Failure and success of the project STARGATE to develop the remote viewing

capacity

Kenji Miyamoto
11 November 2018

Abstract

STARGATE is a code name for the aggregation of various programs to develop the
remote viewing capability. It was originally assumed to be the paranormal phenomenon,
though attracting academic interests in the early 1970s. The Stanford Research Institute,
SRI, obtained the cooperation from several psychics and started the serious research on
this capability, which was eventually subsidized by the US Defense outlets. Their main
program was called “GRILL FLAME” purposed to train the soldier to possess the remote
viewing capability, which was failed and ceased until the early 1990s. It was declassified
with their earlier experiments supported partly by the CIA as well, though the majority
was conducted under the US Defense involvement. Their failure should be destined due
to their focus on the remote viewing rather than on the overall phenomenon that the brain
is affected by the external electromagnetic stimuli. This extrasensory function was
confirmed through the various studies in the early 1970s and there were several
implications that the CIA realized the overall phenomenon could be deployed to their
information gathering rather than focusing on the remote viewing.

Introduction

There was an idea in the CIA to develop techniques to activate human organisms by
remote means, which was clearly mentioned at MKULTRA Subproject 119 in the early
1960s.1 This notion emerged partly due to the change of perception toward the brain
function which irradiates the electrical signal for each specific activity. This phenomenon
was confirmed through the EEG and some researchers have been convinced the brain
can be manipulated with the external low-level electromagnetic field which shares the
same extremely low frequency as the brainwave.

As previously written, MKULTRA Subproject 119 was ended up just with publishing
some books and the researchers did not develop any apparatuses to manipulate the

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human brain remotely. 2 There was another shop emerged for this trial in the 1970s,
which was SRI, Stamford Research Institute, funded by various US Defense
organizations. Their experiment started with a confirmation of the brain function
interacted with the remote electromagnetic stimuli,3 which apparently shared the same
view with the research team conducting the subproject 119, i.e. the researchers from the
Brain Research Institute of UCLA. Actually, SRI was originally famous for the brain
research with EEG analysis, also one of the leading institutes, though this specific
research was conducted by another team at SRI.

Their research was launched by an excitement of the psychic capability to interact with
the outside world without any direct contacts. They were especially interested in the
remote viewing to locate the remote stuff without any helps. This ability was fascinated
by the US military which had subsidized their experiments for decades, though it had
been ceased already, implying that their venture was unsuccessful. It might be a common
sense that the remote viewing capability is destined to be failed, but contrarily, there was
a part of successes as well. Those researches have been declassified as the STARGATE
program, which gives us an insight on the remote electromagnetic phenomenon through
their failure and success.

Remote stimuli

STARGATE Project was a well-known program to develop a remote viewing technology,

mainly supported by various vehicles of the United States Defense organizations,
including the DIA, Defense Intelligence Agency. It was not a single project but they
continuously endeavored to acquire the capability to locate the enemies and their
facilities through remote viewing. The CIA also originally subsidized the program together
with the military outlets, though they halted it until the end of the 1970s. Those
researches and developments were conducted by SRI, Stanford Research Institute, led
by two researchers, Drs. Harold Puthoff and Russell Targ. Looking at the proposal on 1
March 1976, shown below, the project was not yet called as “STARGATE”, but as
“DETECTION OF REMOTE LOW-LEVEL EM SOURCES”.

