PROJECT STARGATE

Classified Consciousness & The Remote Viewing Rabbit Hole: The CIA's Venture into the Psychic through the Lens of Remote Viewer 001 – Joseph McMoneagle

Dec 04, 2024

Understanding PROJECT STARGATE through the podcast episode: The Shawn Ryan Show Episode 95 — Joe McMoneagle CIA’s Project Stargate

Classified Consciousness & The Remote Viewing Rabbit Hole: The CIA's Venture into the Psychic through the Lens of Remote Viewer 001 – Joseph McMoneagle

Shawn Ryan Show Sources + Docs

Preview

Joe McMoneagle is a former U.S. Army Chief Warrant Officer and was among the first Remote Viewers to be recruited into the previously classified Stargate Project. Project Stargate was the United States' first organized research into psychic phenomena via the Defense Intelligence Agency and contractor SRI International.

In this episode, McMoneagle takes us back to the early days of the Vietnam War and how he was recruited into intelligence operations. The height of the Cold War fueled appetites for advantages over the United States' enemies and gave way to the CIA's push into "psychic and extra sensory perception" research and military applications.

Post his military retirement, McMoneagle authored several books to critical acclaim like "The Stargate Chronicles: Memoirs of a Psychic Spy" and continued his work via his private venture–Intuitive Intelligence Applications, Inc. He now teaches Remote Viewing at The Monroe Institute, a world leader in human consciousness exploration.

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The Universe (Multiverse?) has levels of weird… and then there's Project Stargate. Never did I think a six-hour podcast would command my full attention throughout its entirety, let alone fundamentally shift my understanding of reality. I was driving from New York to Boston this past June to see my girlfriend, who had just returned from her post-grad Asia trip, when Joe McMoneagle's voice through my car speakers changed everything. What should have been a three-hour drive turned into four as I found myself repeatedly pulling over to verbally take notes through Siri, missing exits and making wrong turns because my mind was too busy processing the implications of what I was hearing.

I had heard of remote viewing before, as well as the tangential fields of astral projection, holotropic breathing, telepathy/clairvoyance, but I mentally chucked all of it in a bucket off to the side as paranormal fringe conspiracies… As someone who others may refer to as a conspiracy theorist (yet self-identified as a tactical truth seeker, and at the very least an esoteric enthusiast), I've long accepted that the CIA was involved in the JFK assassination, that the world is run by the deep state and shadowed elites often referred to as the Illuminati, and that UFOs are real (the recent congressional UFO disclosures barely raised my eyebrows). But remote viewing? That was where I drew my line in the sand. The Sixth Sense is just a Bruce Willis movie, right? Except it’s not. Just as Bruce's character was dead the whole time (spoiler alert), my skepticism was dead wrong.

My transformation from skeptic to believer began when a friend sent me this article from the Washington Post. The two minute read catalyzed my research bonanza and I quickly realized that the Monroe Institute and the Gateway Process were actually real. After some more sifting on the subject matter, I slid Joe McMoneagle (who wrote multiple books about his experiences with remote viewing) all the way to the top of my podcast queue after ascertaining that he was the first CIA remote viewer, the most effective remote viewer ever and the most widely publicized psychic spy of all time. It became even more abundantly clear this was no conspiracy when I grasped that remote viewing is the most documented subject in the history of American intelligence with over 1.5 million words of research behind it; “there’s more science backing up remote viewing than any other subject in history”.

By the time I finally arrived in Newton, Massachusetts, I realized that of all the insane media I've consumed, this might take the cake… I mean we are talking about an operation that consisted of the CIA studying (and implementing) latent telepathic abilities for intelligence gathering purposes which persisted for multiple decades. The deeper you dive into this rabbit hole, the more you realize there's a hierarchy to hidden truths: first, you accept the mundane conspiracies, then the government cover ups, then the extraterrestrial ones, and finally, you confront the mind-bending reality that human consciousness itself is the biggest mystery of all. Joe McMoneagle, Remote Viewer 001, wasn't just telling stories, he was pulling back the curtain on what might be the most significant government program you've never heard of.

