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How Project Star Gate Worked · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, it's Josh and Chuck your friends, and we
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Speaker 1: it out soon coming this fall. Welcome to Stuff you
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Speaker 1: Should Know, a production of My Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,
1:02
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles
1:06
Speaker 1: w Chuck Bryan over there. Jerry's here floating around the
1:10
Speaker 1: office somewhere, but she's here. Everybody's back. Yes, Jerry is
1:14
Speaker 1: here in the flesh. She does exist, she's real. She
1:17
Speaker 1: also has clothed, not just flesh. That's right. And because
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Speaker 1: the three of us are hanging out even on the
1:24
Speaker 1: internet's it's it's stuff you should know. Yeah, it's good
1:27
Speaker 1: to see her. Her hair is long. She's like a
1:30
Speaker 1: hippie now, I mean long for Jerry is not very long,
1:33
Speaker 1: but it's swoopier than usual and looks quite nice. That's great, man, show.
1:39
Speaker 1: She cares. She's staying home. Stay home, save lives, Jerry. Yeah,
1:45
Speaker 1: that's right. Uh, you know what else may have saved lives? Chuck,
1:50
Speaker 1: Project Stargate, Project Stargate. Do you know when why I
1:55
Speaker 1: hedged and said that it may have saved lives? Why? Well,
2:00
Speaker 1: I mean, you tell your version, but I mean, because
2:03
Speaker 1: we don't even know if this stuff is real or not. Yeah,
2:06
Speaker 1: I it's gonna say that I said it may have
2:08
Speaker 1: saved lives because it totally didn't save any lives as
2:12
Speaker 1: far as you know, it's a bunch of made up
2:15
Speaker 1: gobbledy cook um and a CIA boondoggle and u S
2:20
Speaker 1: military boondoggle from the seventies to the nineties, but some
2:24
Speaker 1: fun anecdotal stories though it is. It is like it's
2:28
Speaker 1: one of the more interesting chapters in CIA history, and
2:30
Speaker 1: CIA history is awfully interesting. It has a lot of
2:33
Speaker 1: interesting horrific chapters. This one's not horrific. I think that's
2:37
Speaker 1: one of the big differences of it is it's just interesting.
2:40
Speaker 1: There's not a lot of horror to it um. I know,
2:43
Speaker 1: the menusteric goats by our pel John Ronson really kind
2:47
Speaker 1: of devolves into horror towards the end of it um
2:51
Speaker 1: when he gets an mk ultra. But this is separate
2:53
Speaker 1: from NK mk Ultra. It came from the same mindset
2:56
Speaker 1: for sure, this idea that there are powers to the mind,
3:00
Speaker 1: I could consumably be unlocked to do ill or good
3:03
Speaker 1: or neutral stuff. Who knows. But this one, it was
3:08
Speaker 1: fairly benign as far as CIA projects go, don't you think, Yeah,
3:12
Speaker 1: and believe it or not, I never saw that movie.
3:16
Speaker 1: It was okay, That's why I didn't, I think. I
3:19
Speaker 1: mean it had everything I love in a movie, which
3:22
Speaker 1: is Jeff Bridges and George Clooney and John Malkovich, but
3:27
Speaker 1: have some funny spots in it too, for sure. Yeah,
3:29
Speaker 1: I don't know why that one got past me. I
3:31
Speaker 1: think I've read tepid reviews and I just kind of
3:33
Speaker 1: was like, Yeah, if you watched it, you would not
3:37
Speaker 1: think that you would just you would not want the
3:39
Speaker 1: two hours of your life back. But you wouldn't just
3:42
Speaker 1: be like, I'm going to dedicate my life to making
3:44
Speaker 1: sure everybody sees this movie. It wouldn't be like that.
3:47
Speaker 1: And I haven't read the book. Sorry, John, if you
3:50
Speaker 1: even listen to us anymore, But um, like, I'm quite
3:54
Speaker 1: sure from what I understand, the book is is vastly
3:57
Speaker 1: superior to the movie. Which when does that ever happened? Sure?
4:01
Speaker 1: If John Ronson's hands were involved in his brain, then
4:05
Speaker 1: I'm sure it was better. I love that guy. Yeah,
4:07
Speaker 1: he's a good guy. Didn't like to wear shoes for
4:10
Speaker 1: people who might not have seen him. Here's another fun
4:12
Speaker 1: fact that you probably don't know. He was on one
4:15
Speaker 1: of the first editions of movie Crush and he sits.
4:21
Speaker 1: He swears that he sits on the very front row,
4:26
Speaker 1: far left seat. That's torture. It's torture. I don't it
4:31
Speaker 1: was so weird. No, I know I heard that episode.
4:34
Speaker 1: His His movie was Annie Right, No, not true. What
4:40
Speaker 1: was it? Do you remember? It was let the right
4:41
Speaker 1: One in? Oh man, that's a great movie. Yeah, sure is.