We informed our subject that at certain times a light was to be flashed in a sender’s
eyes in a distant room, and if the subject perceived that event, consciously or
unconsciously, it might be evident from changes in his EEG output. The receiver was

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 seated in a visually opaque, acoustically and electrically shielded double-walled
steel room.4

This experiment was basically designed to confirm that the receiver could perceive the
sender’s brainwave remotely, which was recorded in the EEG output as a proof. SRI
proposed this capability for various government vehicles, which had eventually been
supported by the US Defense outlets for about two decades. They likely believed it to be
developed to the military grade in the end. This proposal was not actually a start of this
overall project, related to the remote stimuli. The same SRI team wrote another
presentation on 14 February 1973, subjected as “PSYCHOENERGETIC PHENOMENA”

In the past half year we have had an opportunity to work with two individuals who
appear to have unusual abilities both in the area of psychoenergetic effects, and
also with regard to their extraordinary perceptual ability.5

They had a cooperation from two psychics who claimed to see things remotely and
asked the government agencies for a support of the research, partly due to the expensive
“superconductor-shielded Josephson effect magnetometer”. The low-level
electromagnetic field was easily manipulated with this apparatus and they could deepen
their studies with multiple frequencies. It was actually built and delivered to the SRI
facility as proposed, which was scripted on the memorandum by the CIA liaison officer.

On 29 May the undersigned traveled to Develco, Inc. The purpose of this trip was
to check-out of the second order magnetic gradiometer at Develco, transport the
instrument to Stanford Research Institute, and participate in examining subjects who
allegedly have extra sensory perception of powers. Experiments were to be
conducted to see if low level magnetic fields are generated by these individuals when
they are performing in an extra sensory mode.6

This officer belonged to ORD, Office of Research and Development in the CIA, who
seemed to misunderstand the nature of these facilities and experiments. Actually, the
low level magnetic field was created by the magnetometer and those individuals were
expected to perceive it, which was recorded as an EEG signal from their brains. In any
way, this trip report confirmed that the government vehicles including the CIA funded this
research project with the expensive apparatus.

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 Their outcome was published at NATURE and the British Journal in 1975 and it was
also disclosed as one of the government reports under the STARGATE declassification.
However, it is quite hard to extrapolate what they really found scientifically through those
experiments. The report showed an excitement that the SRI researchers found unknown
phenomena presented by two star psychics, Uri Geller and Ingo Swann, who could
perceive the remote electromagnetic stimuli. It sounded more paranormal, but in any way,
they obtained continuous supports from various vehicles of Department of Defense,
mainly due to their claim, the remote viewing capability, which was attractive to the
military intelligence for finding their enemies in a remote distance.

LPNI success of replication

SRI started their remote stimuli study in 1972 after meeting with Ingo Swann 7 and
created a huge controversy about the psychic ability even at the broader society. Their
outcomes were not perceived well by the peer researchers, though some of them
replicated their initial experiments. Rover E. Ornstein was one of them, who worked at
Langley Porter Neuropsychiatric Institute of University of California, San Francisco. His
letter to SRI’s team was declassified to show the detail of his replication. He actually
refined the original protocol to demonstrate the human brain reaction against the remote
stimuli and found out a critical fact.

The previous experiment reported a decrement of at 0 – linked mastoids at 16Hz

compared with the null condition, in the second four seconds. We did not find this
but did find a significant decrement in 0z in the first 4 seconds of the first set. None
of the other 0z comparison attain significance and the combined set 1 and set 2 first
3 seconds in not significant. Therefore we did not directly repeat your earlier findings.
However, the other occipital leads do also show consistent decrements at 16Hz
compared with null, and analyzing all the data from 01 on all 424 trials over 8
seconds shows a consistent decrement.8

It had better start from the protocol in this experiment that SRI and this replication
prepared two sets of subjects, the sender and the receiver who were located in the
separate rooms. The former watched a flashlight with a low-level electromagnetic
exposure, which was perceived by the latter; this was the original experiment of the
remote stimuli. In this particular replication, Dr. Ornstein used a flashlight with 16Hz

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electromagnetic field against the sender, which was supposedly perceived by the
receiver and the whole process was recorded at EEG signals.