What Was Project Stargate? Unveiling the CIA's Psychic Spy Program

Project Stargate wasn't just another obscure government program – it was the CIA's decades-long dive into the depths of human consciousness. Running from the 1970s through the 1990s, this classified initiative represented the U.S. government's most ambitious attempt to harness psychic abilities for intelligence gathering. At its core stood Joe McMoneagle, dubbed "Remote Viewer 001," whose uncanny ability to "see" distant locations without being physically present helped transform a fringe concept into a legitimate intelligence tool. While many government programs fade into obscurity, Project Stargate's legacy lives on through its staggering 1.5 million pages of documented research – making it, somewhat ironically, the most thoroughly studied subject in American intelligence history.

The shadow of MK Ultra loomed large over Project Stargate, creating deep rifts between Congress and the CIA regarding the program's funding. Congressional skepticism toward government-funded psychic research was understandable given the ethical controversies of Ultra, especially after the death of Frank Olson stirred up public perception. Yet, as McMoneagle points out with a compelling analogy, the proof was in the pudding: "If you had a restaurant and you invited the top 15 food critics in your restaurant the day you opened it and they all kept coming back for the next 15 years, would you say it was a pretty good restaurant?" The numbers tell the story – over 1,200 remote viewing sessions conducted for the CIA alone, with 15 of the 17 largest intelligence agencies repeatedly returning for more insights over a 15-year period. Despite public controversy and congressional hesitation, these agencies' continued reliance on remote viewing spoke volumes about the program's effectiveness. While politicians debated its legitimacy in Washington, intelligence operators in the field kept coming back to this unconventional well of information, suggesting that behind the scenes, Project Stargate was serving up exactly what they needed.

The program's evolution reads like a Cold War spy novel, complete with code names that changed as frequently as Soviet targets. Beginning as "Gondola Wish," then morphing into "Grill Flame" before finally becoming "Stargate," the project emerged from a perfect storm of Cold War paranoia and emerging research into human consciousness. When President Carter publicly referenced the program's success in locating a downed Soviet bomber, he inadvertently confirmed what many had suspected: the U.S. government wasn't just interested in psychic phenomena – they were actively weaponizing it. The CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency poured millions into the program, not out of some New Age fascination, but because remote viewing was producing actionable intelligence that conventional methods couldn't touch. From pinpointing secret Soviet submarine bases to tracking foreign agents, Project Stargate was redefining the boundaries of intelligence gathering, one psychic session at a time.

Robert Monroe, The Monroe Institute, The Gateway Process and the Science Behind Remote Viewing

Robert Monroe wasn't your typical consciousness researcher – he was a successful radio executive who stumbled into the field of altered states when he began experiencing spontaneous out-of-body experiences in the 1950s. Rather than dismissing these experiences as mere hallucinations, Monroe approached them with the mind of an innovator and businessman, meticulously documenting his experiences and developing technology to replicate them. This led to his groundbreaking discovery of Hemi-Sync, a binaural beat technology that synchronizes the brain's hemispheres to specific frequencies. The Monroe Institute, which he founded in Faber, Virginia, became a pioneering research center where this technology could be studied and refined. What sets the Institute apart isn't just its founder's experiences, but its commitment to rigorous scientific methodology – their techniques have been studied by institutions ranging from the CIA to leading neuroscience laboratories, all confirming that these binaural beats can indeed induce measurable changes in brain wave patterns.

The Gateway Process, developed at the Monroe Institute, represents the practical application of this research. At its core, it's about achieving a state of "hemispheric synchronization" where the brain's left and right hemispheres operate in perfect harmony. The science is fascinating: when you present slightly different sound frequencies to each ear (say, 200 Hz in one ear and 206 Hz in the other), the brain creates a third phantom frequency (in this case, 6 Hz) that can entrain brain waves to specific states of consciousness and allow remote viewers to ‘leave their body and escape the confines of space and time’; this isn't New Age wishful thinking – it's based on solid neurological principles.The process gradually guides participants through increasingly profound states of consciousness, ultimately allowing them to reach frequencies that match the Earth's own electromagnetic resonance (the Schumann resonance of 7.83 Hz). As McMoneagle explains, success in remote viewing, which is essentially the ability to see and describe distant locations without being physically present, requires intense focus, the ability to quiet one's ego, and a deep understanding of the interplay between clear intention, attention to detail, and expectation of outcomes. The Gateway Process provides the technical framework for achieving these states, offering a reproducible method for experiencing consciousness beyond the physical body. When the CIA investigated this technology, they concluded in their declassified documents that the technique could indeed "alter human consciousness" and potentially free awareness from the constraints of space and time. McMoneagle's profound gratitude for the Monroe Institute transcends mere professional appreciation – “the Monroe Institute was the best place I ever found. Their whole premise is to help human beings discover that we are much more than our physical bodies”; even today, at 78 years old, he continues to teach at the Institute, helping others discover what he learned decades ago through Project Stargate: that consciousness extends far beyond our physical form, and the Institute's methods offer perhaps the most reliable roadmap for exploring these extended realms of human potential.