4:45
Speaker 1: And if you know, if you ever go to a
4:46
Speaker 1: movie theater New York and you see some guy front
4:49
Speaker 1: shoes with no shoes, then go tap him on the
4:52
Speaker 1: shoulder and ask for his autography. UM. Okay, so we're
4:56
Speaker 1: talking Projects Stargate, which was the general name for this
5:00
Speaker 1: secret project that was declassified around two thousand, I think,
5:05
Speaker 1: which is it's very telling that it was declassified in
5:08
Speaker 1: two thousand because the project was finally canceled in. Normally,
5:13
Speaker 1: when the CIA connects the project, especially if that project
5:16
Speaker 1: yields valuable stuff, they don't declassify it in just five years.
5:22
Speaker 1: It takes decades before that stuff starts to trickle out.
5:25
Speaker 1: But with Project Stargate, um, they said, here you go,
5:28
Speaker 1: here's everything. Yeah, that's great reading. Um. But this this
5:34
Speaker 1: project ran from officially I believe, nineteen seventy five, and
5:40
Speaker 1: I had a different couple of different names, and it
5:42
Speaker 1: got passed along from different um different agencies. But the
5:46
Speaker 1: whole thing started even back before the CIA got involved.
5:51
Speaker 1: And from what I saw, there was a woman Soviet
5:53
Speaker 1: woman named new Nell Coolognia, who was on TV in
5:59
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union and she was demonstrating her telekinesis, and
6:03
Speaker 1: apparently some defense intelligence analysts saw this TV show and said, Hey,
6:09
Speaker 1: I think this the Soviets might have some sort of
6:12
Speaker 1: mind weapon that we might want to look at. And
6:15
Speaker 1: it scared the Bejesus out of the United States, and
6:19
Speaker 1: they got busy trying their own hand, starting with the
6:22
Speaker 1: USS Nautilus, the first submarine to make it to the
6:25
Speaker 1: North Pole. Yeah. I think what's so funny about the
6:27
Speaker 1: early history of this is that, um, the Russians started
6:32
Speaker 1: doing it because they thought we were doing it, and
6:35
Speaker 1: we started doing it because we thought they were doing it.
6:37
Speaker 1: And I don't know if either one of us technically
6:40
Speaker 1: were officially doing it. No, no, so yeah, they're the
6:46
Speaker 1: woman on TV. Did not necessarily mean the Soviets had
6:49
Speaker 1: some sort of program, but it was that whole goofy
6:53
Speaker 1: Cold War thing where it's like, if if there's even
6:56
Speaker 1: the slightest possibility the Russians are up to something, we've
6:59
Speaker 1: got to do that too, and then do it better.
7:02
Speaker 1: And they had the exact same mentality. So there was
7:04
Speaker 1: a constant arms race for everything, including E S p
7:08
Speaker 1: and what we'll we'll find out was called remote viewing. Yeah,
7:12
Speaker 1: I mean that's kind of the deal. I guess we
7:13
Speaker 1: should tell everyone what this means. Um, it's sort of
7:16
Speaker 1: like a uh in an addition of Karnak the Magnificent
7:21
Speaker 1: from the Johnny Carson Show. At least this is how
7:23
Speaker 1: they trained. And we'll get into that specifically, but it was, Hey,
7:28
Speaker 1: you have a gift. Maybe we're gonna test you to see,
7:33
Speaker 1: but sit in this room and tell us if you
7:35
Speaker 1: can locate whatever a missile base in the Soviet Union,
7:39
Speaker 1: or a hostage in the Middle East, or just whatever
7:43
Speaker 1: they needed to know that they didn't know. They're like,
7:46
Speaker 1: just sit here quietly and and think it into reality.
7:51
Speaker 1: And uh. That was sort of the basis of the
7:53
Speaker 1: program was it was a trying to use SI P
7:57
Speaker 1: s I, which we've talked about before. You are political
8:01
Speaker 1: and I guess military advantage. Yeah. Yeah, so, I mean
8:06
Speaker 1: in that respect, it was really again very benign. They
8:09
Speaker 1: weren't trying to explode somebody's head, although there were reports
8:12
Speaker 1: of of programs like that, but with Project Stargate specifically,
8:16
Speaker 1: it was just people trying to come up with descriptions
8:20
Speaker 1: of secret places or like you said, the location of
8:23
Speaker 1: certain people. Just kind of astra Lei projecting is another
8:28
Speaker 1: way to put it. Clairvoyance is another way to put it,
8:31
Speaker 1: but just kind of not just reading somebody else's mind,
8:35
Speaker 1: but actually traveling somewhere else in the world and connecting
8:38
Speaker 1: into a person or a thing or a place and
8:41
Speaker 1: getting that information remotely through means other than the normal senses.
8:46
Speaker 1: And that's why another reason um or that's why reason.
8:49
Speaker 1: Another name for remote viewing, which is what it came
8:52
Speaker 1: to be called, is anomalous cognition, which is you've got
8:56
Speaker 1: this information. You're getting this this info that you normally
9:00
Speaker 1: get from like your ears or your eyes or your
9:03
Speaker 1: tongue or something like that, but you're getting it just
9:05
Speaker 1: into your mind. You're sure, Hey, go lick that thing,
9:08
Speaker 1: tell me what you think. See if you can figure
9:11
Speaker 1: out the secret code word, get into that base by
9:13
Speaker 1: licking the keypad. But the I mean, you know, you're not.
