Military spent $20 million over 20 years testing psychic abilities for espionage. Despite consistent failures, program continued with classified funding until 1995 termination.
“Military research programs focus on scientifically proven technologies and capabilities”
From “crazy” to confirmed
The Claim Is Made
This is the moment they called it crazy.
For two decades, the United States military poured millions into a program designed to train soldiers to spy using nothing but the power of thought. The project was real, heavily classified, and by most conventional measures, it didn't work. Yet it continued anyway, hidden from public view, until the Cold War finally ended and budget scrutiny forced its closure.
Project STARGATE began in the 1970s as a joint effort between the Department of Defense and the CIA to explore "remote viewing"—the purported ability to perceive distant locations through extrasensory perception. The premise was straightforward if extraordinary: if psychic abilities could be harnessed and weaponized, they might provide an intelligence advantage during the arms race with the Soviet Union. The military commitment reflected genuine concern that adversaries might be pursuing similar research, and the classified nature of the program meant few officials could challenge its basic assumptions.
For years, the program operated in near-total secrecy. The public knew nothing about it. Skeptics in the scientific community were largely unaware it existed. Even many government officials remained ignorant of how their tax dollars were being spent. When whispers of the program began to surface in the 1980s and early 1990s, the official response was dismissive. Military and intelligence officials either denied the program existed or characterized it as a minor exploratory research effort with no practical applications. The classification kept them safe from detailed public scrutiny.
What changed was documentation. Declassified CIA materials, including an assessment titled "An Assessment of the Evidence for Psychic Functioning," revealed the full scope of what the government had actually done. The numbers were striking: approximately $20 million spent over roughly 20 years. The methodology was rigorous by the standards of the time—double-blind trials, controlled conditions, trained participants. But the results were consistent: remote viewing produced information no better than chance.
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The stunning part wasn't that the program failed. It was that it continued despite the failures. Year after year, the same negative results returned. Year after year, the program received renewed funding and classified authorization. Researchers found no reproducible evidence of psychic ability. Yet the program persisted until 1995, when it was finally terminated, ostensibly because the Cold War had ended and the strategic rationale had evaporated.
This matters for several reasons. First, it demonstrates that institutional inertia and classification secrecy can keep failed programs alive indefinitely. Second, it shows that military and intelligence agencies were willing to pursue unconventional research with government resources, even when preliminary evidence was negative. Third, it reveals how the public can be systematically kept in the dark about what happens with their tax money.
The declassification of STARGATE files vindicated skeptics who had long doubted claims about psychic espionage. But it also validated those who suspected the government was spending taxpayer money on questionable ventures. What remains unsettling is simpler: how many other classified programs, never declassified, continue operating today based on similarly flimsy evidence? The STARGATE case proves that just because something is secret doesn't mean it's important—and just because it's classified doesn't mean it works.
Unlikely leak
Only 5.9% chance this would come out. It did.
Conspirators
~500Large op
Secret kept
30.5 years
Time to 95% exposure
500+ years
