CIA Star Gate Project: An Overview (1993) [pdf]

Reality of the program vs reality of psychic powers

• Broad agreement that Star Gate and related projects were very real, funded for decades and even explicitly authorized by Congress.
• Strong disagreement over whether this implies remote viewing or psychic powers exist; many stress that program existence ≠ phenomenon validity.

Why it was funded / strategic logic

• Some see this as classic CIA/DoD weird-science: small budgets, huge potential upside, Cold War fear that Soviets/Chinese might gain an asymmetric edge.
• Others call it money laundering, crackpot capture, or institutional susceptibility to conspiracy thinking and cognitive dissonance.
• A few argue it’s rational for a defense chief to fund low-probability, high-payoff research, even if it sounds like “mumbo jumbo.”

Evidence, methodology, and the AIR/Star Gate reviews

• One side cites official reviews suggesting remote viewing results were statistically above chance, though vague and not actionable in real intelligence work.
• Critics counter that hits are expected over thousands of trials (birthday-paradox style), and that results don’t generalize or reproduce robustly.
• The Jessica Utts vs. Ray Hyman panel is discussed: Utts seen by some as strong evidence; skeptics point to her parapsychology ties and alleged lack of independence.

USS Stark incident and “prediction” document

• A 1987 remote-viewing transcript resembling the USS Stark attack is seen by a few as “eerily similar” and suggestive of precognition.
• Skeptics highlight vagueness, cherry-picking, and the possibility of backdating or disinformation; note there are many non-hits that get ignored.

Skepticism, standards of proof, and mundane explanations

• Repeated emphasis on scientific method, extraordinary claims requiring strong evidence, and publication/selection bias.
• Arguments that if RV worked even slightly, militaries and hedge funds would exploit it systematically; they do not, which is taken as negative evidence.
• Others push back that some knowledge might be inherently hard to industrialize, or deliberately obscured as “born secret.”

Views on the CIA, personalities, and broader hoaxes

• CIA is portrayed both as dangerously credulous and as an easy political scapegoat.
• Specific figures (e.g., remote-viewing promoters) are criticized as vague, non-falsifiable, or grifter-like.
• Several comments connect Star Gate to contemporary pseudoscience, conspiracy theories, and the recurring human tendency toward elaborate hoaxes.