The Stargate Project was a secret group created by the United States Army in 1977 at Fort Meade, Maryland. It was started by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and Stanford Research Institute (SRI), a company based in California. The group studied whether psychic abilities, such as seeing things from far away, could help in military and 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." These names were used until 1991, when the group was officially renamed the Stargate Project.
The Stargate Project focused on a practice called remote viewing, which is the claimed ability to mentally see events, places, or information from a distance. From 1977 until 1987, the project was led by Lt. Frederick Holmes "Skip" Atwater, who was an assistant to Maj. Gen. Albert Stubblebine and later became president of the Monroe Institute. The group was small, with about 15 to 20 people, and operated in an old, poorly built wooden building.
The Stargate Project was officially ended and made public in 1995 after a review by the CIA found it had no useful role in intelligence work. Although some experiments showed results that seemed meaningful, the reviewers were unsure if these results were accurate or due to mistakes. The information the program provided was often unclear, included unimportant details, or was incorrect. The program was 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 researching parapsychology by starting their own research programs and providing funding. McMoneagle stated that these programs were reviewed twice a year by Senate and House select committees. He explained that the usual process for remote viewing required keeping results secret from the person doing the viewing to prevent failures from affecting 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 known as precognition.
History
In 1970, United States intelligence sources believed the Soviet Union was spending 60 million rubles each year on research related to "psychotronic" studies. In response to claims that the Soviet program had achieved results, the CIA started funding a new program called SCANATE ("scan by coordinate") 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 stated that experiments later exceeded a 65% accuracy rate required by their clients.
In 1972, physicists Targ and Puthoff tested psychics for SRI, including Israeli psychic Uri Geller, who later became famous internationally. Their results attracted attention from the United States 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 evaluate Geller. Hyman concluded Geller was a "complete fraud," leading to the loss of government funding for Targ and Puthoff to work with him. This led to a publicity tour to seek private funding for further research on Geller.
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 Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence (ACSI) Systems Exploitation Detachment (SED) started the Gondola Wish program to "evaluate potential adversary applications of remote viewing." By mid-1978, this became an operational program called Grill Flame, based at Fort Meade, Maryland (INSCOM "Detachment G").
In early 1979, research at SRI was integrated into "Grill Flame," which was renamed INSCOM "Center Lane" Project (ICLP) in 1983. In 1984, the program was reported by Jack Anderson, but it was criticized by the National Academy of Sciences National Research Council. In late 1985, Army funding was stopped, but the program was renamed "Sun Streak" and continued with funding from the DIA's Scientific and Technical Intelligence Directorate.
George Stephanopoulos mentioned the project in his 2024 book The Situation Room, discussing a 1980 Situation Room briefing for President Jimmy Carter after a failed hostage rescue mission in Iran. In a 2005 interview, Carter said CIA director Stansfield Turner had contacted a California woman who claimed to have psychic powers to help locate a missing plane.
In 1991, most of the program's contracts were moved from SRI to Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), with Edwin May controlling most of the funds and data. Its security classification was changed from Special Access Program (SAP) to Limited Dissemination (LIMDIS), and it was finally named STARGATE.
In 1995, the program was transferred to the CIA, and a review of its results was conducted. The panel included Jessica Utts, Meena Shah, and Ray Hyman. Utts argued the results showed evidence of psychic abilities, while Hyman said the findings were not enough to prove psychic powers like precognition, as they had not been independently tested. Hyman noted that most remote viewing reports were vague or incorrect, and the few accurate results could be explained by guessing or subjective validation.
The review concluded that the program should not continue because, despite some statistically significant results in the lab, there was no clear evidence of a paranormal phenomenon like remote viewing. The findings were not reliable enough for intelligence operations, as the information provided was often too vague or unclear to be useful. The CIA ended the program in 1995, citing a lack of proof it had value for intelligence work.
Time magazine reported in 1995 that three full-time psychics were still working on a $500,000-a-year budget at Fort Meade, Maryland, which would soon close.
In his 2000 book The Psychology of the Psychic, David Marks discussed flaws in the Stargate Project. He identified six problems, including the possibility of sensory clues, lack of independent testing, secret experiments that prevented peer review, and conflicts of interest, such as Edwin May being both a judge and the project's main researcher. Marks noted these issues made the results unreliable.
Methodology
Joseph McMoneagle explained that the Stargate Project developed rules to study clairvoyance and out-of-body experiences in a more scientific way. These rules aimed to reduce mistakes and unclear information during the research. He noted that the term "remote viewing" was used to describe this organized method of studying clairvoyance. McMoneagle stated that the project would only begin a mission if all other intelligence methods had already failed.
