing required keeping results secret from the person doing the viewing to prevent failures from harming their confidence or skill.
McMoneagle described remote viewing as an effort to gather information about unknown places or events. He noted that it was typically used to learn about current events, but during military and domestic intelligence work, some viewers claimed to sense future events, a phenomenon called precognition.
History
In 1970, U.S. intelligence believed the Soviet Union spent 60 million rubles each year on research called "psychotronic." In response to claims that the Soviet program had success, the CIA started a new program called SCANATE in the same year. Remote viewing research began in 1972 at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) in Menlo Park, California. Researchers Russell Targ and Harold E. Puthoff claimed that experiments often achieved accuracy rates above 65%, which was the minimum required by their clients.
Targ and Puthoff began testing psychics for SRI in 1972, including Israeli psychic Uri Geller, who later became famous worldwide. Their results interested the U.S. Department of Defense. Ray Hyman, a psychology professor at the University of Oregon, was asked by Air Force psychologist Lt. Col. Austin W. Kibler to investigate Geller’s abilities. Hyman’s report stated Geller was a "complete fraud," leading to the loss of Targ and Puthoff’s government contract to work with him. This event prompted a publicity tour for Geller, Targ, and Puthoff to seek private funding for further research.
One success of the project was the location of a lost Soviet spy plane in 1976 by Rosemary Smith, an administrative assistant recruited by project director Dale Graff.
In 1977, the Army’s Intelligence unit started the Gondola Wish program to study how adversaries might use remote viewing. This became an official program called Grill Flame in 1978, based at Fort Meade, Maryland.
In 1979, SRI’s research was integrated into Grill Flame, which was later renamed INSCOM’s "Center Lane" Project (ICLP) in 1983. In 1984, journalist Jack Anderson reported on the program, and the National Academy of Sciences criticized it. In 1985, Army funding ended, but the program was renamed "Sun Streak" and continued by the DIA’s Scientific and Technical Intelligence Directorate.
In 2024, George Stephanopoulos wrote in his book The Situation Room about a 1980 Situation Room meeting where President Jimmy Carter was briefed on the program after a failed hostage rescue mission in Iran. In 2005, Carter said the CIA once asked a psychic in California to help locate a missing plane.
In 1991, most of the program’s contracts were moved from SRI to Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC). Edwin May controlled most of the funding and data. The program’s security classification changed from Special Access Program (SAP) to Limited Dissemination (LIMDIS), and it was renamed STARGATE.
In 1995, the program was transferred to the CIA, which commissioned a review by the American Institutes for Research (AIR). The report found no proof that remote viewing worked through psychic abilities and stated it had not been used operationally. The CIA then canceled and declassified the program.
The CIA’s review panel included Jessica Utts, Meena Shah, and Ray Hyman. Utts argued the results suggested psychic abilities, while Hyman said the findings were not enough to prove psychic powers like precognition. Hyman noted that most data from remote viewers was vague or unrelated to targets.
The review concluded that the program should not continue because the evidence for remote viewing was unclear. Even if a psychic ability existed, the program’s conditions were not useful for intelligence work. The information from remote viewers was too vague to be helpful for making decisions.
Other evaluators from AIR also found the technique unreliable and not useful for intelligence operations. They noted that in some cases, remote viewers might have had more information than reported.
The final report stated that no remote viewing reports provided useful information for intelligence operations. Based on these findings, the CIA ended the $20 million program, citing no proof of its value. Time magazine reported in 1995 that three psychics still worked on a $500,000 annual budget at Fort Meade, which would soon close.
In his 2000 book The Psychology of the Psychic, David Marks discussed flaws in the STARGATE Project. He identified six issues, including possible cues or leaks, lack of independent testing, secret experiments, and conflicts of interest. Marks noted that Edwin May, the judge overseeing the project, was also its lead researcher, creating a conflict of interest.
Methodology
Joseph McMoneagle stated that the Stargate Project developed rules and procedures to study clairvoyance and out-of-body experiences in a more scientific way. These rules aimed to reduce unwanted sounds and mistakes during research. He explained that the term "remote viewing" was used as a short way to describe this more organized method of studying clairvoyance. McMoneagle said the Stargate Project would only take on a mission if all other intelligence methods had already failed.
He claimed that at the project's busiest time, more than 22 military and civilian remote viewers were active. However, when people left the project, they were not replaced. By the time the project ended in 1995, only three remote viewers remained, and one of them used tarot cards to help with their work. According to McMoneagle, the Army did not fully support the study of psychic abilities, which led to the use of the term "giggle factor" and the saying, "I wouldn't want to be found dead next to a psychic."
Civilian personnel
In the 1970s, the CIA and DIA gave money to Harold E. Puthoff to study paranormal abilities. He worked with Russell Targ on a project called the Stargate Project, which tested the claimed psychic abilities of people like Uri Geller, Ingo Swann, Pat Price, Joseph McMoneagle, and others. Puthoff became a director of the project.
