One thing researchers learn is that public records can cover almost any subject, from housing covenants to Bigfoot. In honor of Halloween, this week we’ll turn our attention to declassified Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) records that document the agency’s research into the paranormal, including parapsychology related to remote viewing (using extrasensory perception – ESP – to learn about an unseen target) and psychokinesis (the ability to influence a physical item without physical interaction) . The spy agency, along with the Defense Department, was driven by claims made by the Soviet Union that it had exploited the power of psychokinesis, prompting research into the paranormal, effectively starting a “psychic arms race.”
In one field report, from October 1974, an unidentified officer filed a trip report related to his visit that month to Stanford Research Institute (SRI) International, which at the time was conducting research related to remote viewing as part of the Stargate Project, a secret U.S. Army unit established in 1978 at Fort Meade, Maryland, by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). The officer wrote of his interactions with physicists Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff – who headed the project – saying he was “impressed by the intensity of their motivation and by the quantity of work they have done – but a bit distressed by the lack of discipline with respect to procedures and exploitation of data.” The officer realizes he might encounter skepticism, but nonetheless writes “at the risk of damaging my own credibility, I must admit that the weight of the evidence (however faulted portions of it might be) leaves me on balance more persuaded than not of some psychic functioning.” The persistent belief, always in the face of contradictory evidence, in this conclusion helps explain why the Stargate Project would continue for another two decades before finally closing in 1995.
You can visit the CIA reading room to see declassified memos published by the agency on Project Stargate, psychokinesis, remote viewing and the paranormal. There was also a book published on the subject in 2017 by investigative journalist Annie Jacobsen titled “Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government’s Investigations Into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis.” Though the New Republic argued that Jacobsen was not skeptical enough of “obviously” discredited ideas in their review of the book.