1.
INSIDE STAR GATE
By Steven Aftergood
Secrecy News
January 14, 2005
http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/secrecy/index.html
The pursuit of "remote viewing" or clairvoyance as a tool for intelligence collection, often regarded as a minor embarrassment in the modern history of U.S. intelligence, is the subject of a new memoir by one of the participants in the effort.
The author, Paul H. Smith, is a retired Army intelligence officer and practitioner of remote viewing. He does not propose a theory, physical or metaphysical, to explain how the technique might work. But he insists that it does. Most if not all studies by non-believers appear to have found little substance to it.
Smith provides a fairly readable account of the development of the initiative, known as Star Gate and other code names, and its sponsorship as an unacknowledged "black" program by the Army Intelligence and Security Command and the Defense Intelligence Agency through its termination by the Central Intelligence Agency in 1995.
Reading the Enemy's Mind: Inside Star Gate: America's Psychic Espionage Program by Paul H. Smith, January 2005, is available here:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0312875150/002-5469307-1289640
A summary account of Star Gate may be found here:
http://www.fas.org/irp/program/collect/stargate.htm [posted
below, #2]
2.
FAS Intelligence Resource Program
STAR GATE [CONTROLLED REMOTE VIEWING] http://www.fas.org/irp/program/collect/stargate.htm
STAR GATE was one of a number of "remote viewing programs" conducted under a
variety of code names, including SUN STREAK, GRILL FRAME, and CENTER LANE by DIA
and INSCOM, and SCANATE by CIA. These efforts were initiated to assess foreign
programs in the field; contract for basic research into the the phenomenon; and
to evaluate controlled remote viewing as an intelligence tool.
The program consisted of two separate activities. An operational unit
employed remote viewers to train and perform remote viewing
intelligence-gathering. The research program was maintained separately from the
operational unit.
This effort was initiated in response to CIA concerns about reported Soviets
investigations of psychic phenomena. Between 1969 and 1971, U.S. intelligence
sources concluded that the Soviet Union was engaged in "psychotronic" research.
By 1970, it was suggested that the Soviets were spending approximately 60
million rubles per year on it, and over 300 million by 1975. The money and
personnel devoted to Soviet psychotronics suggested that they had achieved
breakthroughs, even though the matter was considered speculative, controversial
and "fringy."
The initial research program, called SCANATE [scan by coordinate] was funded
by CIA beginning in 1970. Remote viewing research began in 1972 at the Stanford
Research Institute [SRI] in Menlo Park, CA. This work was conducted by Russell
Targ and Harold Puthoff, once with the NSA and at the time a Scientologist. The
effort initially focused on a few "gifted individuals" such as New York artist
Ingo Swann, an OT Level VII Scientologist. Many of the SRI "empaths" were from
the Church of Scientology. Individuals who appeared to show potential were
trained and taught to use talents for "psychic warfare." The minimum accuracy
needed by the clients was said to be 65%, and proponents claim that in the later
stages of the training effort, this accuracy level was "often consistently
exceeded."
GONDOLA WISH was a 1977 Army Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence (ACSI)
Systems Exploitation Detachment (SED) effort to evaluate potential adversary
applications of remote viewing.
Building on GONDOLA WISH, an operational collection project was formalized
under Army intelligence as GRILL FLAME in mid-1978. Located in buildings 2560
and 2561 at Fort Meade, MD, GRILL FLAME, (INSCOM "Detachment G") consisted of
soldiers and a few civilians who were believed to possess varying degrees of
natural psychic ability. The SRI research program was integrated into GRILL
FLAME in early 1979, and hundreds of remote viewing experiments were carried out
at SRI through 1986.
In 1983 the program was re-designated the INSCOM CENTER LANE Project (ICLP).
Ingo Swann and Harold Puthoff at SRI developed a set of instructions which
theoretically allowed anyone to be trained to produce accurate, detailed target
data. [?] used this new collection methodology against a wide range of
operational and training targets. The existence of this highly classified
program was reported by columnist Jack Anderson in April 1984.
In 1984 the National Academy of Sciences' National Research Council evaluated
the remote viewing program for the Army Research Institute. The results were
unfavorable.
When Army funding ended in late 1985, the unit was redesignated SUN STREAK
and transferred to DIA's Scientific and Technical Intelligence Directorate, with
the office code DT-S.
Under the auspices of the DIA, the program transitioned to Science
Applications International Corporation [SAIC] in 1991 and was renamed STAR GATE.
The project, changed from a SAP (Special Access Program) to a LIMDIS (limited
dissemination) program, continued with the participation of Edwin May, who
presided over 70% of the total contractor budget and 85% of the program's data
collection.
Over a period of more than two decades some $20 million were spent on STAR
GATE and related activities, with $11 million budgeted from the mid-1980's to
the early 1990s. Over forty personnel served in the program at various times,
including about 23 remote viewers. At its peak during the mid-1980s the program
included as many as seven full-time viewers and as many analytical and support
personnel. Three psychics were reportedly worked at FT Meade for the CIA from
1990 through July 1995. The psychics were made available to other government
agencies which requested their services.
