STARGATE PROJECT

STARGATE PROJECT was a series of classified U.S. government programs investigating remote viewing and psychic phenomena for military intelligence applications, operating at Fort Meade, Maryland, from 1977 to 1995. The program passed through five successive code names reflecting changing organizational sponsors: Gondola Wish (1977-1978), Grill Flame (1978-1983), Center Lane (1983-1985), Sun Streak (1985-1991), and STAR GATE (1991-1995). Parallel civilian research under Central Intelligence Agency contract was conducted by Stanford Research Institute beginning in 1972 under the code name SCANATE. The programs were terminated in 1995 following an evaluation by the American Institutes for Research that found no demonstrated practical intelligence utility despite statistically anomalous laboratory results.¹

CIA Origins and SRI Contract

The CIA's involvement with remote viewing research began in 1972, when physicist Hal Puthoff at SRI contacted CIA officer Kit Green in the Life Sciences Division to propose a psi research program. A formal contract was negotiated through October 1972, and the program was designated SCANATE ("scan by coordinate"), reflecting Ingo Swann's method of targeting remote viewing sessions via geographic coordinates.

Key results under SCANATE included Pat Price's 1974 viewing of the Soviet weapons research facility at Semipalatinsk (URDF-3), which CIA analysts assessed as substantially accurate against satellite imagery - Price described a gantry crane, spherical objects under construction, and unusual welding techniques consistent with imagery. Price's subsequent viewing of a secret NSA signals intelligence facility at Sugar Grove, West Virginia, triggered an NSA security investigation of SRI that established the researchers had acted without foreknowledge of the site. SRI researchers Russell Targ and Puthoff published a 1974 paper in Nature and a 1976 paper in Proceedings of the IEEE documenting experimental results.¹²

Establishment at Fort Meade

In 1977, Army captain Frederick "Skip" Atwater, assigned to the Systems Exploitation Detachment (SED) at Fort Meade, proposed an Army remote viewing program to Colonel Robert Keenan. The proposal was approved by Major General Edmund Thompson. Atwater and Major Murray "Scotty" Watt visited SRI to understand viewer selection criteria, learning that Puthoff and Targ prioritized visual-spatial intelligence and artistic rendering ability over claimed psychic experience.

Atwater recruited six Army personnel as the initial unit: Joe McMoneagle, Mel Riley, Ken Bell, Nancy Stern, Fernand Gauvin, and Hartleigh Trent. The program was codenamed Gondola Wish and operated from building 4554 at Fort Meade, later moving to buildings 2560 and 2561 on Llewellyn Street. Initial categorization as "human use experimentation" required Army human use review board oversight and informed consent from participants, a designation driven partly by institutional caution in the aftermath of Project MKUltra.¹

Code Names and Organizational History

Gondola Wish became Grill Flame in late 1978 as the unit transitioned from experimental to operational tasking. McMoneagle, Riley, and Bell became the three full-time viewers designated as the Special Action Branch. The unit received tasking from CIA, NSA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Council during this period. Albert Stubblebine, INSCOM commander from 1981 to 1984, provided command-level protection for the program and was personally convinced of the utility of anomalous human capabilities. Grill Flame viewers were tasked during the 1979-1981 Iran hostage crisis hundreds of times; the relentless monotonous repetition caused viewer burnout that program managers identified as a structural operational problem.

The program was renamed Center Lane in 1983 following Stubblebine's departure and amid concerns about public profile after a Jack Anderson syndicated newspaper column disclosed the program's existence in 1984. It became Sun Streak in 1985 when DIA took the primary sponsorship role. Puthoff left SRI the same year, and Edwin May, a particle physicist who had joined the SRI program in 1976, became principal investigator and consolidated management under the Cognitive Sciences Laboratory.

The final designation STAR GATE followed the transfer of most contracting from SRI to Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) in 1991. May ran the program from SAIC's facilities in Menlo Park, California, maintaining a small operational unit at Fort Meade separately under DIA management.¹³

Notable Operational Sessions

Soviet Typhoon-class submarine (1979): McMoneagle, working from geographic coordinates only, described a massive submarine under construction at Severodvinsk, accurately characterizing its double hull, canted missile tubes, and approximate dimensions months before public reporting. His prediction that the Soviets would need to dynamite a new channel to launch the vessel was confirmed by subsequent satellite imagery.