9:17
Speaker 1: You're getting it from um not just your sensory perception.
9:20
Speaker 1: It's an extra sensory perception, right, is that what that means?
9:24
Speaker 1: That's what that means. Right. So that's the whole jam
9:27
Speaker 1: with this, is that the CIA and then the Soviets
9:30
Speaker 1: had their own thing going on too. We're saying like,
9:32
Speaker 1: let's do this. Let's use this potential capability to um
9:38
Speaker 1: to see if it works, and if it does work,
9:39
Speaker 1: let's use it to gather intelligence without having to go anywhere,
9:42
Speaker 1: without having to spend virtually any money on this. Just
9:45
Speaker 1: like you said, put him in a room maybe with
9:47
Speaker 1: some saltines and some grape coolation. Let him relax and
9:50
Speaker 1: and figure it out. Yeah. So in seventy two is
9:54
Speaker 1: when the d i A, the Defense Intelligence Agency, first
9:58
Speaker 1: got wind of the Soviets potentially doing this for real,
10:03
Speaker 1: and the CIA said, all right, you know what, We're
10:05
Speaker 1: gonna start funding these private research firms to see if
10:09
Speaker 1: this is possible. And seventy three, uh, this started happening
10:14
Speaker 1: at the s r I International in California, which stood
10:19
Speaker 1: originally for Stanford Research Institute, but they weren't a part
10:23
Speaker 1: of Stanford at the time. And there was a guy
10:25
Speaker 1: there named Dr Russell targ who was one of the researchers,
10:30
Speaker 1: and he wrote a book called Mind Race, which is
10:34
Speaker 1: a great title for something like this, and he had
10:37
Speaker 1: some like early examples of sessions that he thought sounded
10:43
Speaker 1: promising at least, right, I was gonna say, I'm not
10:47
Speaker 1: sure how he got into it though, but he I
10:50
Speaker 1: don't know if he was already into it and then
10:52
Speaker 1: the d I A Got into it or started funding
10:55
Speaker 1: him or something like that. But from yeah, from what
10:57
Speaker 1: I can tell you's the earliest one. I bet he
10:59
Speaker 1: was into it. But not for you know, espionage type
11:03
Speaker 1: purposes or anything like that. No, No, I think it
11:05
Speaker 1: was just kind of like this early, you know, beginning
11:08
Speaker 1: of the New Age movement. This guy was like on
11:11
Speaker 1: the leading edge of that whole thing. So in nineteen
11:15
Speaker 1: seventy six there was this experiment that he championed, is like, hey,
11:18
Speaker 1: look this good work. Everyone. There was a remote viewer
11:23
Speaker 1: someone in the offices in California, their s R. I
11:26
Speaker 1: and Dr targ was in New York City and no
11:29
Speaker 1: one knew anything about where he was supposedly, I think
11:32
Speaker 1: we're gonna say supposedly a lot in this podcast. And
11:35
Speaker 1: they said, all right, where am I? And he said, well, um,
11:41
Speaker 1: let me see in my brain. I'm seeing something. Um,
11:46
Speaker 1: I'm seeing a subment depression. It's almost like a dry fountain. Yes,
11:51
Speaker 1: there's a submit post in the middle and there are
11:54
Speaker 1: pigeons flying around? Oh my god, Doctor targ said, Hell,
12:00
Speaker 1: I'm in Washington Square Park and the fountain is empty. Yeah.
12:04
Speaker 1: And and Chuck, there's pigeons pooping everywhere because it's in
12:08
Speaker 1: New York. Yes. And so like with this this apparently
12:12
Speaker 1: successful remote viewing session, Dr targ Um was able to
12:17
Speaker 1: get funding from the d i A at first, and
12:20
Speaker 1: that's where really kind of kicked off this whole study
12:23
Speaker 1: that one I think came through in seventies six, but
12:25
Speaker 1: it's certainly kept his funding going. But he had, um,
12:29
Speaker 1: he had anecdotal data from remote viewing sessions previous to
12:35
Speaker 1: this that really kind of kick things off. And so
12:37
Speaker 1: the CIA is like, well, I mean, if this guy
12:39
Speaker 1: can sit there and and figure out that this guy
12:43
Speaker 1: is in Washington Square Park just with his mind's i
12:47
Speaker 1: you know, without right, no licking at all, certainly no
12:51
Speaker 1: pigeons are being let here. Um that like, like, we
12:56
Speaker 1: could probably put that to good use, having him think
12:59
Speaker 1: about Soviet stuff and we can steal their secrets that way,
13:03
Speaker 1: That's right. And in nineteen seventy six we had a
13:06
Speaker 1: president elect and Jimmy Carter, who you know, asked a
13:10
Speaker 1: couple of questions around the the office, and he got
13:13
Speaker 1: in touch with Uri Geller, the famous Yuri Geller. He's
13:17
Speaker 1: a great mentalist. If you haven't, we've talked about him
13:19
Speaker 1: plenty of times. I feel like, yeah, but I really
13:21
Speaker 1: want to do just enough to show on him. He's
13:24
Speaker 1: pretty great. Did you know that he ended up getting
13:27
Speaker 1: very rich by dowsing for oil companies? Really, can you
13:32
Speaker 1: believe that? I can. I can't do because I think
13:36
Speaker 1: oil companies will pay anybody anything if they think it
13:38
Speaker 1: will lead to oil. You give me some oil, So
13:43
Speaker 1: Carter said, Um. He had a private meeting with him
13:46
Speaker 1: and he kind of asked about what was going on,
13:48
Speaker 1: and Geller said, you know, these Russians they school are
13:52
Speaker 1: They screen school kids and see if anyone has particular talents,
13:56
Speaker 1: like paranormal power talents, and they send them to special
14:00
Speaker 1: places to be trained. And Carter said, well, maybe we
14:03
Speaker 1: should look into this. It's nineteen seventy seven now, and
14:06
Speaker 1: they didn't find any evidence of that kind of thing.
