Stargate Project

Star Gate was the last of the names given to the United States government's programs in remote viewing, the attempt to describe distant or hidden targets by mental means, which ran from a CIA contract with Stanford Research Institute in 1972 to the CIA's closure of the program in 1995. The Army's part began at Fort Meade, Maryland, in 1977 under the name Gondola Wish, became Grill Flame in 1978, Center Lane in 1983, and Sun Streak under the Defense Intelligence Agency in 1985 or 1986; Congress authorized a new DIA program in the defense authorization act for fiscal 1991, which DIA named Star Gate, and moved it to the CIA in 1995. The agency's own history of the matter, written that autumn, ran: "CIA's program began in 1972, but was discontinued in 1977. DIA's direct involvement began later and continued until Star Gate was transferred to CIA this July."¹

SCANATE

The agency's interest went back to the 1950s. After Andrija Puharich lectured a Pentagon conference in 1952 on "the possible usefulness of extrasensory perception in psychological warfare," the chief of the Technical Services Division had Stephen Abrams of the parapsychology laboratory at Oxford prepare a review, under a project the declassified scan renders as "Project ULTRA," which "claimed ESP was demonstrated but not understood or controllable" and "produced no further action for another" decade.²

Russell Targ, a laser physicist "avocationally interested" in parapsychology, met officers of the CIA's Office of Scientific Intelligence in April 1972 and showed them Soviet films of psychokinesis; the office referred him to the Office of Research and Development and the Office of Technical Service, and Targ, who had just joined SRI, proposed work with Hal Puthoff. "For a cost of $874, one OTS and one ORD representative worked with Targ and Puthoff for a few days in August, 1972"; the director of OTS "approved another $2,500 work order"; and on October 1, 1972, OTS "funded a $50,000 expanded effort in parapsychology" under contract 8473, with Ken Kress as project officer. Pat Price became the third subject in the spring of 1973. On April 24, 1973, William Colby "decided that the Executive Management Committee should pass judgment," and by mid-May the question reached the director, James Schlesinger. "I was soon told not to increase the scope of the project," Kress wrote. "The project was too sensitive and potentially embarrassing. It should be tabled." A joint ORD and OTS program began on February 1, 1974, ORD funding basic research and OTS the tests of operational use. Puthoff's account gives the first contract as an eight-month "Biofield Measurements Program" of 49,909 dollars and the second year, January 1974 to February 1975, as 149,555 dollars; an SRI table gives the CIA's total for 1971 to 1975 as 195,000 dollars.²³

In the summer of 1973 a test on "a vacation property in the eastern United States" led Price to "a sensitive government installation a few miles from the vacation property," and, tasked on its interior, he produced project titles and the site's code name, "data subsequently verified by sponsor sources," with wrong personnel names. Price then "went on to scan the other side of the globe for a Communist Bloc equivalent and found one located in the Urals." In July 1974 the target was "the Semipalatinsk Unidentified Research and Development Facility-3 (URDF-3, formerly known as PNUTS)." Kress chose "the tall crane and the four structures resembling oil well derricks" as checks; Price said of the derricks, "I didn't see them because they are not there any more," and new photography weeks later showed "two derricks were partially disassembled." A photo interpreter and a nuclear analyst at Los Alamos judged his crane drawing accurate, the latter writing that either "he, the subject, actually saw it through remote viewing, or two: he was informed what to draw by someone knowledgeable of URDF-3." Kress concluded: "since there was so much bad information mixed in with the good, the overall result was not considered useful. As proof of remote viewing, the data are at best inconclusive." An internal summary of the same four days was harsher: "The remote-viewing experiment of URDF-3 by [Price] proved to be unsuccessful," since besides the crane he drew "several landmark-type objects that simply did not exist" and, shown the surface features of an underground building, denied that anything lay beneath, "his most negative evidence yet." Price also "correctly located the coderooms" of two foreign embassies already known to the agency's audio teams, and described a Libyan site as "a guerrilla training site" with "a related underwater sabotage training facility," partly confirmed by reconnaissance. "Price died of a heart attack a few days later, and the program stopped."²⁴