In conclusion, LPNI team found out a consistent decrement of the receiver’s brainwave
when the sender was exposed to the flashlight with 16Hz for 8 seconds, the longest time-
span in this experiment. The protocol of this replicated experiment was quite solid and
there was no doubt that the receivers got some signals remotely, but it was not
necessarily brainwaves of the senders. Considering the nature of the extremely low
frequency, such as 16Hz, the electromagnetic wave was definitely delivered to the
receivers during the trial as well, implying that it should be received directly by the subject.
The original SRI team was also aware of this fact, partly.

when normal subjects are stimulated with a flashing light, their EEG typically shows
a decrease in the amplitude of the resting rhythm and a driving of the brain waves
at the frequencies of the flashes. We hypothesized that if we stimulated one subject
in this manner (a putative sender), the EEG of another subject in a remote room with
no flash present (a receiver), might show changes in alpha (9-11Hz) actively, and
possibly EEG driving similar to that of the sender, either by means of coupling to
sender’s EEG, or by coupling directly to the stimulus.9

This hypothesis was confirmed by their original research and replicated by Dr. Ornstein
at the LPNI, however their direction was soon detached from a detection of the remote
stimuli to the paramount target, the remote viewing. It might be natural as articulated in
their statement that they tried to find out the receivers were gifted enough to perceive
the brain activity of the remote target. Their concern was not that the ordinary people can
be affected by the remote electromagnetic stimuli, but the psychic could use this ability
more freely through the remote viewing.

GRILL FLAME

Their venture of the remote viewing had progressed to the project called “GRILL
FLAME”, the main program classified under STARGATE. This experimental proposal
was officially submitted on 23 March 1979, implying it was approved around that time.
This project was actually a bold step for SRI and the US military outlets, as it just focused
on the remote viewing which used to be one of the research subjects amongst the remote

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sensing in the past, though they fully betted on a development of this capability for the
practical deployment.

Remote viewing (RV) is an intellectual process by which a person perceives

characteristics of a location remote from that person. RV does not involve any
electronic sensing devices at or focused at the target site, nor does it involve
classical photo interpretation of photographs obtained from overhead or oblique
means.10

This articulation in the proposal was critically different from the past, such as
“DETCTION OF REMOTE LOW-LEVEL EM SOURCES”, another research program
presented on 1 March 1976, which they also obtained a support from the intelligence
community. The remote viewing was one of their original targets to detect remote
electromagnetic sources and they researched broader possibilities of the human brain
directly connected to the outside world, which was an extension of their initial experiment
in 1972-74 to find out the human capability sensing the remote stimuli. It should be a
bold progress just to focus on the remote viewing, which was partly driven by the military
desire.

RV provides a potential capability to target field-mobile weapons which are

currently difficult or impossible to detect prior to launch, such as tactical missiles and
rockets and attack helicopters. RV can be used to: target on key enemy military
individuals, from covert agent to key battle commanders; detect the change in state
of military units; to determine the access code to computers and other electronic
devices; and to determine the general content of documents and other informational
items found in military organizations.11

This statement was a research purpose of the project “GRILL FLAME”, clarifying that
the military desperately wanted to obtain the remote viewing capability. Thereafter, they
started to train some of their soldiers to possess this capability, not just to research the
phenomena conducted by the gifted individuals.

Adey’s review

The US Defense outlets decided to subsidize the remote viewing, though it had not

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progressed as they assumed and later hired outside experts to analyze the feasibility of
this project. Dr. Ross Adey was invited as one of the main researchers for the
reassessment.

For the past eleven years, a small group headed by Dr. H. Puthoff has sought
evidence that would support the case for extrasensory perception. In recent years,
the focus of these studies has centered on “remote viewing” by subjects claiming to
visualize the scene at a point beyond the field of vision”.12

This was an onset of their review written on 1 March 1984, which clearly pointed out
that SRI’s focus was shifted just to research on the remote viewing until then. The
reviewers’ expression implied that they generally accepted the extrasensory perception
to detect the remote stimuli, while skeptical on the remote viewing. Having said that, they
were also intrigued by the research outcome, “too impressive to dismiss as a mere
coincidence”. Their concern was “the lack of a physical model should not be taken to
preclude the existence of the capability to view a remote location”, and concluded as
bellows.