14:09
Speaker 1: But by this point the chicken was out of the coope,
14:11
Speaker 1: I think, and they were going to spend a little
14:13
Speaker 1: bit of money to kind of pursue this. Yes, I
14:16
Speaker 1: think the only evidence that that little line that you're
14:19
Speaker 1: a Geller gave to Jimmy Carter was that Eurie Geller
14:21
Speaker 1: had seen escape to Witch Mountain the year before. I mean,
14:26
Speaker 1: that's the problem with all of this is like BS
14:29
Speaker 1: begets more BS. So Eurie Geller had a meeting with Carter,
14:34
Speaker 1: started talking out of his a and the next thing,
14:38
Speaker 1: you know, the United States is funding and study to
14:40
Speaker 1: find out whether it's true. It's like, come on, yeah,
14:44
Speaker 1: I like I have to. I'm gonna just fess up here.
14:47
Speaker 1: I was very bugged the entire time I was researching
14:50
Speaker 1: this particular one. It was like crop circles all over again. Yeah,
14:54
Speaker 1: but more fun than crop circles. I think it was
14:57
Speaker 1: more fun. But you know what kind of stuck the
14:58
Speaker 1: fun out of it for me? All this ahead and
15:00
Speaker 1: say it now. I was going to save it for
15:01
Speaker 1: the end, but I read something somewhere that really kind
15:04
Speaker 1: of drove at home that the problem with like this
15:08
Speaker 1: kind of stuff is that if you if you let
15:12
Speaker 1: it really kind of get a foothold or get started,
15:15
Speaker 1: it paves the way for the kind of thinking that
15:19
Speaker 1: just doubts science and that that doubts expertise. And then
15:24
Speaker 1: it's like, no, no, don't you know, like people can
15:26
Speaker 1: bend spoons, you don't need to like, you know, you
15:29
Speaker 1: don't you don't have to believe in science. This stuff happens.
15:32
Speaker 1: This is really right, exactly, And then all of a
15:35
Speaker 1: sudden you have people believing anything that they hear. That's
15:39
Speaker 1: the problem with it, and it really bugged me, especially
15:41
Speaker 1: on today of all days. You know. Yeah, of course,
15:44
Speaker 1: so um around and we don't know all this stuff
15:49
Speaker 1: for sure, because a lot of the stuff is still
15:51
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's still top secret. But um,
15:54
Speaker 1: the timelines aren't like you know, we don't know specific dates.
15:57
Speaker 1: But around seventy the c i A stopped funding this
16:01
Speaker 1: and the Army said, hey, we'll take over, no problem,
16:04
Speaker 1: a bunch of money we don't know what to do with. Yeah,
16:06
Speaker 1: and how about a cool army code name. We'll call
16:09
Speaker 1: it Project grill Flame one word. I don't know why
16:14
Speaker 1: that's weird. Well, I think that's the point of a
16:16
Speaker 1: project name. It's meant to kind of baffle you. I
16:18
Speaker 1: think some of them are kind of cool and relatable
16:20
Speaker 1: to the thing now. But to me, it's like, well,
16:23
Speaker 1: you don't want any outsider, what the project is about
16:26
Speaker 1: you know, that's true plowshare plow Okay, you're right, that
16:30
Speaker 1: was a really good one. You're right. So Project Grill
16:32
Speaker 1: Flame from the Army was based in Maryland at Fort Meade,
16:37
Speaker 1: and they had remote viewers or people who claimed to
16:40
Speaker 1: be remote viewers or show talent as remote viewers in
16:44
Speaker 1: barracks and they would do the car neck routine. They
16:47
Speaker 1: would hand them an envelope and said what's inside, And
16:52
Speaker 1: that was kind of the extent of their testing at first. Yeah,
16:55
Speaker 1: um they would um, well they were allowed to open
16:59
Speaker 1: the envelope. I'm sure they would just once I was
17:02
Speaker 1: a joke put into their forehead. Um, but um, they
17:07
Speaker 1: would give them. They would give them a car like
17:09
Speaker 1: an envelope with maybe somebody's picture, maybe a note card
17:13
Speaker 1: that has latitude and longitude typed on it, maybe somebody's
17:17
Speaker 1: name that was it, and they were told to think
17:20
Speaker 1: about that latitude and longitude or told to concentrate on
17:23
Speaker 1: that person's picture or think about their name, and they
17:26
Speaker 1: wanted all the information that came. And so when it
17:29
Speaker 1: was latitude and longitude, typically you would know like you
17:32
Speaker 1: were supposed to be um viewing remotely a like a
17:37
Speaker 1: site or some sort of secret base or some sort
17:40
Speaker 1: of weapon or satellite dish or radartist or something like that.