The agency's reasons, as Kress gave them in 1977: "the research was not productive or even competent; therefore, research support to SRI was dropped. The Director of OTS felt the OTS charter would not support research; therefore, all Agency funding in paranormal research stopped"; operational utility was "considered questionable but deserved further testing"; the contractor tests gave way to "a personal services contract with Price"; and Kress himself, "judged to be a positively biased advocate," was taken off evaluation. The director of OTS, David Brandwein, wrote on February 20, 1976, "I directed that OTS support of this effort be terminated," and on October 7, 1976, "OTS will not support any further research in parapsychology." Director George Bush was briefed in 1976 after learning that Soviet visitors were "questioning Puthoff and Targ at SRI," and left before reacting; Stansfield Turner acknowledged an "operational interest in parapsychology" in August 1977. Puthoff attributed the withdrawal to "pressure on the Agency (unrelated to the RV Program) from the Church-Pike Congressional Committee." By 1977 DIA "remains interested on a low priority basis," the Navy had funded a brief replication and stopped over "mind warfare" concerns, DARPA had held "a hostile confrontation briefing," and "active funding has shifted to the Air Force's Foreign Technology Division." SRI's later accounting of these years: NAVELEX 74,000 dollars (1975-76), the Foreign Technology Division at Wright-Patterson 300,000 (1976-79), the Missile Intelligence Agency at Redstone Arsenal 281,000 (1977-80) for "remote perturbation," the Army Materiel Systems Analysis Activity 230,000 (1978-80), DIA 228,000 (1978-80).²³⁵

Gondola Wish and Grill Flame

"The US Army Intelligence and Security Command's involvement with psychoenergetics began in September 1977. At that time, an INSCOM element implemented the Gondola Wish program which was designed to integrate the Soviet and East European psychoenergetic intelligence collection threat into the all-source operations security (OPSEC) support scenario." By the spring of 1978 the assistant chief of staff for intelligence, Major General Edmund Thompson, "concluded there was sufficient evidence to warrant the development of a comprehensive program," cancelled Gondola Wish, "placed a complete security envelope over Army's interest in psychoenergetics," and began "a new program directed towards intelligence collection using remote viewing." A message of July 6, 1978, issued "the unclassified code name GRILL FLAME to replace any open reference to US Army involvement in parapsychology." In October 1978 Colonel A. W. Hamel of INSCOM was told to find a project officer, and Major Murray Watt was named on October 27. "There exists no written tasking between OACSI and HQ, INSCOM," the first progress report recorded; three INSCOM men were to be trained at SRI. In parallel the Army Materiel Systems Analysis Activity at Aberdeen Proving Ground, after Puthoff's lectures of March 21, 1978, ran twenty sessions of its own to test "confirmation and/or rejection of the SRI remote viewing protocol," renaming "subject" as "remote viewer" and "experiment" as "session," and found that "our replication of the protocol did not result in statistical significance." Its acknowledgments include General Lewis Walt and the physicist Evan Harris Walker.⁶⁷

On February 15, 1979, the Army general counsel found that Grill Flame involved testing on human subjects and halted the AMSAA work. A subcommittee of the surgeon general's review board met on March 26 with Puthoff, Targ, and Colonel Garrison Rapmund of Walter Reed and ruled the SRI work "technology transfer rather than research," while noting that "there clearly is no fixed and formally appointed professional oversight for work being done under 'Grill Flame.'" On November 20, with Edwin May attending as "Grill Flame Project Leader," it found that the revised protocols "did constitute human use," recommended that consent forms warn subjects they might "lose the esteem or respect from certain colleagues," and noted that some subjects had believed they could use the ability "for personal financial gain in games of chance/investment." The under secretary of the Army approved continuation in April 1980, and the secretary renewed it on January 14, 1981, February 1, 1982, and September 1, 1983. A memorandum of understanding of 1981 set up a Grill Flame committee of two voting members each from DIA and the Army, with 150,000 dollars from INSCOM and 300,000 from DIA in fiscal 1981; Thompson's request of May 8, 1981, to use civilian contractors under Procedure 18 of the Defense Department's intelligence rules was approved on May 27 on condition that the work serve "an important foreign intelligence or counterintelligence purpose."⁷

