The Deep Dive
From 1978 to 1995, the CIA and DIA ran the Stargate Project at Fort Meade, Maryland, to determine if 'remote viewing'—the ability to psychically 'see' distant or hidden locations—was a viable intelligence-gathering tool. During the Cold War, fears that the Soviet Union was developing psychic spies prompted the US to investigate. The project worked with individuals who claimed extraordinary extrasensory perception, testing them with tasks like drawing classified foreign military bases hidden inside manila envelopes. After nearly two decades and $20 million spent, the CIA commissioned the American Institutes for Research (AIR) to evaluate the program.
How It Is Used in Marketing
Many modern online psychics cite the Stargate Project as 'proof' that the US government confirmed psychic abilities. They will often state, 'Even the CIA admits remote viewing is real.' This is a selective reading of history used as a marketing tactic to bypass a client's natural skepticism.
The Skeptic's Verdict
The AIR evaluation concluded that the Stargate Project had never produced a single piece of actionable, operational intelligence. The remote viewing reports were consistently vague, contained massive amounts of irrelevant data, and required the 'handlers' to interpret the drawings generously to make them fit the targets. The CIA officially cancelled and declassified the project in 1995, concluding that psychic phenomena, while intriguing in a laboratory setting, were useless for practical application.