It is our conclusion that Dr. Puthoff’s team warrants cautions continued fiscal
support, and that the research should be conducted as much as possible in an open
unclassified mode so that its reproducibility and accuracy can be independently
verified by others.13

As shown in the previous paper concerned on MKULTRA Subproject 111914, he was

one of the MKULTRA doctors who researched “techniques of activation of the human
organism by remote electronic means”.15 He was certainly one of the best professionals
to review SRI’s work and highly likely connected to the CIA, directly or indirectly at that
time as well. The agency became skeptical on SRI’s remote viewing project and had cut
their financial support until then. However, they could obtain the project progress
according to this conclusion through peer reviews of their associated researchers. I am
not sure whether Dr. Adey had that specific intention to conclude this reassessment as it
was originally asked by the US Defense Department, though it was pretty much sure that
he was interested in the on-going development, and the CIA should cautiously share the
same opinion with him.

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CIA doubt

Dr. Adey’s review was submitted in 1984, five years later of the inception of GRILL
FLAME, though the CIA had already written a critical report about the remote viewing on
1 June 1979. It was written by two researchers at Systemetrics, Inc., titled as “SUMMARY
AND CRITICAL EVALUATION OF RESEARCH IN REMOTE VIEWING” 16 , which
apparently indicated that this was a review only concerning the remote viewing. They
reviewed experiments conducted by SRI team led by Drs. Puthoff and Targ, starting from
Project SCANATE in 1974. It was an experiment that “would begin with the subject
(Swann) being given a target location by latitude and longitude only, for which he had to
provide an immediate response what he saw.” 17 This remote viewing with the
geographical coordinate was also one of the main focuses at the project GRILL FLAME
as well. The CIA had already doubted this capability until the time when this whole project
was named as “GRILL FLAME” and that was why they halted a subsidy for the SRI’s
program, despite continuous supports and interests from the military intelligences.

There was another doubt on the purpose of this critical review; why the CIA just focused
on the remote viewing rather than the overall phenomena related to the remote sensing.
The proposal letter from Systemetrics indicated it was not just the remote viewing,
originally.

Following our recent meeting, I have given considerable thought to the need for a
thorough analysis and evaluation of current paranormal psychology findings and
theories as they might apply to intelligence operations.18

There was no mention of the GRILL FLAME in this letter, as it was not named as such,
yet on 25 April 1977. As shown, SRI proposed the overall experiment about the remote
stimuli in that previous year, which was in line with the Systemetrics proposal concerning
the whole remote sensing phenomena. It was the CIA that directed a focus on the remote
viewing.

Analysis and Review of Remote Viewing Paranormal Research

Upon receipt of contract, Systemetrics, Inc. personnel will meet with designed
personnel of the Central Intelligence Agency to discuss and agree upon detailed
plans and timetables for the first four tasks indicated below.19

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 This was likely a part of the memorandum to detail the agreement for analysis and
review of only “remote viewing”. According to this file, they finalized the contract on 15
June 1977, meaning that it was way ahead of SRI’s focus on the remote viewing under
GRILL FLAME project. The CIA had a reasonable doubt on this capability, probably
sharing the same view as Dr. Adey that there was a “lack of a physical model should not
be taken to preclude the existence of the capability to view a remote location”. At the
same time, their intention indicated that they had no doubt on the phenomena that the
human being can sense remote stimuli electromagnetically, as SRI had researched
overall phenomena at the same period even after Project SCANATE in 1974, though
their critical review was just focused on the remote viewing. The CIA realized this
capability was not feasible for the intelligence use until the end of the 1970s.

