It is one of the most remarkable episodes in modern intelligence history – and at the same time one of the best-documented research programs on the question whether consciousness is bound to space and time. From 1972 to 1995, the CIA, DIA, Army Intelligence and NSA jointly funded a project that ran successively under the code names Gondola Wish, Grill Flame, Center Lane, Sun Streak and finally Stargate. Over 23 years, five US presidencies and a budget of around USD 20 million, it researched something that mainstream science officially considered impossible: the psychic perception of places, persons and events over great distances – remote viewing.
How it Began: the Soviets, SCANATE and SRI
In the early 1970s, the CIA learned that the Soviet Union was investing significant resources in "psychotronics" – the experimental study of paranormal abilities for military purposes. The concern: if the Russians made progress, the US could not afford to fall behind. In 1970, the CIA started the precursor program SCANATE. In 1972, it commissioned the physicists Russell Targ and Harold "Hal" Puthoff at the renowned Stanford Research Institute (SRI) in California to run the first experiments – at one of the most respected research institutions in the United States, where, among other things, the computer mouse, the LCD screen and forerunner technology of the internet had been developed.
The Code Names: 1977 to 1995
What began as CIA-funded research at SRI gradually became an operational program of the US armed forces. The operational base was Fort Meade, Maryland. Roughly 15 to 20 personnel served there as viewers and analysts over the years.
| Year | Code name | Note |
|---|---|---|
| 1977 | Gondola Wish | First US Army Intelligence stage |
| 1978 | Grill Flame | Formalised at Fort Meade |
| 1983 | Center Lane Project | Under INSCOM (Army Intelligence) |
| 1985 | Sun Streak | Transferred to the DIA |
| 1991 | Star Gate (Stargate) | Consolidated, transferred to SAIC contract |
| 1995 | Terminated & declassified | CIA |
The Key Viewers
- Ingo Swann (1933–2013): painter and mystic; together with Targ and Puthoff developed Coordinate Remote Viewing (CRV) and trained several generations of military viewers.
- Pat Price (1918–1975): former police officer; one of the most accurate viewers of the early phase; died unexpectedly in 1975 under unclear circumstances.
- Joseph "Joe" McMoneagle (b. 1946): "Remote Viewer #001", Chief Warrant Officer in the US Army, awarded the Legion of Merit – one of the highest US service decorations – for his Stargate contributions.
- Mel Riley: long-serving Army viewer; one of the most reliable members across multiple program phases.
- David Morehouse: later viewer; after the program author of Psychic Warrior.
The Method: Coordinate Remote Viewing
The most important method developed at SRI was Coordinate Remote Viewing (CRV), structured largely by Ingo Swann. A viewer was given nothing but a geographic coordinate (latitude and longitude) – without any further information about what was there. In tightly standardised stages, the viewer was guided to sketch and describe impressions in successive layers. The procedure was so formalised that it could be taught – a crucial point for an intelligence world that needed something methodically reproducible, not merely individual "talent".
Operational Successes
The best-documented successes today come from Joe McMoneagle. His Legion of Merit citation lists four concrete contributions:
- Soviet shipbuilding facility: description of the interior of a secret Soviet plant – including the prediction of a new ship class later identified as the Typhoon class, the largest submarines ever built.
- General James L. Dozier: sketch of the location and description of the thoughts of the US general kidnapped by the Red Brigades in northern Italy in 1981.
- Skylab: prediction – eleven months in advance – of when and where the space station would re-enter Earth's atmosphere.
- Soviet bomber with nuclear material: located in Africa after conventional reconnaissance had failed.
The citation states that McMoneagle "produced critical intelligence unavailable from any other source" – for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, DIA, NSA, CIA and Secret Service.
An Honest Caveat: There Were Failures Too
Stargate was not a miracle program – it was an experimental one with significant variability. In the case of General Dozier (Verona, December 1981, kidnapped by the Red Brigades), the archival record is mixed: while one source credits the program with providing the city and the building, an internal report stated dryly: "None of the data packages was useful in finding and freeing BG Dozier." The actual rescue was achieved on 28 January 1982 by the Italian anti-terror unit NOCS through conventional police work.
This mixed balance matters: it shows that the documentary record is sober and differentiated – no hype, no blanket dismissal.
The 1995 AIR Review: Utts vs. Hyman
When Congress had to decide in 1995 whether the program should continue, the CIA commissioned the American Institutes for Research (AIR) for an external evaluation. Two reviewers were called in – with a remarkable result:
- Jessica Utts, statistician (UC Davis, later President of the American Statistical Association): her assessment was clear – the statistical effects were real and could not be explained by chance, methodological flaws or fraud.
- Ray Hyman, psychologist (University of Oregon, self-described skeptic): he too conceded that the effects were statistically real – but attributed them to suspected methodological flaws he was unable to specify.
Both reports are public today. The CIA terminated the program nonetheless – not because the data were missing, but because the results were classified as "operationally unusable": too vague, too little actionable. A more cautious scientific phrasing would have been: It works – but we cannot reliably control it.
2017: The Files
In 2017, under pressure from FOIA litigation, the CIA released around 12 million pages of Stargate files. The full material is today available online in the CIA Reading Room – session protocols, viewer sketches, evaluations, internal correspondence. Anyone who wants to see the data themselves no longer has to take anyone's word.
What Remains
The official Stargate program ended in 1995, but the activity did not. Joe McMoneagle has documented his experience in several books (The Stargate Chronicles, Remote Viewing Secrets). Civilian structures such as the Find Me Group have carried the methodology over into missing-persons work. Former viewers such as Ed Dames, Lyn Buchanan and Paul Smith continue to train new generations.
There are also remarkable civilian applications outside the US program – for instance the Swiss medium Martin Zoller, who used remote viewing to locate a plane that had crashed in Bolivia and that conventional search teams had failed to find for days.
What Stargate leaves behind is a fact that can no longer be argued away: for 23 years and across five US presidencies, one of the largest intelligence services in the world took the existence of a phenomenon seriously enough to invest millions in it – and to produce 12 million pages of files that are now public. Against this background, the question whether consciousness arises only in the brain can no longer be answered in a single sentence.
Sources:
• CIA Reading Room: Star Gate Collection – ~12 million pages of declassified material, 2017.
• Joseph McMoneagle, The Stargate Chronicles: Memoirs of a Psychic Spy, Hampton Roads 2002.
• Russell Targ & Harold Puthoff, Mind-Reach: Scientists Look at Psychic Ability, Delacorte 1977.
• Jim Schnabel, Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies, Dell 1997.
• Jessica Utts, An Assessment of the Evidence for Psychic Functioning, AIR Report 1995 (publicly available).
• Wikipedia: Stargate Project.
• Wikipedia: Joseph McMoneagle.
Related articles: Mediumship and Power – Helen Duncan, Stargate and Academic Marginalisation, Birgit Fischer and the Find Me Group, Martin Zoller – Remote Viewing in Bolivia.