Participants who apparently demonstrated psychic abilities used at least
three different techniques [at] various times:
--Coordinate Remote Viewing (CRV) -- the original SRI-developed
technique in which viewers were asked what they "saw" at specified geographic
coordinates Extended Remote Viewing (ERV) -- a hybrid
relaxation/meditative-based method Written Remote Viewing (WRV) -- a
hybrid of both channeling and automatic writing was introduced in 1988, though
it proved controversial and was regarded by some as much less reliable.
By 1995 the program had conducted several hundred intelligence collection
projects involving thousands of remote viewing sessions. Notable successes were
said to be "eight martini" results, so-called because the remote viewing data
were so mind-boggling that everyone has to go out and drink eight martinis to
recover. Reported intelligence gathering successes included:
--Joe McMoneagle, a retired Special Project Intelligence Officer for SSPD,
SSD, and 902d MI Group, claims to have left Stargate in 1984 with a Legion of
Merit Award for providing information on 150 targets that were unavailable from
other sources. --In 1974 one remote viewer appeared to have correctly
described an airfield with a large gantry and crane at one end of the field. The
airfield at the given map coordinates was the Soviet nuclear testing area at
Semipalatinsk -- a possible underground nuclear testing site [PNUTS]. In
general, however, most of the receiver's data were incorrect or could not be
evaluated. --A "remote viewer" was tasked to locate a Soviet Tu-95 bomber
which had crashed somewhere in Africa, which he allegedly did within several
miles of the actual wreckage. In September 1979 the National Security Council
staff asked about a Soviet submarine under construction. The remote viewer
reported that a very large, new submarine with 18-20 missile launch tubes and a
"large flat area" at the aft end would be launched in 100 days. Two subs, one
with 24 launch tubes and the other with 20 launch tubes and a large flat aft
deck, were reportedly sighted in 120 days. --One assignment included
locating kidnapped BG James L. Dozier, who had been kidnapped by the Red
Brigades in Italy in 1981. He was freed by Italian police after 42 days,
apparently without help from the psychics. [According to news reports, Italian
police were assisted by "US State and Defense Department specialists" using
electronic surveillance equipment, an apparent reference to the Special
Collection Service] --Another assignment included trying to hunt down
Gadhafi before the 1986 bombing of Libya, but Gadhafi was not injured in the
bombing. --In February 1988 DIA asked where Marine Corps COL William Higgins
was being held in Lebanon. A remote viewer stated that Higgins was in a specific
building in a specific South Lebanon village, and a released hostage later said
to have claimed that Higgins had probably been in that building at that time.
--In January 1989 DOD was said to have asked about Libyan chemical weapons
work. A remote viewer reported that ship named either Patua or
Potua would sail from Tripoli to transport chemicals to an eastern Libyan
port. Reportedly, a ship named Batato loaded an undetermined cargo in
Tripoli and brought to an eastern Libyan port. --Reportedly a remote-viewer
"saw" that a KGB colonel caught spying in South Africa had been smuggling
information using a pocket calculator containing a communications device. It is
said that questioning along these lines by South African intelligence led the
spy to cooperate. --During the Gulf War remote-viewers were reported to have
suggested the whereabouts of Iraq's Saddam Hussein, though there was never an
independent verification of this finding. --The unit was tasked to find
plutonium in North Korea in 1994, apparently without notable success.
--Remote viewers were also said to have helped find SCUD missiles and secret
biological and chemical warfare projects, and to have located and identified the
purposes of tunnels and extensive underground facilities.
The US program was sustained through the support of Sen. Claiborne Pell,
D-R.I., and Rep. Charles Rose, D-N.C., who were convinced of the program's
effectiveness. However, by the early 1990s the program was plagued by uneven
management, poor unit morale, divisiveness within the organization, poor
performance, and few accurate results. The FY 1995 Defense Appropriations bill
directed that the program be transferred to CIA, with CIA instructed to conduct
a retrospective review of the program. In 1995 the American Institutes for
Research (AIR) was contracted by CIA to evaluate the program. Their 29 September
1995 final report was released to the public 28 November 1995. A positive
assessment by statistician Jessica Utts, that a statistically significant effect
had been demonstrated in the laboratory [the government psychics were said to be
accurate about 15 percent of the time], was offset by a negative one by
psychologist Ray Hyman [a prominent CSICOP psychic debunker]. The final
recommendation by AIR was to terminate the STAR GATE effort. CIA concluded that
there was no case in which ESP had provided data used to guide intelligence
operations.
RESOURCES [see original for links]
--Reading the Enemy's Mind : Inside Star Gate--America's Psychic Espionage
Program, by Paul Smith, January 2005
--Remote Viewing Instructional
Services, Inc. Enhancing Human Performance 1988, the National Academy Press
--Cognitive Sciences Laboratory parapsychology research
--Psi Explorer -
Project StarGate
--Farsight Institute