Project termination

Irrelevant to the CIA’s suspicion and disengagement, the military intelligence proceeded
to spend more money on the program and all of the subprojects were listed on the report
“Grill flame progress reports and bibliography of Stanford Research Institute
publication”.20 Their related studies started from “Perceptual Augmentation Techniques”
in January 1974 and the name “Grill Flame” appeared in December 1979, suggesting
the proposal was approved at that time. There were so many projects listed for 14 pages,
ended with “The Effects of Hypnosis on Remote Viewing Quality” in December 1988.
This report was generated to show the sponsor, i.e. the DIA and other defense
organizations, about how effective and rational the remote viewing was, which contrarily
indicated that there were growing doubts on their convictions and they needed more
concrete outcomes, otherwise to halt a funding. This list should be presented at the same
time with the report “Review of the psychoenergetic research conducted at SRI
International”, written in March 1989.

A total of 25,449 trials were conducted under a variety of protocols. Analysis

indicates that the odds that our result are not due to simple statistical fluctuations
alone are better than 2 X 1020 to 1 (i.e. 2 followed by 20 zeros). Using accepted
criteria set forth in the standard behavioral sciences, we conclude that this
constitutes convincing, if not conclusive.21

The psychogenetic effort has been divided into various categories within these

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 processes. The various categories within this domain are defined as follows:
(1) Forced-Choice – remote viewing where the targets are drawn from a limited (and
known) set of potential symbols (e.g. the integers 0, 1)
(2) RV-Lab – remote viewing where the targets are drawn from a large set of
potential materials (e.g. photographs of natural scenes, natural physical
locations), and the experiments are conducted under strict laboratory conditions.
(3) RV-Ops – remote viewing where the targets are drawn from specific targets of
interest
(4) Search – remote viewing where the targets are generally known but their location
is unknown (e.g. a specific military aircraft is known to have crashed – where is
it?)22

Their point was clear that the remote viewing was convincing, if not conclusive, for these
four categories, which was apparently useful to the military objective. The CIA made a
critical review on the remote viewing, even before the GRILL FLAME was officially
established in the late 1970s. Dr. Ross Adey was asked to review the outcome in 1984,
and at the end of the 1980s, the SRI itself was ordered to demonstrate the effectiveness
of their researches.

It was not clear whether the Department of Defense pulled a plug on this program after
the SRI’s own review, but it was ceased until 31 May 1995 when Edwin C. May at SAIC
wrote a memorandum warning that Channel 4 on British television was interested in
“CIA’s Project Scanate and the history of the putative Army’s involvement in remote
viewing”.23 He alerted the exposure risk and mentioned these projects in the past tense
in the memorandum, which implied that the GRILL FLAME was terminated in the early
1990s after the SRI was obliged to reassess the remote viewing by themselves.

According to the CIA’s internal record, they met with the military counterparts, the DIA,
US Army and others in terms of “potential strategies for declassification” of the whole
STARGATE at the first half of 1995. 24 The National Research Institute, one of the
invitees, “stated unequivocally that “the case for remote viewing …. is virtually
nonexistent” during the formal meeting on 5 May. The DIA asked the support of the CIA
accordingly and they were “meeting with CIA’s OGC to discuss EO 12958 other
declassification strategies and issues” on 19 May. This whole story indicated that it was
the CIA plot to leak the information to Channel 4, which was reported back to the US
Army via Dr. May for the immediate declassification.

10

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Success and Failure

The whole program was declassified as “STARGATE” including the CIA’s “SCANATE”,
though the majority were sponsored by the US military outlets as the project “GRILL
FLAME”. There are many condemnations for “STARGATE” from the general public, still
easily found in the internet, though some of them missed a point that it was mainly
conducted by the US Army and the DIA, not by the CIA. It was fundamentally
unnecessary for the agency to be blamed for this matter, implying that there should be
several reasons they also took the bullet with the defense organizations.

