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 in California. The group studied whether psychic abilities, such as seeing things from far away, could help with military and intelligence work. Before being called "Stargate Project," it had many other names, like "Gondola Wish" and "Sun Streak." These names were used by different groups, including the DIA, CIA, and INSCOM, until 1991, when all the projects were combined and named "Stargate Project."
The Stargate Project focused on a practice called remote viewing, which is the idea that people can mentally see events, places, or information from far away. From 1977 until 1987, the project was led 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 in a small, old wooden building.
The Stargate Project was officially ended and made public in 1995 after a review by the CIA. The review found that the project 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 project provided was unclear and often included details that were not helpful or correct. The project was mentioned in a book and movie called The Men Who Stare at Goats, but 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 every six months by Senate and House select committees. He explained that the usual process for remote viewing involved keeping results secret from the person doing the viewing 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 operations, some viewers claimed to sense future events, a phenomenon known as precognition.
History
In 1970, U.S. intelligence sources believed the Soviet Union spent 60 million rubles each year on "psychotronic" research. Because of 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 said that experiments often achieved accuracy rates higher than the 65% minimum required by their clients.
Targ and Puthoff tested psychics for SRI starting 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 visit SRI and evaluate Geller. Hyman reported that Geller was a "complete fraud," leading to the loss of government funding for Targ and Puthoff to work with Geller. This led to a public tour by Geller, Targ, and Puthoff to seek private funding for further research.
One success of the project was when Rosemary Smith, an administrative assistant, located a lost Soviet spy plane in 1976. In 1977, the Army’s ACSI Systems Exploitation Detachment (SED) started the Gondola Wish program to study how adversaries might use remote viewing. In 1978, this became an official program called Grill Flame, based at Fort Meade, Maryland.
In 1979, SRI’s research was combined with Grill Flame, which was renamed INSCOM “Center Lane” Project (ICLP) in 1983. In 1984, journalist Jack Anderson reported on the program, but the National Academy of Sciences criticized it. In 1985, Army funding ended, but the program was renamed "Sun Streak" and supported by the DIA’s Scientific and Technical Intelligence Directorate.
In 2024, George Stephanopoulos wrote about the project in his book The Situation Room, mentioning a 1980 meeting where President Jimmy Carter was told about using a psychic to find a missing plane. In 2005, Carter said CIA director Stansfield Turner had once contacted a psychic for help.
In 1991, most of the program’s work moved from SRI to Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), with Edwin May managing most of the funds 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 moved to the CIA, which commissioned a report by the American Institutes for Research (AIR). The report said remote viewing had not been proven to work through psychic abilities and had not been used operationally. The CIA then ended and declassified the program.
In 1995, the CIA reviewed the program’s results with a panel including Jessica Utts, Meena Shah, and Ray Hyman. Utts said the results suggested psychic abilities, but Hyman argued the findings were not enough to prove ESP, especially precognition, and had not been replicated. Hyman noted that most reports were vague or off-target, and the few hits could be explained by guessing or subjective validation.
The review concluded that the program should not continue because, even though some lab results were statistically significant, it was unclear if a paranormal phenomenon like remote viewing had been proven. The studies did not explain the nature of the phenomenon or its reliability. Additionally, the information from remote viewing was too vague to be useful for intelligence operations.
Other evaluators from AIR said the technique lacked the reliability or clarity needed for decision-making. The final report suggested that in some cases, remote viewers might have had more information than reported. According to AIR, no remote viewing report provided useful information for intelligence operations.
The CIA ended the $20 million program in 1995, citing no evidence of its value to intelligence work. Time magazine reported in 1995 that three psychics still worked on a $500,000 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 the possibility of cues or sensory leaks, 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 make the study of telepathy and experiences where the mind leaves the body more scientific. These rules aimed to reduce unwanted sounds and mistakes during the sessions. He explained that the term "remote viewing" was created as a short way to describe this more organized method of studying telepathy. McMoneagle stated that the Stargate Project would only begin a mission if other ways of gathering information had already failed.
McMoneagle reported that at its busiest time, there were more than 22 active military and civilian remote viewers providing information. 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. McMoneagle noted that the Army was not fully supportive 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 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 became a director of the project.
Like Ingo Swann and Pat Price, Puthoff believed that his remote viewing skills were influenced by his time in Scientology, during which he reached the highest level of the organization. All three individuals left Scientology in the late 1970s.
Puthoff was the principal investigator of the project. His team of psychics reportedly identified spies, located Soviet weapons and technologies, such as a nuclear submarine in 1979, and helped find 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 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 original project was part of the Cognitive Sciences Laboratory managed by May. With increased funding in 1991, May moved the project to the Palo Alto offices of SAIC. The project continued until 1995, when the CIA ended it.
May held the roles of principal investigator, judge, and project manager. Marks noted that this arrangement created a serious problem for the experiments, as 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 denied permission for independent review of the Stargate transcripts. Marks found this refusal suspicious, stating it suggested issues with the data or the methods used to collect it.
Phase One of the project included experiments called "OOBE-Beacon 'RV'" conducted at the American Society for Psychical Research, under the leadership of Karlis Osis. A former Scientologist who claimed to have coined the term "remote viewing" based on protocols developed by a French chemical engineer named René Warcollier in the early 20th century, documented this in his book. Ingo Swann improved upon earlier methods by creating a structured system for clairvoyance called "Coordinate Remote Viewing" (CRV). In a 1995 letter, 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-sponsored projects SCANATE and the Stargate Project. Price joined the program after meeting Harold Puthoff and Ingo Swann, who were also Scientologists at the time, 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 became the Director of National Intelligence.
A major supporter of the research at Fort Meade, Maryland, was Maj. Gen. Stubblebine. He believed that many unusual mental abilities, such as bending metal without touching it, were real. He required his battalion commanders to learn these skills and tried to perform psychic tasks himself, such as walking 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 mistakenly linked "Project Jedi," a supposed program run by Special Forces at Fort Bragg, to the Stargate project. After problems with these experiments, including claims that unapproved civilian psychics worked in secure areas, Stubblebine was forced to retire. His replacement as INSCOM commander was Maj. Gen. Harry E. Soyster, who was known for being more traditional in his approach to intelligence. Soyster did not support paranormal experiments, and the Army’s involvement in Project Stargate ended during his leadership.
In his book Psychic Warrior, Morehouse stated he completed hundreds of remote viewing tasks, including searching for a Soviet jet that crashed in a jungle with an atomic bomb and tracking suspected spies.
McMoneagle reported having strong memories of events from his early childhood. He grew up in difficult conditions, including alcoholism, abuse, and poverty. As a child, he had visions when he was frightened and began developing his psychic abilities in his teens to protect himself while traveling alone. He joined the Army to escape his home life. While serving in U.S. Army Intelligence, he became an experimental remote viewer.
Ed Dames was originally assigned to monitor and analyze remote viewing sessions as an assistant to Fred Atwater, not as a remote viewer himself. He did not receive formal training in remote viewing. After joining the remote viewing unit in January 1986, Dames was used to oversee remote viewers and provide training. He became known for pushing the remote viewing program to include extreme targets, such as Atlantis, Mars, UFOs, and aliens. Dames has frequently appeared on the Coast to Coast AM radio show.
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 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, written 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.