He claimed that at its busiest, the project had more than 22 active military and civilian remote viewers who provided information. When people left the project, they were not replaced, so by the time the project ended in 1995, only three people remained, one of whom used tarot cards. McMoneagle said the Army was not fully open to psychic abilities, leading to the use of the term "giggle factor" and the phrase, "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.
Like Ingo Swann and Pat Price, Puthoff believed his own remote viewing skills came from his time in Scientology, where he reached the highest level at that time. All three left Scientology in the late 1970s.
Puthoff was the main researcher for the project. His team of psychics reportedly helped find spies, locate Soviet weapons, such as a nuclear submarine in 1979, and locate lost SCUD missiles during the first Gulf War and plutonium in North Korea in 1994.
In the 1970s, Russell Targ worked with Harold Puthoff on the Stargate Project while also being a researcher at Stanford Research Institute.
Edwin C. May joined the Stargate Project in 1975 as a consultant and worked full-time on it in 1976. The project was originally part of the Cognitive Sciences Laboratory managed by May. With more funding in 1991, May moved the project to SAIC’s Palo Alto offices. The project ended in 1995 when the CIA shut it down.
May held the roles of principal investigator, judge, and project manager. Marks noted this was a weakness because May had a conflict of interest and could have influenced the data. Marks wrote that May refused to share the names of the "oversight committee" and would not allow him to independently review the project’s transcripts. Marks found this refusal suspicious, saying it suggested problems with the data or the methods used to collect it.
The first phase of the project tested "OOBE-Beacon 'RV'" experiments at the American Society for Psychical Research, led by Karlis Osis. A former Scientologist who claimed to have created the term "remote viewing" based on protocols developed by René Warcollier, a French chemical engineer in the early 1900s, wrote about this in his book. Ingo Swann improved remote viewing methods by creating a structured process called "Coordinate Remote Viewing" (CRV). In a 1995 letter, Edwin C. May wrote he had not worked with Swann for two years because of rumors that Swann had 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 participated in Cold War-era remote viewing experiments, including the U.S. government projects SCANATE and the Stargate Project. Price 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 to retrieve information from Soviet facilities. He is best known for drawing images of cranes and gantries that matched CIA intelligence photos. At the time, the CIA took his claims seriously.
Military personnel
In the 1990s, the leader of the project was Lt. Gen. Clapper, who later became the Director of National Intelligence.
A major supporter of the research at Fort Meade, Maryland, was Maj. Gen. Stubblebine. He believed strongly that many types of psychic abilities were real. He required all his battalion commanders to learn how to bend spoons, like the famous psychic Uri Geller, and he himself tried several psychic activities, such as attempting to walk through walls. In the early 1980s, Stubblebine led the United States Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM), during which the Army's remote viewing project began. Some people have confused "Project Jedi," which was supposedly run mainly by Special Forces at Fort Bragg, with the Stargate project. After problems with these experiments, including claims that unapproved civilian psychics worked in Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities (SCIFs), Stubblebine was forced to retire. His replacement as INSCOM commander was Maj. Gen. Harry E. Soyster, who was known for being more traditional and cautious 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 a jungle with an atomic bomb on board and tracking suspected double agents.
McMoneagle says he had a strong memory of events from his early childhood. He grew up in a difficult environment with alcoholism, abuse, and poverty. As a child, he had visions when he was scared, and in his teens, he began developing his psychic abilities to protect himself while hitchhiking. He joined the Army to escape his home life. While serving in the U.S. Army Intelligence, he became an experimental remote viewer.
Ed Dames was originally meant to be a session monitor and analyst to help Fred Atwater, not a remote viewer himself. He did not receive formal training in remote viewing. After joining the remote viewing unit in January 1986, he was used to supervise remote viewers and provide training and practice sessions. He quickly became known for pushing remote viewers to explore extreme targets, such as Atlantis, Mars, UFOs, and aliens. He has often appeared as a guest on the radio show Coast to Coast AM.
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 of religion. AOTI is located at the Woodson Research Center (WRC), and its materials are stored in the Fondren Library. AOTI contains declassified research from the Stargate Project. Christopher Senn helped organize the Stargate Project collection for Rice University. The collection was donated by Edwin May, who was the U.S. Army’s program director from 1985 to 1995. In Routledge’s Handbook of Religion and Secrecy by Hugh Urban and Paul Christopher Johnson, Kripal and Senn explained that May’s donation to AOTI included thousands of pages of declassified materials. In 2025, Derek Askey, an editor at The Sun, described his visit to AOTI and his review of materials from the government’s Stargate Project. The Stargate Project materials donated by May cover the years from 1972 to 1995.