"During 1979, we conducted 79 operational missions, 43 of which were dedicated to assisting the intelligence community during the Iranian hostage crisis. During 1980 we were able to increase our production to 386 operational missions, 154 of which were still dedicated to Iran." A session report of the hostage crisis states that it was "conducted in compliance with a request from SOD, J3, OJCS, Pentagon," the special operations division of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and that "the remote viewer's impressions of the target are provided as raw intelligence data and as such have not been subjected to any intermediate analysis, evaluation or collation." The unit began in 1979 with five people, two of them viewers; "by the end of 1980, we began an advanced training program using the hemispheric synchronization (Hemi-Sync) process developed by Robert A. Monroe and used at the Monroe Institute," whose tapes INSCOM later asked to write into the protocol, "3-5 times per week," and "in mid 1982, we began a new training program in coordinate remote viewing with SRI." On February 6, 1980, the under secretary of defense for research, William Perry, restricted the use of Program 6 funds, holding it "not appropriate for Army to fund technology programs aimed at scientific demonstration of parapsychology"; an Army history gives the order as March 1980.⁷ After Brigadier General James Dozier was kidnapped in Italy on December 17, 1981, "on 18 December, we conducted our first session"; DIA told the Secretary of Defense that data had gone "to U.S. authorities for discreet release to Italian officials with no source attribution given," adding, "we can not at this time attest to the method's accuracy or usefulness." A drawing from the first session was used by a DIA analyst to brief the commander in Italy "that the search for General Dozier should be concentrated in the Padua area," two days before the rescue there; a session of January 20, 1982, named Padua but "was not forwarded to Italy," because the Italian police "were having difficulty with information they were getting from psychics all over the world." A memorandum in the file records that Dozier was briefed on the program on February 9, 1982, and shown the sketches.⁶⁸⁹

The three-year joint program of fiscal 1981 to 1983 cost 1,475,500 dollars, 962,000 of it from DIA, 313,500 from INSCOM, and 200,000 from DARPA, of which 575,000 went to training. DIA's report of October 19, 1983, found: "Remote viewing is a real phenomenon, and is not degraded by distance or shielding. Remote viewing ability can be improved by appropriate training procedures. Remote viewing has potential for US intelligence applications. However, at this stage of development, descriptive content (e.g., sketches, configurations) is more reliable than analytic content." It reported that INSCOM's viewers "detected the remote site successfully in 50 percent of their projects (89 sites)," and that "a potential threat to US national security exists from foreign achievements in psychoenergetics. In the USSR and in China, this research is well funded." SRI's list of clients served included "a secret NSA facility, including codeword retrieval" and "Soviet R&D facility at Semipalatinsk (PNUTS)."³¹⁰

The Defense Department's coordination began at a meeting in Jack Vorona's conference room at Pomponio Plaza on August 24, 1978, attended by Vorona, Colonel Jack Capps of the Army staff, Charlie Carter of the Missile Intelligence Agency and Dale Graff of the Foreign Technology Division, "to establish a unified DoD effort in the development of remote viewing technology for intelligence purposes." Vorona said "the effort is fully supported by the Director of DIA," that "the Soviet Union has a significant commitment in this area," and that DIA, FTD and AMSAA "have contractual funds at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) for some preliminary investigations into remote viewing feasibility. However, this funding will cease at the end of the current fiscal year (30 September 1978)"; he "decided against the establishment of a restricted access list and a special codeword for the program," marking all papers "SECRET, ORCON"; the working group "will consist of DoD and NSA personnel only." The Naval Intelligence Command replied on September 14 that it was "unable at this time to pledge a specific level of funding support"; the Air Force on September 29 that it "has supported $100K of contractual assistance for FTD to verify data on Warsaw Pact experiments in paranormal techniques" and "cannot commit additional funds at this time"; the Army on October 4 that "the term Remote Viewing may be more correctly replaced with Parapsychology," that "Army Intelligence obligated $75K, this past week, of year-end funds to support an SRI Subject selection and training program for INSCOM personnel over the next year," and that "there are occasional, but persistent indications that the Navy has maintained its research into Parapsychology." A draft Army request of July 7, 1978, with E. H. Walker as principal investigator, had asked for 350,000 dollars in fiscal 1979 "to determine feasibility of developing automatic equipment capable of producing remote viewing in hard copy form," equipment that "might have the same utility in any future conflict as that of the Ultra machine used in WWII."⁹⁰²

