CIA Star Gate Archives

IRVA is proud to offer its members the entire content of the Central Intelligence Agency's Star Gate Archives in an easy to access online format. The Archives as presented here are derived from the Remote Viewing Instructional Services, Inc. (RVIS)

Guide to the Central Intelligence Agency's Star Gate Collection Archives, authored by RVIS President, and founding IRVA director and past president, Paul H. Smith, Ph.D., Maj. US Army (ret.). The original Guide text has been adapted and edited for this special online edition by former IRVA President John P. Stahler with the generous permission of RVIS, Inc.

Introduction

Your examination of the Star Gate Archives will be a lot like a detective story. Much of the tale of what became known as Project Star Gate is here to be found, but it will take some digging and piecing together to ferret it out. But a little diligence will bring considerable reward. Among these documents are some pretty amazing things – mixed in with things more trivial and mundane. Separating the diamonds from the rough will now be much easier for you thanks to this guide, but it won't be effortless. However, it will be worth the effort. There is much that is informative, interesting, and even in some cases fascinating. You will find many actual remote viewing sessions here by people whose names you've heard – Joe McMoneagle, Mel Riley, Gabrielle Pettingell, Lyn Buchanan, and others (including many of my own). There are also interesting reports on operational projects, science papers (some quite long and exhaustive) detailing experiments and scientific discoveries, correspondence tracing the interactions of various intelligence agencies regarding remote viewing, and even reports of fact finding or skeptical investigations into various aspects of the governments programs exploring many aspects of parapsychology. You only have to find them!

Overview of the CIA Version of the Archives

• The Central Intelligence Agency provided the Archive on 14 CD-ROM disks. As shipped, the CIA provided no instructions or guide to the Star Gate Archives. On each of the disks, however, there is a small database file. We have extracted the most useful information among the several data-fields that are included such as original document numbers, creation dates, page count, and folder and document titles, and present the information as a scrollable list of documents. Sometimes the folder and document titles are informative, sometimes they're not. But they do at least provide a starting point for access. This guide together with the document listings should help significantly in navigating through, sorting out, and drawing understanding from the Archives.
• Except for CIA Disk 10, each of the 14 disks themselves contain several sub-folders, each of which usually includes a large number of documents. (Disk 10 contains just one folder, containing only a few documents.) Each sub-folder is labeled "Part0001," "Part0002," and so on. Inside each "Part..." folder are documents. Documents are listed by a file number such as: CIA-RDP96-00789400l60206000l-6 (each document's number is also printed on the top and bottom of every page of the document itself). The first parts of the number remain the same in most of the sub-files (though they are different in a few). We present the lists of documents organized as originally presented by the CIA in a Disk... / Part... hierarchy.
• The original Archives included both a TIFF image file and as a text file for each document, paired next to each other. It appears that the original documents were first scanned, then processed by OCR ("optical character recognition") software to provide the text file. We have converted the TIFF files to the more easily viewed PDF format. The text files are not included in this online version.
• The documents preserved in the Archive don't seem necessarily to be included in any particular order, though often documents pertaining to a certain project or administrative function might be grouped together. For example, memos, letters, and spread sheets having to do with the program's budgeting process for fiscal year 1984 might be grouped together on a given disk, then be followed by a set of remote viewing sessions pertaining to the Iran hostage situation but preceded by a collection of non-disclosure statements signed by people given access to information about the program. Often, lone documents that should be grouped with others elsewhere in the Archive show up in altogether different locations.
• A number of the documents are incomplete. This is due to any one of several reasons:
  • Portions of some documents are ruled exempt from declassification, so pages at the beginning, middle, or end have been removed or are blank. Frequently text in the middle of documents will be redacted (blanked out), with no explanation (though there are usually annotations off to the side which, if the code were available, might tell the reason for the deletion).
  • Draft copies of final documents are included in the archive, and these are sometimes incomplete.
  • Sometimes pages are simply missing, with no explanation.
  • Tabs and appendices are not always included with the base document, but in many cases do appear as separate entries in the archive – hopefully in close proximity to the base document (though not always).

Historical Background

The documents in this archive apparently date from 1972 through 1995, and include five main categories:

• Research documents from the SRI-International and SAIC research programs (plus documentation provided by sub-contractors);
• Operational documents, including reports on remote viewing projects as well as raw remote viewing sessions by the various military viewers;
• Remote viewing training sessions performed by various viewers;
• "Foreign assessment" documentation (articles, surveys, etc., from or about foreign experimentation in or application of parapsychology, and used to compile intelligence reports about the state of overseas involvement in the field); and
• Administrative documents (memoranda for record, contracts, letters of instruction, transmittal, etc., disposition forms, indoctrination statements, budgetary documentation, and so on) from both research and operational remote viewing activities.

