The Stargate Project was a secret United States Army group created in 1977 at Fort Meade, Maryland, by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and Stanford Research Institute (SRI), a company based in California. The group studied whether mental abilities, such as the supposed ability to see things from far away, could help with military or intelligence work. Before being called the Stargate Project in 1991, it had many other secret names, including "Gondola Wish," "Grill Flame," and "Sun Streak."
The Stargate Project focused on remote viewing, which is the claimed ability to mentally observe events, places, or information from a distance. From 1977 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.
The Stargate Project ended in 1995 after a review by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) found that it did not help with intelligence work. While some experiments showed results that were statistically meaningful, the reviewers were unsure if these results were accurate. The information the program provided was often unclear, included unimportant details, or had mistakes. The program was later mentioned in the 2004 book and 2009 movie The Men Who Stare at Goats, though neither used its real name.
Background
According to Joseph McMoneagle, the CIA and DIA responded to reports that the Soviets were researching parapsychology by creating and funding their own research programs. 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 "viewer" to prevent failures from affecting their confidence or skills.
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 sources thought the Soviet Union was spending 60 million rubles each year on "psychotronic" research. Because of claims that the Soviet program had produced 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. Supporters of the research, Russell Targ and Harold E. Puthoff, said that a minimum accuracy rate of 65% required by clients was often exceeded in later experiments.
In 1972, physicists Targ and Puthoff began testing psychics for SRI, including Israeli Uri Geller, who later became an international celebrity. Their results appeared successful and caught the attention of 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 visit SRI and evaluate Geller. Hyman’s report said Geller was a "complete fraud," and as a result, Targ and Puthoff lost their government contract to work with him. This led to a publicity tour for Geller, Targ, and Puthoff 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, a young administrative assistant hired 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." In mid-1978, the Army formalized this as an operational program called Grill Flame, based in buildings 2560 and 2561 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 not well received by the National Academy of Sciences National Research Council. In late 1985, Army funding was stopped, but the program was renamed "Sun Streak" and funded by the DIA’s Scientific and Technical Intelligence Directorate (office code DT-S).
In 2024, George Stephanopoulos wrote in his book The Situation Room about a May 8, 1980, Situation Room briefing for President Jimmy Carter, after Carter’s failed hostage rescue mission in Iran on April 24, 1980. In 2005, Carter told a GQ magazine interviewer that CIA director Stansfield Turner once 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 70% of the contractor funds and 85% of the data. Its security classification was changed from Special Access Program (SAP) to Limited Dissemination (LIMDIS), and the program’s final name was STARGATE.
In 1995, the defense appropriations bill directed that the program be transferred to CIA oversight. The CIA commissioned a report by the American Institutes for Research (AIR) that found remote viewing had not been proven to work through psychic mechanisms and had not been used operationally. The CIA then canceled and declassified the program.
In 1995, the project was transferred to the CIA, and a review of the results was conducted. The panel included Jessica Utts, Meena Shah, and Ray Hyman. Utts and Hyman were chosen because they had strong scientific backgrounds and represented both sides of the paranormal debate. Hyman had previously criticized Geller and SRI, but David Marks noted that Utts’ collaboration with Edwin May, a key researcher, might affect her impartiality.
Utts’ report claimed the results showed evidence of psychic functioning, but Hyman argued that the conclusion about ESP, especially precognition, was premature and that findings had not been independently replicated. Hyman wrote:
Psychologists, such as myself, who study subjective validation find nothing surprising in the reported matching of remote viewing reports against targets. Most data is vague, general, or far from the target. The few apparent successes are what we would expect from guessing and subjective validation.
The review concluded:
The data does not provide clear evidence that a paranormal phenomenon, remote viewing, exists. Even if such a phenomenon were proven in the lab, the conditions used in experiments are not useful for intelligence work. The information from remote viewing is often unclear, making it hard to use for important decisions. We conclude that using remote viewing for intelligence is not justified.
Other evaluators from AIR assessed the program’s usefulness for intelligence gathering and found the technique unreliable and not suitable for decision-making. The final report said there was reason to believe some reported successes might have been based on more information than was apparent.
According to the AIR review, no remote viewing report provided useful information for any intelligence operation. The CIA ended the $20 million program in 1995, citing a lack of evidence that 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.
David Marks, in his 2000 book The Psychology of the Psychic, discussed flaws in the Stargate Project. He identified six problems, including the possibility of cues or sensory leakage, lack of independent replication, secret experiments that prevented peer review, and a conflict of interest because Edwin May, the judge, was also the project’s lead researcher.
