TELEPATHY 75
others.) Star Gate was the code name for a number of secret CIAsponsored studies (such as Sun Streak, Grill Flame, and Center Lane).
The efforts got their start around 1970 when the CIA concluded that the
Soviet Union was spending up to 60 million rubles a year on "psychotronic" research. There was concern that the Soviets might be using ESP to locate U.S. submarines and military installations, to identify
spies, and to read secret papers.
Funding for the CIA studies began in 1972, and Russell Targ and
Harold Puthoff of the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) in Menlo Park
were in charge. Initially, they sought to train a cadre of psychics who
could engage in "psychic warfare." Over more than two decades, the
United States spent $20 million on Star Gate, with over forty personnel,
twenty-three remote viewers, and three psychics on the payroll.
By 1995, with a budget of $500,000 per year, the CIA had conducted
hundreds of intelligence-gathering projects involving thousands of remote viewing sessions. Specifically, the remote viewers were asked to
• locate Colonel Gadhafi before the 1986 bombing of Libya
• find plutonium stockpiles in North Korea in 1994
• locate a hostage kidnapped by the Red Brigades in Italy in 1981
• locate a Soviet Tu-95 bomber that had crashed in Africa
In 1995, the CIA asked the American Institute for Research (AIR)
to evaluate these programs. The AIR recommended that the programs
be shut down. "There's no documented evidence it had any value to
the intelligence community," wrote David Goslin of the AIR.
Proponents of Star Gate boasted that over the years they had scored
"eight-martini" results (conclusions that were so spectacular that you
had to go out and drink eight martinis to recover). Critics, however,
maintained that a huge majority of the remote viewing produced
worthless, irrelevant information, wasting taxpayer dollars, and that
the few "hits" they scored were vague and so general that they could
be applied to any number of situations. The AIR report stated that the
most impressive "successes" of Star Gate involved remote viewers who
already had some knowledge of the operation they were studying, and
hence might have made educated guesses that sounded reasonable.
others.) Star Gate was the code name for a number of secret CIAsponsored studies (such as Sun Streak, Grill Flame, and Center Lane).
The efforts got their start around 1970 when the CIA concluded that the
Soviet Union was spending up to 60 million rubles a year on "psychotronic" research. There was concern that the Soviets might be using ESP to locate U.S. submarines and military installations, to identify
spies, and to read secret papers.
Funding for the CIA studies began in 1972, and Russell Targ and
Harold Puthoff of the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) in Menlo Park
were in charge. Initially, they sought to train a cadre of psychics who
could engage in "psychic warfare." Over more than two decades, the
United States spent $20 million on Star Gate, with over forty personnel,
twenty-three remote viewers, and three psychics on the payroll.
By 1995, with a budget of $500,000 per year, the CIA had conducted
hundreds of intelligence-gathering projects involving thousands of remote viewing sessions. Specifically, the remote viewers were asked to
• locate Colonel Gadhafi before the 1986 bombing of Libya
• find plutonium stockpiles in North Korea in 1994
• locate a hostage kidnapped by the Red Brigades in Italy in 1981
• locate a Soviet Tu-95 bomber that had crashed in Africa
In 1995, the CIA asked the American Institute for Research (AIR)
to evaluate these programs. The AIR recommended that the programs
be shut down. "There's no documented evidence it had any value to
the intelligence community," wrote David Goslin of the AIR.
Proponents of Star Gate boasted that over the years they had scored
"eight-martini" results (conclusions that were so spectacular that you
had to go out and drink eight martinis to recover). Critics, however,
maintained that a huge majority of the remote viewing produced
worthless, irrelevant information, wasting taxpayer dollars, and that
the few "hits" they scored were vague and so general that they could
be applied to any number of situations. The AIR report stated that the
most impressive "successes" of Star Gate involved remote viewers who
already had some knowledge of the operation they were studying, and
hence might have made educated guesses that sounded reasonable.