The research program began in the summer of 1972 at SRI-International (formerly the Stanford Research Institute), and continued to 1995, by which time the program had been moved to SAIC (Science Applications International Corporation - this move took place approximately 1990). In the early-to-mid 1970s the program used the nickname "SCANATE," which was formed from the words "scanning by coordinate."

Some of the people associated with the research program:

Note: Joe McMoneagle and Ken Bell (see below) continued research work with SRI and SAIC after their respective retirements from the Army

The military operational RV periods covered:

Further, there is a period from about 1975 to around 1979/80 where the Air Force managed the program under the leadership of Dale Graff; and there may be documents from this period also mixed in with the rest of the archives. AMSAA was an Army organization at Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD which carried on a fairly intensive remote viewing program for a short time during roughly 1978-1979.

Some of those assigned to the military RV unit: (people are listed alphabetically, independent of program cover name they served under)

*Sometimes the same number was re-used after a source left the unit. Dates of service should make clear which person is referred to in the Archives.

The viewer/source numbers will be helpful in sorting out who the viewers and who the monitors were on many of the various sessions. There are a number of numbers from the Grill Flame years that haven't yet been identified as to which individuals they belong to. This is at least partly because viewers at the time were often assigned several numbers which were used interchangeably as a security measure.

Commanders of the Ft. Meade unit, and their tenures:

Note: Three of the commanders also appear in the list of viewers. Gauvin and Ray both served as viewers before they became commander (also known as "branch chief"). Atwater served as interim commander between Jachim and Buzby while simultaneously serving as operations officer and training officer.

Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) Key Figures:

The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) also figured prominently in the remote viewing saga. By the late 1970s under chief scientist Jack Vorona the Agency was a major supporter of and contractor for the SRI research. This continued up to the Star Gate program's demise in 1995. But besides the research angle, DIA absorbed the Army's operational unit starting in 1985 (with the official transfer from Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM) coming on 30 January 1986).

Important figures in the DIA effort were:

• Dr. Jack Vorona (deputy director in charge of science and technology intelligence issues)
• Dale Graff (who transferred to DIA in about 1980 when the Air Force discontinued its program)
• Jim Salyer (who monitored the SRI program for DIA from the 1970s through about 1990)
• John Berberich (replaced Vorona in early 1990)

Most primary DIA-related activities took place at the Defense Intelligence Analysis Center (DIAC) located on Bolling Air Force Base, across the Anacostia River from metropolitan Washington, DC. DIA's actual headquarters, though, were in the E-ring of the Pentagon, where the Director's office was at the time.

Despite labels such as "The CIA's 'Star Gate' Program," the Central Intelligence Agency never actually ran the Star Gate program. In 1994 Congress ordered DIA to turn the Program over to the CIA. The day the CIA took control, June 30, 1995, the Agency terminated the program as a functioning element. No military remote viewers ever actually worked directly for the CIA as viewers.

Projects and project numbers: The operational remote viewing projects conducted at Ft. Meade were usually numbered with the year and the order in which the tasking was received. For example: 8709 (the project against the Stealth aircraft) was the ninth project received in 1987. In the Archives, unfortunately, the actual target of a given project is in most cases missing, so it is frequently difficult to know what the purpose of the sessions was. However, reports included with the sessions often give useful clues as to what the mission was, and in some cases tasking information about the targets is included as well. Fortunately, this same problem doesn't exist for the training sessions, where the majority of them come with the feedback attached so it is possible to see how well the viewer did in describing the intended target.

Browse the Archive Contents

The following overview provides a summary paragraph of the general contents for each Part of each of the CIA disks. This summary is not exhaustive, though, and there are often many interesting documents contained in the various parts that aren't mentioned. Included after the description of each Part is usually a list of "Highlights" that can be found there. This allows you as you peruse the Archives to quickly find some of the many interesting or significant documents included here.

Note: Due to the extensive nature of this archive (14 disks with multiple parts each), the complete disk-by-disk browsing guide with all highlights has been preserved. Members can access detailed information about each disk's contents through the archive interface. Below is a summary of what each disk contains:

Glossary