Chinese nuclear device at Lop Nor (1979): McMoneagle and Riley independently described an "hourglass on its side" shape as a central design element of a new Chinese nuclear device. Air Force analysts later assessed this as substantially accurate. Both viewers also indicated the device did not successfully detonate, which matched the absence of any detected nuclear test at the site.

B-2 Stealth bomber (opsec tasking, early 1980s): In an Army operations security test - intended to identify information security vulnerabilities in classified programs - Riley described a "strange batlike flying-wing shape" with a "bulbous cockpit" and fiber-optic control mechanisms. The description corresponded to design elements of the then-classified B-2 bomber that the tasking Air Force officials confirmed as accurate but had not expected the remote viewers to perceive.

Crashed Navy A-6 aircraft (1979): Bell, tasked with locating a downed aircraft, described it as being on something named "bald" at a few hundred miles from Fort Meade. The aircraft was found on Bald Knob in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.

Skylab reentry zone (1979): McMoneagle accurately identified the reentry trajectory and general debris field of the Skylab station over western Australia. Skylab reentered on July 11, 1979, on a trajectory matching McMoneagle's description.

Soviet T-72 tank acquisition: Viewers including Riley tracked the movement of a Soviet T-72 tank being covertly acquired by the U.S. government, correctly perceiving the tank on a rail car and later aboard a ship. McMoneagle additionally perceived details of a staged operational cover story for the acquisition.¹

1995 AIR Evaluation and Termination

In 1995 the CIA commissioned the American Institutes for Research to evaluate the STAR GATE program. The AIR assigned independent assessments to statistician Jessica Utts of the University of California, Davis, and skeptic Ray Hyman of the University of Oregon. Utts concluded that the laboratory data showed a statistically significant anomalous effect - an effect size replicable across independent laboratories - and that the results warranted serious scientific investigation. Hyman concluded that methodological issues in the research, particularly inadequate safeguards against sensory leakage and experimenter bias, made it impossible to accept the results as evidence for remote viewing, though he acknowledged the effect could not be explained by chance.

The joint AIR report found no demonstrated practical intelligence utility for operational applications. The CIA declassified and terminated the program in November 1995. Edwin May disputed the AIR operational conclusions, arguing that the evaluation conflated the question of methodologically sound laboratory results with the separate operational question of intelligence utility, and that the program's actual intelligence contributions had not been adequately assessed.¹³

Scientific Context and Skepticism

The program operated against persistent skepticism within both the scientific community and the intelligence agencies. Program managers used the phrase "Giggle Factor" to describe the reflexive ridicule psi research attracted from mainstream intelligence officers, which limited the program's ability to integrate findings into routine analytical products. Critics including James Randi and the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal argued that the SRI experiments permitted sensory leakage and that positive results reflected inadequate experimental controls rather than genuine psi.

The Soviet justification for U.S. psi research was partly built on a fabricated "Nautilus telepathy experiment" - a story published in a French popular science magazine in 1959 by a journalist who later acknowledged inventing it - which had significantly influenced U.S. policymakers' perception of a Soviet psi gap. Genuine Soviet psi research did exist, conducted through military laboratories and institutions studied in DIA assessments, but its scale and results were difficult for U.S. analysts to independently verify.¹

Key Personnel

Military figures:

• Skip Atwater - SED operations officer, recruited original viewers, later president of the Monroe Institute
• Albert Stubblebine - INSCOM commander 1981-1984, program's strongest command-level supporter
• Murray "Scotty" Watt - first commanding officer of the remote viewing unit
• Robert Keenan - SED commander, approved the original program proposal
• Edmund Thompson - Major General, approved the Fort Meade program
• Joe McMoneagle - Viewer 518, one of the original six, known as the program's most prolific operational viewer
• Mel Riley - original viewer, known for artistic rendering of sessions
• Ken Bell - original viewer
• Nancy Stern - original Army civilian viewer
• Fernand Gauvin - original viewer, civilian counterintelligence specialist
• Hartleigh Trent - original viewer, former Navy petty officer
• David Morehouse - viewer, later wrote Psychic Warrior (1996)
• Ed Dames - session monitor and analyst, later active in the commercial remote viewing community
• Harry Soyster - INSCOM commander who ended Army's direct participation
• James Clapper - DIA director in the early 1990s during STAR GATE period, later Director of National Intelligence
• Jake Stewart - Navy lieutenant commander on NSC staff, primary NSC-level tasker
• William Rolya - INSCOM commander, supported the program
• Edward Meyer - Army Chief of Staff, supporter
• Clifford Alexander - Secretary of the Army, supporter

