Inside the Cold War Program Where the U.S. Tested Psychics Abilities

Beginning in the 1970s, U.S. government intelligence agencies investigated the existence of ‘remote viewing.’ Those files are now declassified.

BY VICTORIA SALVES, EDITORIAL FELLOW

Illustration: Getty Images

If you’re looking forward to reading the government’s soon-to-be-declassified files on aliens and UFO’s, then here’s a little something to hold you over: declassified files on psychics.

For about two decades, beginning in the 1970s, U.S. government intelligence agencies, including the CIA, investigated the existence of psychic abilities, in particular a phenomenon called “remote viewing,” according to reporting by Popular Mechanics and Wired. Remote viewing, in layman’s terms, is the purported ability to psychically “see” (and potentially influence) objects, events, information, or people that are hidden from physical view or channels otherwise inaccessible to the “viewer.”

The experiments were an attempt to test the validity of psychic abilities and weaponize those with such abilities against the Soviets. And yes they partly inspired the recently concluded television show Stranger Things. Indeed, several of the experiments conducted as part of Project Stargate are strikingly similar to scenes from the show.

In 1972, for example, Stanford Research Institute (SRI) physicist Harold Puthoff, witnessed alleged-psychic Ingo Swann alter the magnetic field inside a heavily shielded underground vacuum container for several seconds using only his thoughts, according to an article by Popular Mechanics. 

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Puthoff monitored these measurable changes to the magnetic field with a magnetometer, noting changes during the intervals when Swann was instructed to think about the apparatus and when he was told to stop. Interestingly enough, in 1973, Swan, also known as a pioneer of psychic studies, also allegedly described the rings of Jupiter before they were officially confirmed by NASA’s Voyager 1 probe in 1979. 

The psychic experiments had a variety of code names until they became collectively known as “Project Stargate,” when the Defense Intelligence Agency assumed control of the program in the early 1980s. The program was declassified in the 1990s.

When the Defense Intelligence Agency took over they assigned the project three main research goals: “‘Operations,’ using remote viewing to collect intelligence against foreign targets; ‘Research and Development,’ using laboratory studies to find new ways to improve remote viewing for use in the intelligence world; and ‘Foreign Assessment’ the analysis of foreign activities to develop or exploit the paranormal for any uses which might affect our national security.”

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