Star Gate was a Defense Intelligence Agency program that used paranormal phenomena, primarily “remote viewing,” for intelligence collection. Remote viewing is the claimed ability to describe a location one has not visited. The program and its predecessors ran in various forms for more than two decades.
In 1995 the CIA, directed by Congress to take the program over from DIA, commissioned an outside review, and on the strength of that review its research office recommended ending remote viewing operations and research across the intelligence community. The account below follows the two documents that closed the program: the American Institutes for Research (AIR) evaluation of Sept. 29, 1995, and the CIA Office of Research and Development memorandum of Sept. 27, 1995, that summarized its consequences.
Origins at SRI and the DIA program
The AIR report describes the government’s interest in remote viewing as beginning in the 1970s, driven by the prospect that people who could describe unseen sites could “supplement and enhance more time-consuming and perhaps dangerous methods” of collection (AIR report, Chapter One, p. 1-3). The CIA’s own program “began in 1972, but was discontinued in 1977.” DIA’s direct involvement “began about 1985,” and the program carried the name Star Gate from the early 1990s (AIR report, p. 1-4).
The laboratory research was conducted under contract. Ray Hyman, one of the review’s two expert panelists, described it as a program on “Anomalous Mental Phenomena” carried out at SRI International, formerly the Stanford Research Institute, from 1973 through 1989, and continued at Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) from 1992 through 1994 (Hyman review, AIR report, p. 3-43). The principal investigator for the later work was Edwin May (AIR report, Chapter Two, p. 2-2).
DIA organized the program around three objectives: “Operations,” using remote viewing against foreign targets; “Research and Development,” laboratory work on improving the technique; and “Foreign Assessment,” analysis of foreign efforts to develop or exploit the paranormal (AIR report, pp. 1-3 to 1-4). Intermediate code names for the Army and DIA phases, among them GRILL FLAME, CENTER LANE and SUN STREAK, appear in the Federation of American Scientists’ program summary. They are not used in the two documents discussed here.
A National Research Council panel convened at the request of the Army Research Institute had already reviewed the subject. Its 1988 report, Enhancing Human Performance, found “little or no support” for the usefulness of remote viewing (AIR report, p. 1-1). The AIR report notes that work continued regardless, with perhaps 50 to 100 additional studies conducted after 1986.
The congressionally directed transfer
A Congressionally Directed Action (CDA) required the transfer of Star Gate from DIA to the CIA. In January 1995, the CIA’s executive director asked the Office of Research and Development (ORD) to respond. The plan ORD proposed, and the executive director approved, had three parts: a blue-ribbon panel to conduct “a twenty-year technical review,” immediate declassification of past CIA sponsorship with further review of other program material, and, once the panel finished, a management strategy “including addressing whether or not this program made sense for CIA” (ORD memorandum, Sept. 27, 1995, para. 1).
The congressional language itself, as quoted in the ORD memorandum, called for “a re-evaluation of the classification of the existence of this effort as well as the results that have been obtained over time,” and directed the Director of Central Intelligence’s declassification committee to determine what parts could be “converted into an open world activity.” CIA staff briefed the Senate Appropriations Committee and the Senate intelligence committee staffs in March and April 1995. Presentation of the management strategy was deferred to Sept. 30 so the external review could finish (ORD memorandum, para. 2). ORD contracted with AIR in June 1995 (AIR report, p. 1-4).
The research review: Utts and Hyman
AIR’s panel paired two experts chosen “to represent both sides of the paranormal controversy.” Jessica Utts, a statistics professor at the University of California, Davis, had published work viewing paranormal interpretations positively. Ray Hyman, a psychology professor at the University of Oregon and a member of the earlier NRC committee, represented “a more skeptical position” (AIR report, Executive Summary, pp. E-1 to E-2). Two AIR senior scientists, Michael Mumford and Andrew Rose, joined the panel without prior background in parapsychology. The panel reviewed roughly 80 publications.
The two experts disagreed on the central question. Utts concluded that “psychic functioning has been well established” by the standards applied to other sciences, and that it would be “wasteful of valuable resources to continue to look for proof” (Utts review, Sept. 1, 1995, AIR report, pp. 3-2 and 3-31). Hyman, focusing on the 10 SAIC experiments, described the case as “still shaky, at best,” while acknowledging that the SAIC work showed “methodological and statistical sophistication well above previous parapsychological research” (Hyman review, Sept. 11, 1995, AIR report, p. 3-73). Both agreed the first test should be whether the SAIC results held up with independent judges, since the experiments had relied on a judge familiar with the experienced viewers’ response styles.
