Its goal was to create an espionage technique based on extrasensory perception talents that the Soviets were allegedly developing. They experimented with "remote viewers" for 23 years to see if they might be utilised in defence.
In the centre of a pitch-black chamber in Fort Meade, Maryland, a lone individual is seated at a table. The protocol calls for full quiet in order for the subject, also known as a remote viewer, to explain why he was picked for the test.
The objective is straightforward: the remote viewer should concentrate on a picture and attempt to depict it as precisely as possible. The image to be duplicated is outside the room, in an area he is unfamiliar with. However, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is interested in seeing if this person's psychic powers may help him conquer that challenge. That skill would be essential for obtaining intelligence on the nations behind the Iron Curtain during the Cold War.
To look into and use the purported paranormal powers of some people in defence and intelligence. This is how the Stargate project, one of the most expensive undertakings of the US' CIA, was conceived at the beginning of 1970.
The world was kept on edge by the armaments race and tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union; among the rival countries, the leaders dreamed of a comparative advantage, even if it was based on metaphysical ideas like psychic capabilities. According to released CIA records, the study was one of several projects the agency supported in 2017 in an effort to excel in "remote viewing" operations, the capacity to foresee assaults and gather locations or information through paranormal aptitude.
The Stargate Project's existence remained a mere rumour, hidden in the background. The CIA examined his conclusions and, after finding them wanting, decided to call off the probes.
The Psychic Weapon Race
A Navy report served as the impetus for the start of investigations on psychic occurrences in the US and the USSR. In 1960, the French journal Science et Vie revealed what had taken place within the nuclear submarine Nautilus: a crew member had telepathically connected with a military installation in Maryland. The crew member had to recognise the cards in a deck of cards that a Duke University student attempted to give him on land as part of the experiment. In seven out of ten instances, the guy was right, but the information was incorrect.
Despite scepticism regarding the accuracy of this tale, the Kremlin changed its mind about looking into paranormal phenomena in an effort to use psychic powers as a weapon in the Cold War. The State Research Institute of Clinical Immunology received 450,000 rubles from the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union in 1987 to collaborate with the Institute of Clinical and Experimental Medicine to conduct a number of tests. The transfer of mental energy was one of them, according to the CIA document, and it was intended to treat cardiovascular issues.
These experiments were conducted by Soviet scientists Konstantin Buteyko and Vlail Kaznacheev in quest of psychic weapons. The techniques included the use of a chamber with mirrors at either end that were concave. According to their expectations, there was a person in the centre whose psychic energy would be focused through these stones.
The CIA assessment implied that the Soviets had some success with extrasensory perception and the mental transmission of geometric pictures despite the absence of specifics on the outcomes of these tests. These developments sparked a psychological arms race. During this time, the US had already started investigating psychic energy and its potential use in espionage, such as remote vision.
The underlying principles and goals of the Stargate project
The Soviet Union purportedly developed its remote viewing experiments effectively, which would progress it in its quest to learn more about paranormal talents, which caused the CIA to become increasingly concerned. This helped to develop the Stargate project in the United States and "psychotronics" as a subject of research in the Soviet Union.
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| Parapsychologists Harold Puthoff and Russell Targ |
The project gained colleagues including parapsychologists Harold Puthoff and Russell Targ at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) in Menlo Park, California, the city where Meta's current headquarters are situated. They had a clear objective: to find psychic occurrences that would be useful for intelligence and defence.
Up until 1987, the programme was overseen militarily by Lieutenant Frederick Holmes and Major General Albert Stubblebine under the aegis of the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA). The first declared objective for the remote viewers was to gather data on drug shipments, military installations, or the presence of spies in certain locations. Coordinates on a map and their alleged psychic powers were the only knowledge they had to complete their mission.
Scanate was the name of the project's initial coordinate-based scanning phase. It went by a number of names before becoming Stargate, according to CNET, including Sun Streak and Grill Flam. For years it had findings that the CIA first thought were favourable. According to The Guardian, among the missions' purported accomplishments are the finding of Soviet weaponry in 1979 and the 1980 detection of a KGB agent in South Africa.