Puthoff, Ingo Swann, and Pat Price said their remote viewing skills were influenced by their time in Scientology. At that time, Puthoff had reached the highest level in Scientology. All three left Scientology in the late 1970s.
Puthoff was the main researcher for the Stargate Project. His team of psychics is said to have helped identify spies, find Soviet weapons, including a nuclear submarine in 1979, and locate lost SCUD missiles during the first Gulf War and plutonium in North Korea in 1994.
Russell Targ started working with Harold Puthoff on the Stargate Project in the 1970s while also working as a researcher at Stanford Research Institute.
Edwin C. May joined the Stargate Project in 1975 as a consultant and worked full-time in 1976. The project was originally part of the Cognitive Sciences Laboratory, which May managed. In 1991, with more funding, May moved the project to SAIC’s Palo Alto offices. The project ended in 1995 when the CIA closed it.
May was the main researcher, judge, and leader of the project. Some people, like Marks, said this was a problem because May had a conflict of interest and could have controlled the data. Marks noted that May refused to share the names of the "oversight committee" and would not allow independent review of the project’s data. This raised concerns about the reliability of the results.
The first phase of the project tested experiments called "OOBE-Beacon 'RV'" at the American Society for Psychical Research, led by Karlis Osis. A former Scientologist who claimed to have created the term "remote viewing" said the idea came from protocols developed by a French engineer named René Warcollier in the early 1900s. Ingo Swann improved the methods for testing clairvoyance, creating a system called "Coordinate Remote Viewing" (CRV). In 1995, Edwin C. May wrote that he had not worked with Swann for two years because of rumors that Swann shared information about remote viewing, aliens, and extraterrestrials with high-level officials at SAIC and the CIA.
A former police officer from Burbank, California, and former Scientologist, Pat Price took part in Cold War-era remote viewing experiments, including the SCANATE and Stargate projects. He joined the program after meeting Harold Puthoff and Ingo Swann, who were Scientologists at the time, near SRI. Using maps and photos from the CIA, Price claimed he could find information about Soviet facilities. He is best known for drawing pictures of cranes and gantries that matched CIA intelligence photos. At the time, the CIA believed his claims.
Military personnel
The project leader in the 1990s was Lt. Gen. Clapper, who later became the Director of National Intelligence.
A key supporter of the research at Fort Meade, Maryland, was Maj. Gen. Stubblebine. He believed in the existence of many types of psychic abilities. He required all battalion commanders to learn how to bend spoons, similar to what a man named Uri Geller was known for. Stubblebine also tried several psychic abilities, including an attempt to walk through walls. In the early 1980s, he led the United States Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM), during which the remote viewing project in the U.S. Army began. Some people have mistakenly linked a program called "Project Jedi," supposedly run by Special Forces at Fort Bragg, to the Stargate project. After controversy involving these experiments, including claims of security issues caused by unapproved civilian psychics working in Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities (SCIFs), Stubblebine was retired. His replacement as INSCOM commander was Maj. Gen. Harry E. Soyster, who was known for being more traditional and conventional in his approach to intelligence work. Soyster did not support continuing paranormal experiments, and the Army’s involvement in Project Stargate ended during his leadership.
In his book Psychic Warrior, Morehouse claims he completed hundreds of remote viewing tasks, including searching for a Soviet jet that crashed in the jungle and was carrying an atomic bomb, and tracking suspected double agents.
McMoneagle claims he had a strong memory of events from his early childhood. He grew up in a difficult environment marked by alcoholism, abuse, and poverty. As a child, he experienced visions at night when he was scared, and he began to develop his psychic abilities during his teenage years for protection while traveling alone. He joined the Army to escape his home life. While serving in U.S. Army Intelligence, McMoneagle became an experimental remote viewer.
Ed Dames was originally assigned to monitor and analyze sessions as a helper to Fred Atwater, not as a remote viewer. He did not receive formal training in remote viewing. After joining the remote viewing unit in January 1986, Dames was used to supervise remote viewers and provide training and practice sessions. He became known for pushing remote viewing to extreme limits, with sessions focused on topics like Atlantis, Mars, UFOs, and aliens. Dames has often appeared as a guest on the Coast to Coast AM radio program.
Archives of the Impossible
The Archives of the Impossible (AOTI) at Rice University in Houston, Texas, is a special collection started in 2014 by Jeffrey J. Kripal, a professor who studies religion. AOTI is located at the Woodson Research Center (WRC), and its materials are stored in the Fondren Library. AOTI holds secret research materials from the Stargate Project that have been made public. Christopher Senn helped organize the Stargate Project collection for Rice University. The collection was given to AOTI by Edwin May, who led the U.S. Army’s program from 1985 to 1995. In a book published by Routledge titled Handbook of Religion and Secrecy, Kripal and Senn explained that May’s donation included thousands of pages of declassified materials. In 2025, Derek Askey, an editor at The Sun, visited AOTI and reviewed materials from the government’s Stargate Project. The Stargate Project materials donated by May cover the years 1972 to 1995.