Oversight in the Pentagon followed a letter of October 25, 1978, from Representative Charlie Rose to Ruth Davis, the deputy under secretary of defense for research and advanced technology, asking "to see the Department of Defense undertake those efforts deemed necessary and appropriate to investigate remote viewing," and with her memorandum to Vorona of November 20 setting eight questions for "the oversight groups you will establish," among them measures "developed by other than the current experimenters" that "ensure that the magicians' processes of deception, feedback to subjects, etc. are not inadvertantly allowed" and "a stark clear statement of events, data, etc. that will justify termination of continued funding." The Grill Flame steering committee first met on February 13, 1979, with "all Service ACSI's, Dr. Ruth Davis, Dr. LaBerge, and Dr. Vorona (standing in for LTG Tighe)." The Grill Flame Scientific Evaluation Committee appointed that summer put the money spent to date at "CIA, 1972-78: $240K. DIA, 1979: $100K. USAF, 1976-79: $300K. Army, 1977-79: $490K," recorded that the Navy's representatives "attend all DOD meetings, but remain uncommitted and literally silent," and reported in December 1979 that remote viewing "thus far have not proved the existence of the phenomena," a report the Pentagon's working group called "misleading and inadequate."⁹⁰¹

The committee first met as "the DoD Committee on Special Sensors" on November 28, 1978, in Vorona's conference room and named itself the DoD Grill Flame Committee. Its oversight committee was "Dr. Jack Vorona, DIA; MG E. R. Thompson, Army ACSI; RADM S. Shapiro, Commander, NIC; Maj Gen J. L. Brown, Air Force ACSI; Dr. Lowell Dailey, USDR&E Representative" in DIA's minutes (INSCOM's summary of the same meeting has it as "service ACSI's, Dr. Vorona and Dr. Ruth Davis," and calls Dailey "Bob Dailey - DUSRAT/Consultant"), "responsible for insuring that research and experiments fall within the legal guidelines"; "DIA will have 'Intelligence Oversight' responsibility; local IG cannot inspect without approval." Permanent members "must possess SI/TK clearances"; "Dr. Vorona expressed concern that parapsychology activities within DoD elements were springing up all over. He directed that agencies (represented on committee) develop policy for turning off 'exposures' as they come up"; "all documents originating as a result of the GRILL FLAME program would undergo downgrading review only after 20 years"; "Mr. Graff next suggested that a cover story be developed for the program; Dr. Vorona suggested that the National Academy of Sciences might back an open program to investigate paranormal phenomena"; it was agreed that a CIA representative be invited; and a review of "the SRI remote viewing experiments carried out at DIA this past summer" found "the results appear to be inconclusive."⁹⁰⁴

DIA's 1995 history of the service programs adds the Army's Missile Research and Development Command (MIRADCOM), which "had Stanford Research Institute (SRI) under contract" under the sponsorship of the Missile Intelligence Agency (MIA), whose object "was to determine whether selected individuals could interact and influence" electronic equipment; MIRADCOM "had responsibility for developing a 'Remote Perturbation' experimental program," and "from May 1979 to September 1979, SRI assisted MIRADCOM in developing sensitive measurement equipment for the experiment." Its funding table, in thousands of dollars: MIA, 80 for psychokinesis in 1977-78 and 118 in 1979; AMSAA, 220 for remote viewing in 1978; INSCOM, 75 for remote viewing in 1978-80 and 25 for operations in 1979-80; MIRADCOM, 90 for psychokinesis and 190 for an unknown purpose in 1979-80; the Army staff and INSCOM, 150 for remote viewing in fiscal 1981; and DARCOM, 700 for remote viewing in fiscal 1981. Of the Navy and Air Force work of the same years, "no further information is on file."⁹⁰⁰

