InvestigationProject Stargate (1972–1995)

aka Project Stargate (1972–1995)

The DIA's 23-year classified remote-viewing program, with cumulative funding of approximately $20 million, was conducted in partnership with SRI International and Science Applications International Corporation; declassified in 1995 by CIA at the direction of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

apparatus-event A 23-year DIA remote-viewing program whose 1995 American Institutes for Research review found no operational intelligence value. In the corpus it documents institutional appetite, not phenomenology.

status history (1)

2026-06-09 · unannotated → apparatus-event — initial annotation sweep (Epic J.F4)

Physicist Hal Puthoff at SRI — principal investigator of the CIA-DIA-funded remote-viewing program later named Stargate. Wikipedia Commons · Public domain · CIA · 2000

Initiated as Project SCANATE at Stanford Research Institute (later SRI International) in 1972 under physicists Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff, the program was funded by the CIA and the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command. It operated under successive code names — Gondola Wish, Grill Flame, Center Lane, Sun Streak, Star Gate — until consolidated at the Defense Intelligence Agency in 1991 and closed in June 1995. The 1995 closure report, prepared by the American Institutes for Research (AIR) at the request of Sen. Arlen Specter, concluded that ‘while statistically significant remote-viewing effects exist… the information is not in a form that is useful to intelligence operations.’ The cumulative classified funding has been variously stated at $20–25 million across the program’s 23-year run.

Notable & intriguing

Project Stargate was officially terminated by CIA on 30 June 1995. The American Institutes for Research closure assessment, prepared at the request of Sen. Arlen Specter, was authored by statisticians Jessica Utts (UC Davis) and Ray Hyman (Oregon); Utts concluded the statistical evidence for remote viewing was ‘sufficient,’ while Hyman concluded the contrary.

American Institutes for Research, An Evaluation of Remote Viewing: Research and Applications, September 1995
Documents declassified in 1995 include a 7 May 1984 CIA memorandum reporting remote viewer Joseph McMoneagle’s accurate description of a Soviet Typhoon-class submarine then under construction at the Severodvinsk Shipyard, an installation he had no clearance to visit; the description preceded U.S. satellite confirmation by approximately four months.

CIA-RDP96-00788R001500260001-9, declassified 1995; Joseph McMoneagle, The Stargate Chronicles, 2002
Project Stargate’s accumulated funding across all program names from 1972 to 1995 has been variously stated by participants at $20–25 million, drawn from a mixture of CIA, Army INSCOM, and DIA black-budget appropriations.

Edwin C. May (former program director, 1985–1995) testimony, 60 Minutes, CBS, December 1995

Public-record items already documented about this subject. Folklore is labelled. Sources cited where the specificity warrants it.

Suggested watching

Third Eye Spies (2019) documentary

dir. Lance Mungia · Prime / various · 1h 41m

The SRI remote-viewing program from inside, with Puthoff, Targ, Swann, and McMoneagle.

primary source
Men Who Stare at Goats (2009) film

dir. Grant Heslov · various · 1h 34m

Comedic adaptation of Jon Ronson's 2004 book on Stargate-adjacent programs. Fictionalized; cultural reference.

fictionalized — flag accordingly

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