During the intense rivalry of the Cold War, the United States government pursued a secret and extraordinary intelligence method: recruiting mind readers and psychics as spies. Driven by fears of lagging behind the Soviet Union, agencies like the CIA and the US Army launched a clandestine program to harness extrasensory perception (ESP) for national security.
The Birth of a Paranormal Arms Race
This unusual initiative, which later became known as Project Star Gate, began in the early 1970s. It was sparked by a classified report in 1972 that claimed the Soviet Union was pouring significant funds into researching psychic abilities like ESP and psychokinesis for espionage. Alarmed by the prospect of Soviet psychic warfare, the CIA started its own covert research at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) in Menlo Park, California.
The program gained momentum with the involvement of Uri Geller, the famous Israeli performer known for claiming to bend spoons with his mind. According to journalist Annie Jacobsen's research based on declassified documents, the CIA was less interested in metal-bending and more focused on Geller's alleged skills in "mind projection"—the ability to read or influence thoughts from a distance.
From California Labs to Fort Meade
In a striking juxtaposition, Geller participated in classified psychokinesis tests in 1975 at a laboratory in Livermore, California—a site primarily dedicated to developing nuclear warheads and advanced weapons. This indicated the high-level, sensitive nature the government assigned to psychic research.
By the late 1970s, the CIA stepped back, and the program's oversight shifted to the US Army's Fort Meade in Maryland under the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). For nearly two decades, Congress continued to fund this remote viewing research. Support wasn't universal, but some, like Congressman Charlie Rose in 1979, saw it as a potentially "cheap radar system" the US couldn't afford to ignore if the Soviets had it.
Psychic Spies on Real Missions
Operatives termed "remote viewers" were deployed on hundreds of missions. Joseph McMoneagle, an Army veteran, participated in roughly 450 missions between 1978 and 1984. His tasks included helping locate American hostages in Iran and identifying a hidden radio in a calculator used by a suspected KGB agent in South Africa.
Another viewer, Angela Dellafiora Ford, assisted in a 1989 manhunt for a fugitive former US customs agent. She pinpointed his location as "Lowell, Wyoming," while agents arrested him near a town called Lovell, Wyoming—about 100 miles away, showcasing the often ambiguous but sometimes curiously close results.
The End of Star Gate and Lasting Intrigue
Despite decades of secret work, Project Star Gate was officially terminated in 1995. The closure followed an independent review by the American Institutes for Research (AIR), commissioned by the CIA. The report acknowledged some intriguing anomalies but concluded that the intelligence produced was too "vague and ambiguous" to be actionable. It stated that proving the existence of a genuine paranormal phenomenon remained unclear.
However, government interest in similar concepts didn't completely die. In 2014, the Office of Naval Research initiated a $3.85 million program exploring intuition or a "sixth sense" in sailors and Marines. Furthermore, Dr. Edwin May, the former head of Star Gate research, has continued to advocate for serious scientific study of ESP, citing later experiments as some of the best in the field.
The full scale of this bizarre chapter in espionage history only became public in 2017, when the CIA declassified nearly 12 million pages of documents, finally revealing the detailed story of America's psychic spies.