The unit's personnel file, released with the collection, holds Grill Flame security agreements dated February 8, 1979, with consent statements, in the names of Joseph W. McMoneagle, Melvin C. Riley, Ann E. Djupman, Stephen C. Horton, Donald L. Hopkins, Maurice C. Himes and Nancy K. Stout, with Kenneth V. Bell, Jr.'s form of May 9, 1979, and later ones for Lawrence J. Rickard (1981), Robert C. Cowart (1981) and the DIA Sun Streak access forms of 1985 to 1988 signed by Vorona; McMoneagle's participant counseling statement as a warrant officer, "INSCOM Op Ctr Analyst," carries a date the scan renders as October 1977, elsewhere read as October 26, 1979.⁹⁰³

Center Lane

In 1981 the ACSI "transferred total management responsibility for the project to INSCOM," and a joint services committee of DIA, the Air Force, and the Army was formed; "the Navy expressed no interest and later the Air Force Chief of Staff directed that the Air Force withdraw." At the end of fiscal 1982 "the budget subcommittee of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (Senator Wallop) curtailed all psychoenergetic operational activities conducted by the Army in the National Foreign Intelligence Program." The commander of INSCOM, Albert Stubblebine, "decided to continue INSCOM's project and provide funding with Security and Investigative Activities (S&IA) monies," under "a provisional special access program nicknamed Center Lane," approved by the Secretary of the Army as a special access program on June 15, 1983, and continued on September 1, with a compartment called "Center Lane Level 4." Its mission statement ran: "Conduct intelligence collection and counterintelligence operations utilizing all psychoenergetic processes applicable," and "expand operational capabilities and training beyond the confines of information collection into the fields of psychoenergetic communication and psychokinesis." By the end of fiscal 1984 it had nine operational and two support personnel, and "in the past five years we have conducted over 750 operational intelligence collection missions."⁶

From March 21 to April 20, 1984, the unit "conducted 11 remote viewing interviews at the request of the Central Intelligence Agency" on William Buckley, the station chief kidnapped in Beirut on March 16: where he was, his condition, his captors, and "CIA point of contact for release negotiation." A CIA memorandum of May 1, 1984, over the title block of the deputy director for operations, stated: "CIA's relationship with the US Army activities covered under the designator of CENTER LANE has been that of a customer. We have no Agency people or funds assigned to or otherwise designated in support of those activities." Its sources "have often 'made contact' far beyond what might be expected by probabilities and coincidence," with "a less than hoped for signal-to-noise ratio and a less than photographic resolution, as well as some outright misses"; "we would like to continue to call upon CENTER LANE." The overview of May 4, 1984, by Lieutenant Colonel Brian Buzby recommended that the work continue within INSCOM. A memorandum chain of November and December 1984 recorded that the fiscal 1983 appropriation language "directed that future parapsychological experimentation be conducted outside the NFIP," that DIA's funds for 1984 and 1985 were 79,000 dollars each for "evaluation of foreign research only," that DARPA had put in 600,000 dollars in 1984, that the Army surgeon general anticipated two million for 1985, and that DIA planned "to detail the operational remote viewing unit from HQDA/INSCOM to DIA."¹⁰¹¹

INSCOM's chronology of the unit lists briefings of an official of the Office of Management and Budget (April 1982), the House and Senate intelligence and appropriations staffs (1981 to 1983), Lieutenant General Lincoln D. Faurer of the NSA (August 5, 1982, and December 5, 1983), Senator Claiborne Pell (September 29, 1982), Senator Wallop (October 5, 1983), Vice President Bush (1983), the Secretary of the Army, and the Army inspector general (April 10, 1984). The Grill Flame Scientific Evaluation Committee under Manfred Gale had reported in December 1979 that the research "thus far have not proved the existence of the phenomena," with a majority of five of eight allowing INSCOM's operational work to continue under oversight. The unit ceased collection on September 28, 1984, and passed under DIA's operational control on March 7, 1985.¹²