AIR’s summary of the laboratory evidence accepted that “hits occur more often than chance,” but found it “unclear whether the observed effects can unambiguously be attributed to the paranormal ability of the remote viewers as opposed to characteristics of the judges or of the target.” The use of the same viewers, the same judge and the same target photographs made their independent effects “impossible to identify” (AIR report, p. E-3).
The operational review
The second half of the evaluation assessed remote viewing as used for intelligence. AIR interviewed end users who had tasked the remote viewers, the viewers themselves and the program manager, and examined end users’ ratings of the reports (AIR report, p. E-3). Its findings were that laboratory conditions “do not apply in intelligence gathering situations,” that the reports “failed to produce the concrete, specific information valued in intelligence gathering,” and that the information was “inconsistent, inaccurate with regard to specifics, and required substantial subjective interpretation.”
The report then stated: “In no case had the information provided ever been used to guide intelligence operations” (AIR report, p. E-4).
AIR’s conclusion was that “continued use of remote viewing in intelligence gathering operations is not warranted” (AIR report, p. E-5). The foreign assessment component was outside the scope of AIR’s contract.
The ORD recommendations of Sept. 27, 1995
Two days before the AIR report’s date, ORD sent the CIA executive director, through the Deputy Director for Science and Technology, a Secret memorandum titled “Star Gate – Final Response to CDA” (ORD-0520-95). Its attached management strategy made four key recommendations (ORD memorandum, para. 3):
- Terminate remote viewing operations within the intelligence community.
- Terminate research and development relating to remote viewing within the intelligence community.
- Perform a comprehensive declassification review of all Defense Department and CIA program files to prepare them for transfer to the National Archives.
- Apply no resources to the assessment of foreign developments in parapsychology.
The last recommendation rested on a parallel assessment of Russian parapsychology overseen by the National Intelligence Officer for Science and Technology, with help from DIA Star Gate personnel. The CIA Directorate of Intelligence concluded that it saw no “credible evidence of developments that could significantly add to the threat that Russia currently poses to US national security,” and rated parapsychology “a relatively low threat” (ORD memorandum, para. 3). ORD proposed forwarding the recommendations to the appropriate members of Congress in satisfaction of the directed action (para. 4).
Chronology from the documents
| Date | Event | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 1972 | CIA remote viewing program begins | AIR report, p. 1-4 |
| 1973–1989 | Contract research at SRI International | Hyman review, p. 3-43 |
| 1977 | CIA program discontinued | AIR report, p. 1-4 |
| c. 1985 | DIA direct involvement begins | AIR report, p. 1-4 |
| 1988 | NRC report finds little or no support for remote viewing | AIR report, p. 1-1 |
| 1992–1994 | Contract research at SAIC | Hyman review, p. 3-43 |
| Jan. 1995 | CIA executive director tasks ORD with the transfer | ORD memorandum, para. 1 |
| June 1995 | ORD contracts AIR for external review | AIR report, p. 1-4 |
| Sept. 27, 1995 | ORD recommends terminating operations and research | ORD-0520-95 |
| Sept. 29, 1995 | AIR evaluation dated | AIR report, cover |
Both documents carry CIA release stamps: the ORD memorandum was approved for release on Aug. 10, 2000, and the AIR report on May 22, 2002. They are held in the CIA’s Electronic Reading Room under the RDP96-00791R document series.
Sources
- American Institutes for Research, Michael D. Mumford, Andrew M. Rose and David A. Goslin, “An Evaluation of Remote Viewing: Research and Applications” (Sept. 29, 1995), CIA-RDP96-00791R000200180006-4, including the reviews by Jessica Utts (Sept. 1, 1995) and Ray Hyman (Sept. 11, 1995) (PDF copy)
- CIA Office of Research and Development, memorandum for the Executive Director, “Star Gate – Final Response to CDA,” ORD-0520-95 (Sept. 27, 1995), CIA-RDP96-00791R000100150001-1 (PDF copy)
- Federation of American Scientists, Intelligence Resource Program, “STAR GATE [Controlled Remote Viewing]”