17:45
Speaker 1: UM and if it was a person you know, who knows,
17:49
Speaker 1: maybe they were a lost person. And some of these people,
17:51
Speaker 1: some of these remote viewing UM subjects, would would say
17:56
Speaker 1: like I need a little more info or something like that,
17:58
Speaker 1: and then it would kind of get them going, and
18:00
Speaker 1: then they would write down what their impressions were. They
18:03
Speaker 1: would maybe dictated, they would draw it, maybe they would
18:06
Speaker 1: do all three and then after twenty minutes, thirty minutes,
18:10
Speaker 1: however long they dedicated to it, they would stop and
18:14
Speaker 1: all of their info would be taken away and then analyzed,
18:18
Speaker 1: analyzed by a defense intelligence analyst CIA analyst an NSA
18:25
Speaker 1: analyst who knows somebody whose job was going through intelligence
18:29
Speaker 1: that was given to them by spies and satellites and
18:33
Speaker 1: all that would every once in a a while get a
18:35
Speaker 1: package slip to them between that had somebody had literally
18:41
Speaker 1: pulled out of thin air and put down in words
18:44
Speaker 1: and here you go. See if this this holds up
18:47
Speaker 1: or helps you in any way in figuring out what's
18:51
Speaker 1: in that mountain in the urals. Yeah, So there was
18:53
Speaker 1: a guy named Joseph mcmonagle, and he was he worked
19:00
Speaker 1: as a he was a recruit for for grill Flame,
19:03
Speaker 1: and he worked into the nineties. And he has some
19:05
Speaker 1: pretty good stories. And there's a lot of good stories
19:10
Speaker 1: in here. And is this stuff true? Is the thing?
19:14
Speaker 1: Like it was frustrating you think this stuff is all
19:16
Speaker 1: made up? I here's the thing. For every one of
19:18
Speaker 1: his stories, I went and tried to cross for infant
19:21
Speaker 1: with with declassified CIA documents. I couldn't find anything. Like
19:26
Speaker 1: all of the guys stories are anecdotal. Here's the problem.
19:30
Speaker 1: They get reported not necessarily as fact, but they get
19:34
Speaker 1: reported in like, you know, an actual profile of the
19:36
Speaker 1: guy in the Washington Post Newsweight or something on this podcast,
19:40
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden, right, and then all
19:42
Speaker 1: of a sudden, when somebody cross references some weird thing
19:45
Speaker 1: they read in some fringe e book, it pops up
19:48
Speaker 1: in a Washington Post article too. That's true, that's true.
19:52
Speaker 1: It's just bad reporting. That is that is continuing this
19:55
Speaker 1: to go on. But as far as I know, I
19:57
Speaker 1: could not find any corroboration from any declassified documents for
20:02
Speaker 1: any of his stories. So one of his examples in
20:05
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy nine. He said that he was he could
20:08
Speaker 1: see where sky Lab, the very famous satellite in the
20:11
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies and eighties, was going to crash eleven months before.
20:16
Speaker 1: So this is also precognition, which is another part of PSI.
20:21
Speaker 1: And in one UH and supposedly that was correct. In in
20:25
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty one, he also got another tip, a
20:28
Speaker 1: mental hot tip that there was a hostage Brigadier General
20:32
Speaker 1: James Dozier that was being held in UH. I don't
20:36
Speaker 1: know if it's Padua or Padua, Italy Padua Padua either one.
20:41
Speaker 1: I think it is Padua. And supposedly the tip arrived
20:45
Speaker 1: in Italy and the day that he was released in
20:48
Speaker 1: that very town. UH. What else? What about the the
20:51
Speaker 1: KGB agent, This one's pretty great. So there's a KGB
20:55
Speaker 1: agent in South Africa that the CIA had been watching
20:58
Speaker 1: in the in I guess thineteen eighty and they couldn't
21:01
Speaker 1: figure out how he was contacting his KGB handlers back
21:05
Speaker 1: in in Mother Russia. And um, I guess McGonagall or mcmonagle.
21:11
Speaker 1: Um it was focused on a calculator. He saw that
21:15
Speaker 1: this guy really was obsessed with his calculator. And it
21:18
Speaker 1: turns out when the CIA looked at his calculatory, figured
21:21
Speaker 1: out it was a short wave radio. And also just
21:23
Speaker 1: check the guy's calculator. Sure, like checking all the electronics
21:27
Speaker 1: that he has. He has a cigarette lighter and a calculator.
21:30
Speaker 1: We looked at the cigarette lighter, found nothing. We just
21:32
Speaker 1: gave up after that. Yeah, we looked at the calculator
21:35
Speaker 1: and held it upside down and just said, bubblis who.
