Operation Stargate, The CIA and Psychic Spies

By Judyth Piazza

Please find below the feature "operation Stargate" and the response that was provoked by not covering both sides of the story. I hope that my mistake will help fledgling writers and journalists from making the same mistake that I made. - Judyth Piazza

Long before Mrs. Cleo and her Psychic Friends Network sprang onto the American scene there was another group dabbling deep into psychic phenomena.

In the early 1970s, the CIA created the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) to begin a study of controlled clairvoyance under the direction of Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff.

Under the rubric "Project Scanate" which stood for "scanning by coordinates," thousands of people were recruited, placed in dark rooms, and asked to describe what they saw at given longitudes and latitudes. Edwin May, a former director of Stargate, which was the remote viewing project that was spawned of the cold war as a result of the fear that the Soviet Union might already have established a psychic warfare program, has gone on record as saying, "we are exactly correct 50% of the time."

"Russell Targ is a physicist and author who was a pioneer in the development of early laser technologies, as well as being the co-founder of the Stanford Research Institute's investigation into psychic abilities during the 1970s and 1980s. He is a co-author of Mind Reach; Scientists Look at Psychic Abilities and The Mind Race, as well as Understanding and Using Psychic Abilities. Targ recently retired from Lockheed Martin which is a major defense contractor of the U.S. Government, working as a senior staff scientist, where he developed laser technology for peaceful applications."

"Dr. Puthoff is currently the Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Austin, Texas, a position held for more than 10 years. He is considered one of the premier theoretical physicists in the field of vacuum zero point energy and has published several of the most respected papers in the field. A graduate of Stanford University, he has been a research associate and lecturer at the University in the Department of Electrical Engineering. Dr. Puthoff also served for several years as the Director of the Cognitive Sciences Program at SRI International. As a theoretical and experimental physicist, he has worked in the areas of fundamental electrodynamics, quantum vacuum states, gravitation, cosmology, and high power microelectronics. He has authored more than 30 technical papers and is co-author of the textbook Fundamentals of Quantum Electronics, which is used in numerous Universities around the world. He is also listed in the publications, Who's Who in Science and Engineering, Who's Who in the World, and is also a Fellow of the Fetzer Institute."

For decades, U.S. Intelligence Agencies as well as Intelligence Services around the world have been engaged in a quest to find Intelligence operatives with abilities reaching far beyond any network of informants or advanced spying technology. An agent with the ability to probe the enemy's deepest underground bunkers, to determine the exact location of hostages, or physically incapacitate foreign leaders or entire armies, all from thousands of miles away by using only their minds.

Efforts to determine intelligence applications for psychic abilities have centered around "remote viewing," which is a purported clairvoyant ability to spy on distant enemies.

Operation Stargate was first brought to the attention of the American public by ABC TV's Night Line news program on November 28, 1995. As a result of the program, at the request of the U.S. Senate appropriations committee, the CIA was asked to assess the project, which it had inherited from the Pentagon and had an operating budget of somewhere around 25 million dollars a year to determine whether more research would increase its efficiency and practicality.

The assessment concluded that despite its achievements as well as statistically significant results in the laboratory, remote viewing had not provided reliable operational applications in the collection of intelligence data for the purpose of national security.

However, the remarkable success that operation Stargate experienced in the late 1970's and early 1980's cannot be overlooked. The early successes were due largely to a group of six psychics known as "The Naturals." Joe McMoneagle, a retired army intelligence officer, who claims that he left Stargate in 1984 after receiving a Legion of Merit award for "providing information on more than 150 targets that had been previously unavailable from other sources."

When asked about this, McMoneagle said, "The project deteriorated as the military began letting any old kook into Stargate." Other sources also began deploring the New Age twist given by the influx of spoon-benders and crystal gazers.

"Joe McMoneagle is considered to be one of the greatest naturals." In the early 1970's Joe had a Near Death Experience (NDE), which seems to have given him the ability to achieve telepathic and altered states at will. Joe has stated that a viewer's ability to remote view is dependent upon each individual's innate talent.

In other words, their achievements in remote viewing are limited by the amount of natural ability they are born with."

McMoneagle said, "It's important to withhold belief in any paranormal abilities until they've been fully demonstrated and replicated by science."

Operation Stargate's crowning achievement came when remote viewers were able to describe in an incredible amount of detail the Soviet Union's construction of a secret missile base, which were not be seen by U2 flyovers or orbiting spy satellites. Remote viewers were able to draw highly accurate sketches of a large crane, which was constructed on railroad tracks as well as a large metallic domed structure. The drawings were substantiated by U2 spy plane flyovers and integrated human intelligence on the ground.

Operation Stargate was not confined to activities solely at the SRI. At Penn State University Park, PA beginning in 1980 and lasting until 1992 students were subjected to non consensual experimentation, this included being drugged and subjected to verbal psycho stimuli while asleep. Target subjects at times recalled indicia of memory where by those who were experimenting on them directly indicated or eluded to working for federal agencies such as the FBI, secret service, CIA, NRO, ATF, and Interpol. These activities were not limited to federal involvement. State and local agencies were also implicated in the participants' memories.

The backgrounds of these students were eternally manipulated in order to forestall criminal liability on the part of the federal government. Participants say their credit ratings were ruined and their academic records had been abused. "Professors you knew suddenly did not know you." Students have also alleged that photos were taken of them and surveillance devices were placed in their apartments and dorms. When contacted by journalists, Penn State refused to comment on the allegations but did not deny them.

The experiences of the participants in the alleged experiments all suffer similar flashbacks as UFO abductees and soldiers from Vietnam that were subjected to mind altering drugs which were intended to decrease a soldiers need for sleep as well as decreasing his fear to fight. This program has sometime been referred to as "Jacob's Ladder."

Operation Stargate was officially decommissioned in 1995 under the Clinton administration's defense budget cuts. However, its missions were simply absorbed into the covert operations of allegedly disassociated federal offices and agencies.

Topics such as remote viewing, mind control, and Men in Black all sound like something out of the X-Files, but let us only look back to the time of Dick Tracy and his wrist communicator and Buck Rogers with his rocket pack. Both of these are current technologies being used by the military as well as publicly operated corporations.