The Chronicles of Remote Viewer 001 – The Memoirs of a Psychic Spy

Before he became known as Remote Viewer 001, Joe McMoneagle had already lived several lifetimes worth of extraordinary experiences. His twelve years as an army intelligence officer in Vietnam included surviving three assassination attempts – one of which was so convincing that army intelligence performed a fake funeral for him. But it was his near-death experience in Austria, where he was poisoned and clinically dead long enough for doctors to assume brain damage, that unlocked his extraordinary abilities. During this incident, McMoneagle had his first documented out-of-body experience, watching from above as medical personnel frantically worked to revive him. This brush with death would prove to be the gateway to his future role in Project Stargate.

McMoneagle's remote viewing achievements read like a Hollywood screenplay with every incident meticulously documented in government files: “He was the first remote viewer for the US. He called the hunt for the Red October submarine, where the first international space station was going to land, he’s called a lot. He spent over 12 years as army intelligence officer in Vietnam, survived three assassination attempts, Remote viewed everything from classified submarines to hostage situations and even Mars. He has performed numerous successful remote viewings on live tv and even saved kidnapped children’s lives”. His most famous success came with locating and identifying the Soviet Union's largest submarine, a breakthrough that would later inspire Tom Clancy's "The Hunt for Red October." With nothing but geographical coordinates, McMoneagle helped the US government identify a new Russian submarine by precisely describing the submarine's design, specifications and location, providing intelligence that would have been impossible to gather through conventional means. Even more remarkably, he accurately predicted where the first international space station would land – a feat that demonstrated remote viewing could transcend not just space, but time.

McMoneagle's most controversial and thought-provoking remote viewing session involved his alleged psychic journey to Mars. When tasked with viewing the Red Planet in the 1970s, McMoneagle described with remarkable detail what he claimed was a massive pyramid structure inhabited by a dying civilization of human-like beings. He sketched detailed architectural features and described environmental conditions that, at the time, seemed fantastical but interestingly aligned with some later Mars rover discoveries about the planet's geological history. "I've gotten shot at, blown up, and had lots of stuff happen to me that was pretty extreme," McMoneagle reflects, "but nothing was quite as extreme as remote viewing Mars." While the existence of pyramids and ancient civilizations on Mars remains unverified, this session represents one of Project Stargate's most fascinating ventures into exploring not just distant locations on Earth, but potentially other worlds entirely.

Among McMoneagle's most compelling remote viewing successes was his detailed visualization of the Titanic disaster, providing insights that contradicted accepted historical accounts but were later proved accurate. While survivors' testimonies had led historians to believe the ship sank in one piece, McMoneagle's remote viewing session in 1982 revealed that the Titanic had actually split in half before sinking – a detail that wasn't confirmed until Robert Ballard's famous discovery of the wreckage in 1985. Even more remarkably, McMoneagle described specific structural failures and the exact sequence of events during the sinking, including details about the ship's internal collapse that were impossible to verify until modern underwater exploration technology made detailed examination of the wreck possible. This session stands as one of the most concrete examples of remote viewing providing historical insights that transcended both time and the limitations of conventional historical research.

But perhaps his most profound contributions came from using his abilities to save lives. McMoneagle's skills proved invaluable in numerous hostage situations and missing persons cases, including a dozen instances of locating kidnapped children. One particularly striking case involved him providing law enforcement with such precise details about a kidnapping that they were able to rescue the child within an hour. These humanitarian successes carried special weight for McMoneagle, who viewed them as validation that his abilities could serve a higher purpose beyond military intelligence.

The scope of McMoneagle's remote viewing extended far beyond earthly concerns. His work included sketching classified quantum energy devices that remain classified to this day, and mapping hidden facilities like the mysterious base at Mount Hayes, Alaska – allegedly housing a nuclear power plant capable of generating power for 25,000 years. For his first paid remote viewing exercise, tracking a spy near a wind generator outside Palo Alto, he earned a quarter-million dollars – a testament to how highly his abilities were valued. Perhaps most impressively, he consistently demonstrated these abilities under the most rigorous conditions, including successful remote viewing sessions performed live on television, leaving skeptics struggling to explain his consistent accuracy.