21:39
Speaker 1: It was one of those remember the professor ones thinking
21:43
Speaker 1: the mortar cap and all that. You know, There was
21:48
Speaker 1: one that had a drawing of like an old wise
21:50
Speaker 1: man with a graduation cap on. It was a pretty famous,
21:54
Speaker 1: like seventies calculator for kids. Oh, you mean the calculator itself. Yeah, no,
22:00
Speaker 1: I think you know what you're talking about. I thought
22:02
Speaker 1: you meant some weird trick where you type in numbers
22:04
Speaker 1: and turn it upside down and it says, oh and
22:05
Speaker 1: it looks like a guy. Oh I see. I was like,
22:07
Speaker 1: that's pretty impressive, right, You're like, I can just type boobs.
22:11
Speaker 1: So in eight five, the d i a uh took
22:15
Speaker 1: control of this program. I guess took it back from
22:18
Speaker 1: the army. It seems like nobody wanted it, like every
22:22
Speaker 1: few years they would just be like, who wants to
22:23
Speaker 1: take this over now? But the thing is, it kept
22:26
Speaker 1: getting funding and from what I read, either target Edwin
22:29
Speaker 1: May who comes in later um as the director of
22:33
Speaker 1: this program. Like they said it was a year to
22:36
Speaker 1: year funding, but it kept getting funding every year for
22:39
Speaker 1: twenty years. I would think I would think too that
22:42
Speaker 1: like once it went from one agency to another, maybe
22:46
Speaker 1: it would survive once. But it survived all these transitions. Yeah,
22:50
Speaker 1: so they take it back in five and started funding
22:55
Speaker 1: s r I again international. They're back on the scene.
22:58
Speaker 1: And then another contract after a private contractor came on
23:01
Speaker 1: called Science Applications International Corporation, also in California. And this
23:07
Speaker 1: is where they name it Stargate in nine. And it
23:11
Speaker 1: had to be after the movie, right, I don't think so, man.
23:14
Speaker 1: I think the movie came out a few years after that. Really,
23:17
Speaker 1: I'm gonna look, that's easy enough to check. The whole
23:21
Speaker 1: time I was wondering about that. And that was the
23:23
Speaker 1: name from nine till it's end in nineteen and uh, oh,
23:30
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, not end in is when the CIA took
23:35
Speaker 1: it back over, right, um. And then the CIA finally said,
23:41
Speaker 1: you know why we're just we're not sure about this anymore. Um,
23:45
Speaker 1: we're just gonna we're just gonna defund this thing and
23:48
Speaker 1: let it go away. Um again. This was and five
23:53
Speaker 1: years later they declassified as far as we know, everything
23:57
Speaker 1: that had anything to do with it. I think some
23:59
Speaker 1: of the people like mcmonagle who were involved are saying,
24:03
Speaker 1: now there's still plenty of classified stuff you guys don't
24:06
Speaker 1: know about that really proves everything, right, They're just not
24:08
Speaker 1: showing you the good stuff. Yeah, but I read this, Um,
24:11
Speaker 1: I read a I guess the transcript of a Skeptoid
24:15
Speaker 1: our buddy Brian Dunning's UM podcasts who we went. Um
24:20
Speaker 1: we had a flame war with over whether or not
24:23
Speaker 1: it could rain frogs? Um, yeah we did. He well,
24:27
Speaker 1: he tried to start one. I just ignored him. But um,
24:30
Speaker 1: this is when we had the can it rain Frog's episode?
24:33
Speaker 1: But that was years ago, wasn't it. I have a long,
24:36
Speaker 1: long memory. I can hold a grudge. But anyway, in Skeptoid,
24:41
Speaker 1: he was basically saying, like the very fact that like
24:44
Speaker 1: all these people are allowed who were verifiably in this
24:47
Speaker 1: program run by the CIA for twenty years, The fact
24:50
Speaker 1: that they're allowed to walk around and talk about this
24:52
Speaker 1: and haven't been like, haven't disappeared. It just lends further
24:56
Speaker 1: credence to the idea that there was nothing that came
24:58
Speaker 1: of this because they it all just be vanished. Kind of.
25:02
Speaker 1: I think the CIA is not above that kind of thing. Well,
25:05
Speaker 1: at any rate, the CIA said, uh, it's not worth
25:08
Speaker 1: this money that we're spending, so let's just get a
25:12
Speaker 1: very you know, the typical thing. Let's get a third
25:15
Speaker 1: party report that will solve it all. In the American
25:19
Speaker 1: Institutes for Research published an evaluation of remote viewing colon
25:24
Speaker 1: Research and Applications and said, you know what, this is
25:28
Speaker 1: pretty compelling stuff, but we can't use it for intelligence
25:32
Speaker 1: because you note the word intelligence zing and they shut
25:39
Speaker 1: it down, shut it down in they did twenty years,
25:43
Speaker 1: twenty million dollars looking for everything from new Soviet submarine
25:48
Speaker 1: designs to lost GUD missiles to people being held by
25:51
Speaker 1: foreign kidnappers. Um, all of it just down the down
25:56
Speaker 1: the toilet. That's right. And in the old days this
25:58
Speaker 1: would be the end of the episode. But in today's stuff,
26:01
Speaker 1: you should know it's our first message break that might
26:30
Speaker 1: be a record chuck a thirty minute first act. Oh yeah, yeah,
26:37
Speaker 1: that's right, I was slicking. We started a little late
26:39
Speaker 1: after we started recording. That's that's I don't think that's
26:42
Speaker 1: the record alright. So should we keep talking about Project
26:45
Speaker 1: Stargate just because it's fun? Yeah, let's so. Um yeah.