First of all, there was potentially no damage to the CIA at all and partly to the Department
of Defense, as the project was essentially harmless in nature. The project MKULTRA
was terribly denounced as the CIA doped many dangerous chemicals into their subjects
without notice that they conducted a human experiment in harm’s way. The US military
had also employed some of their officers for the same kind of experiments in the 1950s
and 1960s, but they did not harm any soldiers trained under the GRILL FLAME project,
whose declassification was not a big risk to them, originally.

Secondarily, it is reasonably interpreted that the CIA had different programs related to
the remote sensing, which was well covered up by the failure of the remote viewing. As
discussed, the CIA intentionally focused the outside review into the remote viewing,
despite the fact that Systemetrics proposed to review all of the paranormal experiments
related to the remote stimuli.

In a number of laboratories’ evidence has been obtained indicating the existence

of an as-yet-unidentified channel wherein information is observed to couple from
remote electromagnetic stimuli to the human nervous system as indicated by
physiological response, even though overt responses such as verbalization or key
provide no evidence for such information transfer.25

This statement was written in the SRI’s proposal on 1 March 1976, probably for the CIA
and the US Defense outlets, implying that there had been already enough experiments
and data to prove the brain function of remote sensing. The crucial issue was that the
US military had been stuck to the remote viewing for nearly two decades rather than to

11

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research on the overall electromagnetic phenomenon. Dr. Adey pointed out a related
issue in the mid-way that “exploration of the phenomenon should not be restricted to
specific applications. Rather, remote viewing should be studied as a scientific research
program aimed at establishing the existence or non-existence of the phenomenon.”26

The US military disregarded his suggestion and continued a development of the remote
viewing, as it was crucial for them to locate the enemy in the distance, while the overall
phenomenon looked like not attractive to spend their budgets. It also indicated why the
CIA halted their subsidy as the remote viewing was not necessarily their primary goal.
As articulated in the MKULTRA Subproject 119 conducted by Drs. Mary Brazier and Ross
Adey, they had an interest in the “techniques to activate human organism by remote
means”, which should be used for the information gathering. In this sense, their goal was
more associated to the overall remote sensing than focusing on the remote viewing. I
am pretty much sure that the CIA has run the programs for the remote sensing since the
1970s and have a reasonable doubt that they utilized the declassification of STARGATE,
as a cover-up of their still covert operation.

1 The CIA MKULTRA Subproject 119 was their initial electromagnetic program,
Kenji Miyamoto, 2018, or CIA File C00017376
2 The CIA MKULTRA Subproject 119 was their initial electromagnetic program,

Kenji Miyamoto, 2018

3 CIA-RDP9600787R000100140001-7
4 CIA-RDP96-00787R000200120002-7
5 CIA-RDP9600787R000100140001-7
6 CIA-RDP00780R000200200022-6
7 CIA-RDP96-000787R000200190001-1, P4
8 CIA-RDP96-000787R0005000240024-7
9 CIA-RDP96-787R000200120002-7
10 CIA-RDP96-00788R001300070001-1
11 CIA-RDP96-00788R001300070001-1
12 CIA-RDP96-00792R000600230001-6
13 CIA-RDP96-00792R000600230001-6
14 The CIA MKULTRA Subproject 119 was their initial electromagnetic program,

Kenji Miyamoto, 2018

15 MKULTRA Subproject 119, File 119-18
16 CIA-RDP96-00791R000100440001-9
17 CIA-RDP96-00791R000100440001-9
18 CIA-RDP96-00787R000100250001-5
19 CIA-RDP96-00787R000100250002-4
20 CIA-RDP96-00791R000200170008-1
21 CIA-RDP96-00878R000300170001-2, P2

12

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22 CIA-RDP96-00878R000300170001-2, P4
23 CIA-RDP96-00791R000200190068-3
24 CIA-RDP96-00791R000200030002-2
25 CIA-RDP96-00787R0002000120002-7
26 CIA-RDP96-00792R000600230001-6

13

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