Project Stargate: Did the CIA Discover Real Psychic Powers?
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How did Stanford researchers begin testing psychic remote viewing for the CIA?
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Over its 80-year life, the Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, California, has given the world speech recognition, VPNs, and laser printing. It's filed over 13,000 patents and generated more than 50 spinoff companies. But back in August 1972, it embarks on an unusual experiment, its purpose to explore a potential new espionage technique that will become known as remote viewing.
This was the idea that certain individuals might be able to perceive distant places or events using extrasensory perception. I mean, that's kind of a euphemistic way of saying, like, psychics.
It sounds like something from the pages of science fiction. But as Ingo Swann, an artist and self-described psychic, sits down to begin the experiment, it is very real. His task is to use his psychic abilities to describe what another participant elsewhere on the Stanford campus can see.
In intelligence work, there's always going to be this tension between skepticism and curiosity. If you dismiss unusual ideas too quickly, you might be missing something real.
Remarkably, Ingo meets with some success. He produces descriptions such as a large open courtyard, a building with columns, and a fountain-like structure. In further experiments, Ingo describes locations when given nothing more than a latitude and a longitude. The results are so intriguing that the CIA invests $50,000 to pay for a formal study. This investment would turn out to be only the beginning. What would result is a multi-million dollar research program that would capture the attention of several U.S. government departments and become known as Project Stargate. For the next 23 years, researchers would rigorously experiment with extrasensory perception in the hopes that it would one day become a tool in America's intelligence-gathering arsenal.
It's one of the most bizarre and intriguing stories in American intelligence history. and to take us through it, former CIA agent Lindsey Moran.
Project Stargate shows us how there's this constant tension in the world of intelligence between skepticism and between imagination. In theory, if the descriptions consistently matched the real targets, that would suggest some kind of anomalous, perceptual, really psychic ability. This wasn't the first or last time that the CIA dabbled in the idea of mind control, which they're probably still doing to this day.
Welcome to the podcast series that explores the past's darkest corners, sheds light on the lives of intriguing individuals, and uncovers the truth buried deep in history's most controversial legacies. I'm Eric Meyers, and this is Forbidden History.
Why did Cold War fears push the United States to investigate psychic spying?
Cold War rivalry between America and the Soviet Union leads to the Space Race, projects to create ever more deadly nuclear weapons, and a scramble to spread competing ideologies around the world. But behind these public competitions is another more secretive contest, the one between opposing intelligence agencies.
The 1970s were this period of really intense technological and also psychological competition between the United States and the Soviet Union. I grew up in the 1970s and grew up very much with kind of this mentality that the world was separated into two. We were the good guys and the Soviets were the bad guys. And my own upbringing was very much shaped by this Cold War mentality. And in fact, it's what drew me to have a fascination with the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc and to go into the world of intelligence. It really was this like race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Just, you know, a real kind of spy versus spy world at that time.
Due to the clandestine nature of this rivalry, it's difficult for opposing intelligence agencies to know what the other one is doing to get ahead.
Intelligence agencies in the 1970s, they were constantly worried about being surprised by some kind of breakthrough, some new capability that the other side had discovered first.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
How did Stanford researchers begin testing psychic remote viewing for the CIA?
0:00–3:43
2
Why did Cold War fears push the United States to investigate psychic spying?
3:43–7:03
3
How did the CIA create the SCANATE remote viewing program?
7:03–9:36
4
How did CIA researchers test whether remote viewing actually worked?
9:36–12:33
5
Did psychic spies identify Soviet military sites and missing aircraft?
12:33–15:05
6
Why did the CIA lose faith in remote viewing, and how did the Army take over?
15:05–17:26
7
How did Project Stargate end, and what did the 1995 review conclude?
17:26–19:32
8
What does Project Stargate reveal about skepticism and intelligence gathering?
19:32–20:55
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from Forbidden History
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