Civilian researchers:

• Hal Puthoff - co-principal investigator, SRI 1972-1985, co-developed coordinate remote viewing protocols with Swann
• Russell Targ - co-principal investigator, SRI 1972-1982
• Edwin May - principal investigator, SRI 1976-1991, then SAIC Cognitive Sciences Laboratory 1991-1995
• Ingo Swann - remote viewer, coined the term "remote viewing," developed the Coordinate Remote Viewing (CRV) protocol; trained Army viewers including Riley and Lyn Buchanan beginning in 1984
• Pat Price - remote viewer, Semipalatinsk and Sugar Grove sessions; died July 1975
• Uri Geller - Israeli psychic tested by SRI under CIA contract 1972-1973
• Hella Hammid - photographer, demonstrated exceptional results in SRI blind experiments
• Angela Dellafiora - DIA STAR GATE viewer hired 1986, practiced Written Remote Viewing (WRV)

Government officials and liaisons:

• Kit Green - CIA Life Sciences Division, received Puthoff's 1972 letter, SRI program overseer
• Ken Kress - CIA engineer, negotiated the first CIA-SRI psi research contract
• Richard Kennett - CIA analyst, key liaison and evaluator
• Peter Maris - CIA physicist, tasked Price with the Semipalatinsk viewing
• Bill O'Donnell - CIA officer who inadvertently provided coordinates for Sugar Grove
• Norm Everheart - CIA technical operations specialist, chief Grill Flame coordinator
• John McMahon - CIA Deputy Director for Operations, authorized early SRI funding
• Charlie Rose - U.S. Congressman, congressional supporter of the program
• Jessica Utts - UC Davis statistician, wrote the AIR evaluation's positive assessment
• Ray Hyman - University of Oregon psychologist, wrote the AIR evaluation's skeptical assessment

Organizational Connections

• Stanford Research Institute - primary civilian contractor 1972-1991
• Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) - took over most contracting 1991-1995
• Defense Intelligence Agency - primary government sponsor through the Sun Streak and STAR GATE phases
• Systems Exploitation Detachment - the Army unit that housed the program at Fort Meade
• United States Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM) - parent command
• Monroe Institute - consciousness exploration organization; several program personnel affiliated, including Atwater and McMoneagle (who married into the Monroe family)
• American Institutes for Research - conducted the 1995 termination evaluation
• Institute of Noetic Sciences - funded Geller's SRI visit; separately funded parapsychology research
• American Society for Psychical Research - Swann was a research subject at ASPR before SRI

Program Timeline

1972: CIA initiates SCANATE program; SRI begins testing psychics under CIA contract, including Ingo Swann and later Pat Price

1974: Price's Semipalatinsk session assessed substantially accurate; Nature publishes Puthoff-Targ paper

1976: Remote viewer Rosemary Smith locates a downed Soviet aircraft; Proceedings of the IEEE publishes SRI remote viewing experimental results

1977: Gondola Wish established at Fort Meade; original six viewers recruited

1978: Unit redesignated Grill Flame; operational tasking begins

1979: Typhoon submarine, Chinese nuclear device, Skylab, and A-6 sessions

1980-1981: Hundreds of Iran hostage crisis taskings; viewer burnout identified as operational problem

1983: Redesignated Center Lane following Stubblebine's departure

1984: Jack Anderson column publicly discloses the program's existence

1985: Redesignated Sun Streak; Puthoff leaves SRI, May becomes principal investigator

1991: Contracting transferred primarily to SAIC; redesignated STAR GATE

1995: AIR evaluation delivered; CIA declassifies and terminates program in November