The Application of Extra-Sensory Perception to Intelligence Collection:

The US Government’s Program STARGATE

Announcing a lecture by

Edwin C. May, Ph.D
Laboratories for Fundamental Research
Palo Alto, California, USA

(Program Director of the Stargate Project, 1985–1995)

Monday, April 26th. 2004, at 5.30 pm
in the Winstanley Lecture Theatre, Trinity College, Cambridge

From 1972 through 1995, the US Government’s Intelligence Community funded a $20M+ programme with defence contractors SRI International (formerly Stanford Research Institute) and Science Applications International Corporation, involving an in-house effort to apply extrasensory perception (ESP) to problems of national interest during the cold war. Early tests showed that, if used properly, ESP garnered limited, but sometimes critical, successes. Unlike traditional academic research, the Intelligence Community was result-oriented: as long as the data, when combined appropriately with other sources, provided useful information, the programme was allowed to continue. In the final analysis, the use of ESP as a collection methodology is as good as (or as bad as) basic HUMINT (i.e., human source intelligence), with an additional caveat that the problems that were assigned were generally the ones that could not be solved by more traditional techniques.

Initially, there was a two-fold mission: (1) gather intelligence against specific targets and (2) assess the threat potential of a variety of foreign activity. Later, applied research was added to the mission in order to improve the production.

The presentation will give a brief historical outline, define terms, show examples from laboratory studies and unclassified intelligence missions, and outline some of the implications for future intelligence collection and science.

enquiries: 01223 337260 (338400 for Trinity College)