Stargate: When the U.S. Military Tried to See Across Distance

On May 1, 1995, a summary of the Star Gate program recorded a test that sounds like science fiction and scores like office work. Five military organizations had sent requests to the program. Three full-time remote viewers had answered them. Users left behind 99 accuracy ratings and 100 value ratings for those answers. From 1986 through the first quarter of fiscal year 1995, operational units submitted more than 200 tasks. Every one of those numbers sits on a form with a date, a tasking officer, and a scorer. This record is not an Internet legend passed from mouth to mouth. It is how a defense agency tried to measure a talent that everyone calls mystical.

Remote viewing meant describing a person, place, object, or activity without ordinary sensory access to it. A program manager handed the viewer only a thin slice of information: sometimes a coordinate, sometimes a name. The viewer sat alone, recorded impressions of shape, movement, temperature, and terrain, and worked them into sketches. The report went back to the requesting unit for scoring. CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and Army units kept these records alive under several different program names.