The U.S. Army spent $20 million and nearly 20 years trying to weaponize psychics — and by the end, one of the last remote viewers on staff was using tarot cards.
The Stargate Project was a classified U.S. Army intelligence program established in 1977 at Fort Meade, Maryland, created in direct response to reports that the Soviet Union was investing heavily in psychic research for military purposes. The fear wasn't that psychics were real — it was that the Soviets might believe they were.
The program focused primarily on 'remote viewing,' the claimed ability to perceive distant locations or events purely through psychic means. Researchers at Stanford Research Institute ran early experiments, and the Army quietly recruited a small unit of trained military personnel to attempt operational intelligence gathering using the technique.
Over nearly two decades, the program cycled through a series of code names — SCANATE, Gondola Wish, Grill Flame, Center Lane, Sun Streak — before being consolidated under the Stargate name in 1991. It was run by a rotating cast of officers and civilian researchers, and at its peak employed around 15–20 people operating out of a deteriorating wooden barracks.
The program attracted some genuinely unusual figures. Major General Albert Stubblebine, head of Army Intelligence, was a true believer who reportedly tried to walk through walls. Joseph McMoneagle, one of the most celebrated remote viewers, was later awarded the Legion of Merit for his contributions. One participant was said to have used tarot cards by the program's final years.
In 1995, the CIA commissioned a formal evaluation by the American Institutes for Research. Statistician Jessica Utts found the laboratory results showed real statistical significance; skeptic Ray Hyman concluded the data was too vague and inconsistent to be meaningful. The overall verdict: remote viewing had never produced actionable intelligence.
The $20 million program was terminated and declassified in 1995 after the review found its practical value to be negligible. The CIA's conclusion was blunt: even if some laboratory effect existed, it was too unreliable and imprecise to be useful in real intelligence operations.
The Stargate Project gained a second life in popular culture through Jon Ronson's 2004 book and the 2009 film 'The Men Who Stare at Goats,' which dramatized the military's flirtation with paranormal warfare. In 2017, the CIA released thousands of declassified Stargate documents online, and the program's archives were later donated to Rice University.