The Science Panel

A "congressionally directed independent scientific review" met in August and September 1983 and reported on March 1, 1984, over the signatures of W. Ross Adey, Donald M. Kerr, and F. Zachariasen: "The evidence shown to us is too impressive to dismiss as mere coincidence. Certain similarities between the SRI and Princeton results, obtained in very different circumstances by unrelated investigators, are particularly compelling." The panel "found no obvious evidence of cueing or collusion," thought "remote viewing is either real or due to some sort of experimental interference from one or some of the participants," found that "repeated attempts to elicit a rational basis" for Ingo Swann's coordinate training "were uniformly unsuccessful," and concluded "that Dr. Puthoff's team warrants cautious continued fiscal support, and that the research should be conducted as much as possible in an open unclassified mode." DIA was still citing the report in 1993.¹³

Sun Streak

The DIA phase is described on the page Sun Streak. "In January 1985, Project GRILL FLAME was transferred to DIA and was placed under the staff cognizance of the former Directorate for Scientific and Technical Intelligence. Moreover, a 5-year psychoenergetics program (FY 1986-1990), using Army medical research and development funds authorized by the then U.S. Army Surgeon General, was begun at SRI," to "document that psychoenergetic phenomena are real and reproducible, to determine the underlying mechanisms, and to bring psychoenergetics research into the mainstream of human performance research." The Fort Meade unit "was transferred to DIA in 1986 when 12 billets were authorized in the GDIP budget for this activity. A Special Access Program (SAP), SUN STREAK, was established in order to protect identity of the individuals." It worked 192 projects from 1986 to 1989. A Military Intelligence Board review of 1989 and 1990 found "potential applications exist for certain project types: counternarcotics (CN), counterterrorism (CT), counterintelligence (CI)," "limited potential" for detailed data, and "low potential" for prediction; in a 1990 Army counternarcotics test, of 32 projects with ground truth "about one third of all projects were judged to have provided data of good quality." The Army surgeon general's money ran 1.9 million dollars in 1985-86, 2.3 million in 1987, 1.15 million in 1988, and one million in 1989. "The effort at SRI was discontinued in 1990."¹⁴

Star Gate

"In the FY 1991 Defense Authorization Act, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) was identified as executive agent for initiating a new program to investigate parapsychological/anomalous phenomena. A funding level of $2 million was authorized," repeated in the fiscal 1992 appropriation, which also ordered DIA to "realign 10 civilian billets" and to assess foreign "weaponization." The project "was formally established as a limited dissemination (LIMDIS) project early-on and given the official project name, STAR GATE," and the research went to the Cognitive Sciences Laboratory of Science Applications International Corporation in Menlo Park under May. DIA's budget paper of March 1995 listed among the customers USSOCOM, CENTCOM, the Joint Interagency Task Forces East and West, JTF-6, and the El Paso Intelligence Center, and gave DIA's own funding as 600,000 dollars in 1993, 500,000 in 1994, and 650,000 in 1995; "since FY 1980, the manpower structure devoted to Project STAR GATE remained constant (10 billets)." Congress in fiscal 1994 required a plan "to determine whether the STAR GATE program can show results that are cost-effective," subject "to peer review by neutral scientific experts"; the SAIC contract expired in May 1994 and was twice extended without cost to the end of the year, and 45 SRI and SAIC reports were approved for declassification. SAIC's own assessment, quoted by DIA: "The evidence for a valid information transfer anomaly (anomalous cognition (AC)) meets all recognized statistical and methodological criteria," its size "medium-to-large when compared to other known human behaviors," and "approximately 1 percent of the general population appears to meet strict statistical criteria for exhibiting a robust AC ability."¹⁵

DIA's account of the Star Gate years: the project was "established on 31 January 1991"; the fiscal 1991 money, "$2 million received and obligated ($1.5 million R&D, $0.5 million O&M)," went to a sole-source contract with SAIC's Cognitive Sciences Laboratory "on line by July 1991," to a "Long-Range Comprehensive Plan" published by May 30, 1991, and to magnetoencephalograph measurements at Los Alamos National Laboratory whose "analysis of results was reported to be inconclusive." Under the fiscal 1992 authorization DIA realigned the ten billets, delivered a report, "Project Architecture," ODT-S-1042-SL, on March 30, 1992, and was to balance the program among "over 12 users" including USSOCOM, USCENTCOM, the joint interagency task forces and JTF-6. Fiscal 1993 language "authorized $0.6 million for STAR GATE and directed the DIA Director to determine the feasibility of transferring" it to the Armed Services Medical Intelligence Center at Fort Detrick; "the study was undertaken and a decision was made to retain the project at Fort Meade." For fiscal 1994 DIA published "Project STAR GATE Research and Review Plan," PAG-TA-1068-SL, in June 1994, but "core R&D program funds expired in May 1994," and the customer base was "expanded through visits" to the commands, task forces and the El Paso Intelligence Center.⁹⁰⁰