26:49
Speaker 1: And I don't mean like I'm not trying to pooh
26:51
Speaker 1: pooh like people's imagination. I've got the same thing. I
26:54
Speaker 1: love the same stuff. It's just mine eyes have been
26:57
Speaker 1: opened and they can never be closed again. Need to
27:00
Speaker 1: say mine eyes? Yes and again? Oh goodness, So with
27:07
Speaker 1: with Stargate right. Um. The whole basis of this was
27:11
Speaker 1: that it was allowed to continue on for twenty years
27:14
Speaker 1: because the people involved were very much impressed with what
27:19
Speaker 1: they saw, and um, what they saw kind of went
27:23
Speaker 1: a little bit like this, Like the earliest test I think,
27:26
Speaker 1: the ones that Russell targ was doing. We're basically like, um, uh,
27:32
Speaker 1: tell me about some Soviet submarine floating around somewhere in
27:36
Speaker 1: the world. Let's see what you can do, just really free, loosey,
27:40
Speaker 1: goosey hippie stuff. Right. And then a guy named um
27:44
Speaker 1: Dr Edwin May came along and he took over and
27:50
Speaker 1: I think but he'd been working on the project starting
27:53
Speaker 1: at the Stanford Research Institute, um beginning and back in
27:56
Speaker 1: nine and Um. So he was on this project, I
28:01
Speaker 1: believe for the full twenty years, in one capacity or another.
28:04
Speaker 1: And when he took over, they weren't even paying him
28:07
Speaker 1: for the last ten No, he was just hanging around
28:10
Speaker 1: living off a Celtines in Great Cool with his red stapler.
28:14
Speaker 1: But he yeah, kinda, but he Um. He instituted way
28:19
Speaker 1: stricter protocols for conducting these remote viewing experiments and tests too.
28:25
Speaker 1: Not just you know, remote viewing experiments were connected. He
28:28
Speaker 1: wanted to kind of show that these things could work too,
28:31
Speaker 1: so he came up with something called ranked order judging,
28:34
Speaker 1: which was part of a larger type of test called
28:37
Speaker 1: forced choice. Yeah. And I'm gonna get you to explain
28:41
Speaker 1: that in a second, because I didn't fully get the redo.
28:46
Speaker 1: But May is a pretty interesting guy. He was a doctor,
28:49
Speaker 1: He was a PhD in nuclear physics. Um. And while
28:53
Speaker 1: it's easy to sort of cast someone like this as
28:56
Speaker 1: just sort of a loopy hippie type, he really intelligent guy. Um,
29:02
Speaker 1: but he was also a loopy hippie type. He got
29:04
Speaker 1: his post stock in San Francisco in the nineteen sixties,
29:06
Speaker 1: So you know what that means. Uh, And he literally
29:09
Speaker 1: used the words. He became a professional hippie, did a
29:12
Speaker 1: lot of drugs, did a lot of psychedelics, and got
29:14
Speaker 1: into parapsychology and did what you do if that is
29:18
Speaker 1: your path. You go to India at some point just
29:21
Speaker 1: hoping to sort of soak up some cool esoteric knowledge,
29:25
Speaker 1: bump into rupert. Yeah, perhaps. And he came back and
29:29
Speaker 1: didn't really get a lot out of in m Sure
29:31
Speaker 1: he had a great time and everything, but it didn't
29:33
Speaker 1: come back there. Yeah, I didn't come back with anything
29:36
Speaker 1: he could use. Came back in seventy five and then
29:40
Speaker 1: that's where he got a job as a research assistant
29:42
Speaker 1: at s r I International, working with telekinesis, and he
29:46
Speaker 1: was like, this is it for me, baby, this is
29:49
Speaker 1: this is the job. You pay me for this. And
29:53
Speaker 1: he just kind of took off from there and and
29:55
Speaker 1: I guess took over as director in right. Yeah, so
29:59
Speaker 1: he was the one that's are did this different sort
30:01
Speaker 1: of testing method called forced uh not first choice, but
30:05
Speaker 1: forced choice. Right. It just wasn't quite it wasn't anywhere
30:09
Speaker 1: near is like free and easy as the free response ones.
