Sun Streak

Sun Streak was the DIA's name for the remote-viewing unit at Fort Meade after it took the Army's Center Lane project. Operational control passed on March 7, 1985, and "this 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 and due to the nature of some of the projects examined." It sat under the Directorate for Scientific and Technical Intelligence, and its viewers appear in its records only by number: 003, 011, 018, 025, 032, 049, 052, 079, 095, 099. Lieutenant Colonel Brian Buzby, the last Army project manager, filed his request for access to the DIA project on May 10, 1985. Its research contract stayed with SRI, on Army surgeon general's money, until 1990.¹²

The Unit

The annual report for 1989 described "the SUN STREAK Prototype Operational Group" as "dedicated to the exploitation of the Remote Viewing (RV) process to determine its potential and effectiveness as a Human Intelligence (HUMINT) collection tool," a group "comprised mainly of professional intelligence officers," whose "results to date reveal the presence of satisfying results, disappointing shortfalls, and quantifiable limitations directly related to the nature of the tasks at hand." Viewers were "cross-trained in both CRV and ERV," coordinate and extended remote viewing, with written remote viewing "optional" and its protocol still being drafted; "individual and beacon training searches were conducted during the reporting period with an apparent success rate of about 30%. Efforts to provide predictive data resulted in an apparent success rate ranging from 8 to 12 percent." Members attended a three-day seminar by Discovery Engineering International "to recognize theta states of consciousness through tonal recognition." One experienced viewer was to retire from the Army in June 1990 and another to rotate out in August.³

Operations

A report of November 1987 on Project 8713, eighteen sessions by four viewers in October against a coordinate target, concluded that "the activity of intelligence interest appears to focus on a foreign-flagged submarine operating from a secretive northern cold weather base and is responsible for tracking the activity of ships and objects launched in space"; Viewer 011 had "perceived this apparatus as originating from a very northern base (like the USSR), traveling through the Bering Straits, south into the Pacific Ocean." In Project 8804, fifteen sessions from August to October 1988 on a building, Viewer 079 placed the target "west southwest of Moscow in the vicinity of Bugulma and Blagoveschensk" and associated it with "the concept of the Blackjack's suitability as a low-level, strategic intelligence gathering platform"; other viewers reported "a turbine or compressor," "jet turbine engines and aircraft thrust," and "massive amounts of contained energy." Project 8808 in 1988 involved maps of Lebanon and a vessel, known from the file titles only. Project 8915, eight sessions in May and June 1989 on a site in overhead photography, produced "a compound of structures surrounded by leveled-off, flat, brown land in a foreign country" where "mobile military weapon structures are worked on" and "10-20 'vehicles' at a time are brought in by rail." In Project 8926, seventeen sessions in August and September 1989, one viewer described "cylindrical objects with rounded ends" with "the odor of an obnoxious chemical," one "a 'hydro-bomb,'" and Viewer 032 "a swirling, metallic energy mass rotating in a counter clockwise rotation," later "an information gathering UFO," which the operations officer noted "is considered as being probably incorrect; it was the cause of a viewing distraction which 032 was unable to overcome"; Viewer 018's "drug-related" reading "seems to be the result of interference caused from recent efforts directed against drug-related targets."⁴

Counternarcotics

"In 1989 the Military Intelligence Board (MIB) agreed to examine the utility of the project under field conditions involving counternarcotics projects." A review of 192 projects from 1986 to 1989, briefed to the board that year, found that "potential applications exist for certain project types: counternarcotics, counterterrorism, counterintelligence," "limited potential exists for detailed data," and "low potential exists for predictive tasks." In July 1990, for the Army staff, Viewer 018 gave a day-by-day account of drug transfers between vessels with names heard as "Oro Negra," "Bindar," and "Burgon/Burgundy," and "perceived the intercept and seizure of vessel(s) at the transfer point on 7 July 1990"; the report added that "Viewer 018 recently reported the apparent experimental use of the equivalent of a 'psychic shield' to avoid detection. Viewer 018 was instructed not to discuss this finding with anyone," since 018 was Viewer 052's trainer. On September 6, 1990, in Project 90102, Viewer 095 described a cargo vessel whose name "starts with the sounds 'CA LEH,'" carrying "solid, rock-like cocaine" in "a sealed metal compartment in the absolute stern," at a given position off Central America, to be met by a white motor vessel that would carry the drugs to a port near Guaymas, and Viewer 049, for a base station in Mexico, a walled compound whose head, "an older man with graying hair," "frail but ruthless," ran a family associated with "the words 'GARCIA' or 'de GARCIA'" and "the 'Guadalahara Cartel'" and calling itself "SPIDER WEB"; "time sensitive information was reported on 061500L SEP 90 to DAMI-PO via STU-III." The board reviewed the test in September 1990: "Overall, about one third of all projects were judged to have provided data of good quality. This was based on evaluation of 32 projects. Although 104 projects were conducted, weather/operational constraints prevented follow-up for ground truth on the majority of those projects." "The effort at SRI was discontinued in 1990," and under the defense authorization act for fiscal 1991 the program became Star Gate.¹⁴