"From 1986 to the first quarter of FY 1995, the DoD paranormal psychology program received more than 200 tasks from operational military organizations." Only in 1994 did it adopt a numerical evaluation. By May 1, 1995, its three viewers, all full-time government employees, had answered 40 tasks from five organizations, 26 of them from DIA in support of two joint task forces, others on "North Korean (NK) capabilities and leadership." Of 99 accuracy scores on a six-point scale, 55 were 2s and 3s and 13 were 1s; of 100 value scores on a five-point scale, none was "major significance." The summary report of the evaluations concluded: "The utility of RV for operational intelligence collection cannot be substantiated. The ambiguous and subjective nature of the process actually creates a need for additional efforts of questionable operational return."¹⁶

Termination

"In early 1995, Senate conferees directed the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to transfer the 'Star Gate' program from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) to CIA. Specifically, the conferees directed the transfer of ten civilian billets and $500,000 in Star Gate program resources by July 1, 1995," together with "a technical review of Star Gate going back twenty years, a declassification review, and establishment of a cooperative activity with the Russians in parapsychology." The Senate Appropriations Committee had already required "a retrospective review and technical analysis of the data that has been produced by the program since its inception 20 years ago." DIA told the CIA in a memorandum of May 10 (logged as received on May 16 in the CIA's chronology) that "any decision on declassification actions regarding Project STAR GATE should be made by the CIA" and that it had "no objection to a declassification of the 'fact of' a DIA program to employ paranormal phenomena for intelligence purposes"; DIA's log of the files, sent after a telephone call of October 10, counted 38 boxes transferred in July, where the CIA's papers counted 43 (1995 transfer of Star Gate to the CIA). The CIA contracted the American Institutes for Research in June (1995 AIR evaluation of Star Gate), whose report of September 29 it quoted in its management paper: "the information provided by remote viewing is vague and ambiguous, making it difficult if not impossible for the technique to yield information of sufficient quality and accuracy for actionable intelligence," and "it remains unclear whether the existence of a paranormal phenomenon, remote viewing, has been demonstrated." The paper recommended terminating both operations and research, adding that "this does not mean that research in parapsychology is not important or that it should not continue in the public domain," a declassification review of "at least five different programs including Star Gate, Grill Flame, Center Lane, Sun Streak, and SCANATE," some "43 document boxes," and, on the advice of the Directorate of Intelligence and the National Intelligence Council, "no resources to the assessment of foreign developments in parapsychology": "we view developments in parapsychology as a relatively low threat to the United States," and "in none of this Russian research do we see credible evidence of developments that could significantly add to the threat that Russia currently poses."¹⁵¹⁷

Other Accounts

Other operational sessions are known from the accounts of participants: Joe McMoneagle's 1979 description of a large submarine under construction at Severodvinsk, later identified as the Typhoon class; his and Mel Riley's "hourglass on its side" for a Chinese device at Lop Nor; Riley's "batlike flying-wing" in an operations security test on the B-2; Ken Bell's location of a crashed Navy aircraft on Bald Knob in Virginia; McMoneagle on Skylab's reentry; and the tracking of a Soviet T-72 tank. The same accounts give the original unit as McMoneagle, Riley, Bell, Nancy Stern, Fernand Gauvin, and Hartleigh Trent, recruited by Captain Frederick Atwater of the Systems Exploitation Detachment, and a 1984 Jack Anderson column as the first public disclosure. Targ and Puthoff had published the SRI work in Nature in 1974 and in the Proceedings of the IEEE in 1976.¹⁸¹⁹

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