The End of Project Stargate and the CIA’s Cognitive Dissonance

The Stargate Project was terminated and declassified in 1995 after a CIA report concluded the program was never useful in any intelligence operation, arguing that the information provided was too vague, often irrelevant & erroneous, and that there were concerns about inconsistencies in inter-judge reliability of the remote viewing results. The CIA's 1995 report declaring Project Stargate "never useful in any intelligence operation" stands as perhaps one of the most glaring examples of institutional cognitive dissonance in intelligence history. This dismissive conclusion seems almost comically at odds with the program's documented successes and longevity. Consider the contradiction: if remote viewing was truly useless, why did 15 of the 17 largest intelligence agencies consistently return to the program for over 15 years? Why invest millions in supporting the Monroe Institute's research if there were no actionable results? McMoneagle's verified successes alone – from locating the Soviet's largest submarine to predicting the international space station's landing site – make the CIA's conclusion feel less like objective assessment and more like institutional face-saving. The skeptics' primary complaints about "vague information" and "irrelevant data" conveniently ignore the program's documented hits, including McMoneagle's precise architectural drawings of foreign facilities that were later confirmed by satellite imagery. Perhaps most telling is the simple business logic: no organization, especially not the pragmatic CIA, continues funding a "useless" program for decades. The official narrative of Stargate's ineffectiveness reads like a bureaucratic attempt to distance the intelligence community from a controversial program while quietly filing away its most significant findings. After all, what better way to bury groundbreaking research than to publicly dismiss it while classifying its most compelling successes?

Conclusion: Civilian Experiences & The Paramount Implications of Remote Viewing

After listening to this podcast episode and diving deep into the rabbit hole of Project Stargate, my fascination continued to grow and I found myself wondering: if trained operatives like McMoneagle could achieve these extraordinary states of consciousness, what about ordinary civilians? This led me to Ethan Frice, a TikToker whose viral documentation of his Gateway Process journey suggests that these abilities might be more accessible than we imagine. Following the Monroe Institute's protocols through guided meditation, Ethan achieved verifiable out-of-body experiences within weeks – lending credence to McMoneagle's assertion that psychic ability isn't a rare gift but a dormant human potential waiting to be awakened.

The implications of remote viewing extend far beyond intelligence gathering or personal exploration. The verified successes of Project Stargate force us to grapple with fundamental questions about the nature of consciousness itself. How does remote viewing align with quantum field theory's suggestion that everything in the universe is interconnected through fields of energy? Or with string theory's proposition of multiple dimensions beyond our physical perception? The ability to access information across space and time suggests that consciousness isn't confined to our brains but might be more like a receiver tuning into a universal broadcast – or, as simulation theory and the multiverse theory might suggest, a player accessing different parts of a vast computational universe.

Perhaps the most profound revelation isn't about the existence of psychic abilities at all, but about our fundamental nature as conscious beings. As the ancient wisdom goes, "You are not a human being with a soul; you are a soul that temporarily inhabits a physical body." Project Stargate's success, the Monroe Institute's continuing research, and even ordinary people's achievements with these techniques all point to a revolutionary understanding: we are not simply humans experiencing the universe – we are the universe experiencing itself through human form. The strangest conspiracy, it turns out, isn't about hidden government programs or psychic spies, it's the conspiracy of silence around our own vast potential, the truth that our consciousness extends far beyond the boundaries of our physical form.

The real question isn't whether remote viewing is real – decades of documented success have answered that. The question is what these abilities tell us about who and what we really are. In the end, Project Stargate should not be remembered for its intelligence gathering achievements, but for helping to crack open the door to a larger understanding of human consciousness and our place in the cosmos. As more people like Ethan continue to explore and document these capabilities, we may be approaching a tipping point in human consciousness – one that forces us to accept that reality is far stranger and more magnificent than we ever imagined.

Monroe Institute - https://www.monroeinstitute.org/pages/trainer-joe-mcmoneagle

Books - https://b.link/b87bbrq3

Download Supporting Documentation from the Episode:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1pklgNbRzR_l4esCsVnUMl9MpAIiE_zsF?usp=drive_link