Methodology
According to Joseph McMoneagle, the Stargate Project developed a set of rules to help scientists study clairvoyance and out-of-body experiences more carefully. These rules aimed to reduce mistakes and unclear information during research. He explained that the term "remote viewing" was created as a shorter way to describe this organized method of studying clairvoyance. McMoneagle stated that the Stargate Project would only begin a mission if all other ways of gathering intelligence had already been tried and failed.
He reported that at its busiest time, more than 22 military and civilian remote viewers were working on the project. When people left the project, they were not replaced. By the time the project ended in 1995, only three remote viewers remained, one of whom used tarot cards to assist with their work. McMoneagle noted that the Army did not fully support the study of psychic abilities, leading to the use of the term "giggle factor" to describe the skepticism around such work. This skepticism also inspired the saying, "I wouldn't want to be found dead next to a psychic."
Civilian personnel
In the 1970s, the CIA and DIA provided funding to Harold E. Puthoff to study paranormal abilities. He worked with Russell Targ on the Stargate Project, which examined the claimed psychic abilities of individuals such as Uri Geller, Ingo Swann, Pat Price, Joseph McMoneagle, and others. Puthoff later became a director of the project.
Puthoff, along with Ingo Swann and Pat Price, believed that their remote viewing abilities were influenced by their involvement with Scientology. At that time, Puthoff had reached the highest level in Scientology. All three individuals left Scientology in the late 1970s.
Puthoff served as the principal investigator of the Stargate Project. His team of psychics reportedly helped identify spies, locate Soviet weapons and technologies, such as a nuclear submarine in 1979, and assisted in finding lost SCUD missiles during the first Gulf War and plutonium in North Korea in 1994.
Russell Targ began working with Harold Puthoff on the Stargate Project in the 1970s while also serving as a researcher at Stanford Research Institute.
Edwin C. May joined the Stargate Project in 1975 as a consultant and became a full-time employee in 1976. The project was initially part of the Cognitive Sciences Laboratory managed by May. In 1991, with increased funding, May moved the project to SAIC’s Palo Alto offices. The project continued until 1995, when the CIA shut it down.
May held the roles of principal investigator, judge, and project manager.
The Stargate Project’s early experiments, called "Phase One," were conducted by the American Society for Psychical Research under research director 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 20th century, documented this in his book. Ingo Swann improved upon earlier methods by creating a structured system called "Coordinate Remote Viewing" (CRV).
In 1995, Edwin C. May wrote that he had not worked with Swann for two years due to 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 a former Scientologist, Pat Price participated in Cold War-era remote viewing experiments, including the U.S. government-funded projects SCANATE and the Stargate Project. He joined the program after meeting Harold Puthoff and Ingo Swann near SRI. Using maps and photographs provided by the CIA, Price claimed to have retrieved information about facilities behind Soviet lines. He is best known for sketches of cranes and gantries that matched CIA intelligence photographs. 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 worked as the Director of National Intelligence.
A major supporter of the research at Fort Meade, Maryland, was Maj. Gen. Stubblebine. He believed that many types of psychic abilities were real. He required all his battalion commanders to learn how to bend spoons, like Uri Geller did, and he tried several psychic activities, such as attempting to walk through walls. In the early 1980s, he led the United States Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM), during which the Army's remote viewing project began. Some people have confused a "Project Jedi," supposedly run by Special Forces at Fort Bragg, with Project Stargate. After problems with these experiments, including claims that unapproved civilian psychics worked in special secure areas, Stubblebine was retired. His replacement as INSCOM commander was Maj. Gen. Harry E. Soyster, who was known as a more traditional and cautious intelligence officer. 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 said he worked on hundreds of remote viewing tasks, including searching for a Soviet jet that crashed in a jungle with an atomic bomb and tracking suspected double agents.
McMoneagle said he had strong memories 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 started developing his psychic skills in his teens for protection while hitchhiking. He joined the Army to leave his home life. While serving in U.S. Army Intelligence, he became an experimental remote viewer.
Ed Dames was originally meant to help Fred Atwater by monitoring and analyzing remote viewing sessions, not by being 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 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 created in 2014 by Jeffrey J. Kripal, a religion professor. AOTI is located at the Woodson Research Center (WRC), and its materials are stored in the Fondren Library. AOTI contains declassified research materials from the Stargate Project. Christopher Senn was responsible for organizing the Stargate Project collection for Rice University. The collection was donated by Edwin May, who served as the U.S. Army's program director from 1985 to 1995. In Routledge's Handbook of Religion and Secrecy, authors Hugh Urban and Paul Christopher Johnson wrote that Kripal and Senn explained May's donation to AOTI included thousands of pages of declassified documents. 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 1972 to 1995.