The Stargate Project Psychics
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| Stanford Research Institute (SRI) |
During the 23 years that the Stargate project was active, 20 persons who claimed to possess paranormal powers were drawn to the US government's efforts to psychically energise the military. With the use of these viewers, a paranormal espionage method based on the capacity to sense things, people, and events at a distance was created and was known as Perceptual Channel from Kilometres Away.
Psychics Uri Geller and Ingo Swann were important figures in the investigations. Both were already well-known artists when they started working with the CIA, albeit the former kept a low profile and concentrated on the alien life discussion during the tests. Geller, who demonstrated on American television that he could bend spoons with the force of his mind, was the one who gained a contested reputation both inside and outside the agency for his questionable abilities, according to ABC.
As soon as the tests started in August 1973, the man caught people's notice. Geller was imprisoned in a confined room where he was required to duplicate drawings that others had done in a different room as the CIA attempted to verify his talents. Declassified CIA records reveal that the researchers were at least somewhat convinced by the outcomes.
The mentalist never succeeded in persuading the world of his purported abilities, despite the claims of the experiments. There is also a story that claims Geller attempted but failed to convince scientist Richard Feynman that he had supernatural skills. Geller said that the documents on the Stargate project that were made public in 2017 just represent the tip of the iceberg.
The operations that the viewers had to do are confirmed by the declassified records. The majority of them concentrated on the espionage of people who were viewed as dangers to national security as a result of their unlawful involvement in drug trafficking. It appears that the primary subject of remote watching is Pablo Escobar.
The file contained a transcription of the tasks completed by project 9002-B in March 1990. A viewer was tasked with describing Escobar's position as seen in an aerial shot with the encrypted coordinates: 70207B/939117 as part of a test. The building depicted by the psychic with the number 025 is said to be the home of the cocaine lord. The CIA made the decision to label the psychological espionage material as "operational data available upon request."
The instance in the file dated March 22, 1990 was comparable. This time, the agent requested information about a cocaine smuggling operation from the same viewer. The coordinates are no longer included in the file. The test subject connected three drug dealers on a tiny boat with the few information he had been given.
Latitude 17°N and longitude 74°W, south of Haiti, in the Caribbean Sea, were the coordinates he gave for the ship's position. The boat's final position, according to the psychic, was above Tampa, Florida, in the Gulf of Mexico, at 27°N-82°W. He confirmed that the ship was carrying cocaine before leaving.
The interviewer's conclusion centred on emphasising that it was difficult to make an objective judgement even without having access to the real operational data for comparison. He said, "From what is known about the mission," he rated the places a 20% confidence level and said they were suspect.
The Stargate project persisted in spite of these obstacles. Additionally, it was so thoroughly examined that other publications were created about it, such as "Autonomous Sensing and Remote Observation," published by Stephen LaBerge of The Lucidity Institute and Marilyn J. Schlitz of the Cognitive Sciences Laboratory. The findings of these tests revealed that several nervous system regions were active during psychic tasks, but it was made clear that further research was required to fully comprehend the consequences of "Remote Viewing".
The end of the Stargate project
In 1995, the Stargate project came to a conclusion and was made public. A US Senate committee decided to request a thorough assessment from the CIA amidst the issue. The agency requested an unbiased assessment from the American Institute for Research (AIR) due to the agency's lack of knowledge on extrasensory perception and paranormal events.
In response, the AIR engaged parapsychologist Jessica Utts from the University of California and sceptic Ray Hyman to evaluate the findings. Both came to the conclusion that more compelling evidence was still needed. The authorities suggested stopping the Stargate project after 23 years and a cost of roughly USD 20 million after determining that remote viewing had little utility in intelligence operations.
Sources: Diego Duran/Infobae/CIA/The Guardian/CNET