30:12
Speaker 1: It was basically it kind of went like this. Okay,
30:15
Speaker 1: so let's say let's say that, um, you're holding one
30:19
Speaker 1: of these tests. Ideally you have three people involved. You
30:23
Speaker 1: have the remote viewer, you have the sender who's actually
30:28
Speaker 1: thinking of the thing that the remote viewer is supposed
30:30
Speaker 1: to be tapping into and gaining information from, and then
30:34
Speaker 1: you have a judge. Okay, yeah, And also ideally the
30:41
Speaker 1: sender and the remote viewer should not be in contact
30:44
Speaker 1: with one another before or during the experiment. It's another
30:47
Speaker 1: kind of important one too. And these are things that
30:50
Speaker 1: like Edwin May was instituting that really kind of scientific fied. Um,
30:55
Speaker 1: the whole thing definitely gave it a more legitimate glean
30:58
Speaker 1: for sure. But um, so what happens is the the
31:03
Speaker 1: sender chooses a photo from a hundred photos in a
31:08
Speaker 1: national geographic photo set. That's usually what they use. And
31:11
Speaker 1: I also ideally we could point out that, um, they
31:14
Speaker 1: would use way more than a hundred photos and not
31:16
Speaker 1: those same photos over and over. That's a big one too,
31:19
Speaker 1: as we'll see for sure, that's a big problem if
31:21
Speaker 1: you use the same photo set and the same remote viewers. Right,
31:26
Speaker 1: So the person who is the sender would sit there
31:28
Speaker 1: and they would pick a photo and then they would
31:31
Speaker 1: think about that photo, and the remote viewer would be
31:35
Speaker 1: ideally somewhere else thinking about that what the sender was
31:39
Speaker 1: thinking of, and then they would write down their impressions,
31:42
Speaker 1: they would draw their impressions, and then they would compile
31:45
Speaker 1: this little document basically of what they saw during the
31:49
Speaker 1: remote viewing session. Okay, that's the first step. The second
31:54
Speaker 1: step is that you take four other maybe five other
31:59
Speaker 1: pick is from that same National Geographic Photo set, and
32:02
Speaker 1: you could even physically put them as printed photos into
32:05
Speaker 1: an envelope, and then you give that to the judge,
32:09
Speaker 1: who has nothing to do with any of this. To
32:11
Speaker 1: this point. They've just now been given an envelope of photos,
32:15
Speaker 1: and then they've also been given the remote viewers um
32:20
Speaker 1: document that they whipped up from the remote viewing session.
32:23
Speaker 1: And so the judge is supposed to take the remote
32:25
Speaker 1: viewers impressions and and basically match them to one of
32:29
Speaker 1: the photos, and so they rank the photos. If you
32:32
Speaker 1: have six photos, there's one photo that's your number one
32:35
Speaker 1: photo that you're saying, like, this is what the remote
32:38
Speaker 1: viewer was seeing. This one is the second likeliest, the
32:42
Speaker 1: third likeliest, fourth, fifth, and sixth likeliest, So you rank
32:44
Speaker 1: the photos. If the remote viewer got it right, then
32:48
Speaker 1: the photo of the judge chose as chose as the
32:51
Speaker 1: number one photo should be the photo that the sender
32:55
Speaker 1: was thinking of when the remote viewer got their impressions. Okay, sure,
33:00
Speaker 1: it's actually, in a weird way, very scientific because you
33:03
Speaker 1: can insert statistical analysis into this whole thing. And they did,
33:07
Speaker 1: and they found that over time, some remote viewers did
33:11
Speaker 1: do much better than chance, just random chance, where out
33:15
Speaker 1: of every hundred tries, any photos should be chosen out
33:19
Speaker 1: of a set of five, um, you know, twice. Yeah,
33:22
Speaker 1: it was. I think the direct quote was from the
33:24
Speaker 1: report was far beyond what is expected by chance. Yes,
33:28
Speaker 1: that supposedly came from a true believer statistician who had
33:31
Speaker 1: done an analysis of this. But yes, there were there
33:34
Speaker 1: were this. There was this idea that some of these
33:36
Speaker 1: people were capable of of drawing impressions of what somebody
33:41
Speaker 1: else in a different room was thinking based on a
33:43
Speaker 1: photo they were looking at. And then there are Now
33:47
Speaker 1: we can talk about all the explanations of how that
33:49
Speaker 1: probably wasn't any sort of clairvoyance. Yeah, and what bugs me,
33:53
Speaker 1: just before we even get to that is in the
33:56
Speaker 1: report it said it was far beyond what is expected
33:59
Speaker 1: by chance, Like, tell me what percentage chances and what
34:03
Speaker 1: percentage they got, not your opinion on what is far
34:07
Speaker 1: beyond and what isn't right? Right? So that bugs me
34:10
Speaker 1: right off the bat. That's a big one right there.
34:12
Speaker 1: There's also subjectivity running through this big time, because the
34:16
Speaker 1: judge is doing a subjective analysis to right. Yeah, and
34:20
Speaker 1: you know if they're picking another Like I mentioned, another
34:22
Speaker 1: one of the problems is they use the same set
34:24
Speaker 1: of one dred nat Geo images. So I imagine after
34:29
Speaker 1: a couple of times they know it's going to be
34:33
Speaker 1: something about nature at the very least. And if they say,
34:37
Speaker 1: let's say, lion attacking elk, they're like, no, but it's
34:43
Speaker 1: a tiger attacking an antelope. You win, you know, yep.
34:48
Speaker 1: And then if that is the the only photo with
34:52
Speaker 1: anything like a lion in an elk or whatever tiger
34:56
Speaker 1: um in the photos set the rest is like an
34:58
Speaker 1: oil derrick and a lake and some other stuff, then
35:01
Speaker 1: of course that's the one that's gonna win. With With that,
35:04
Speaker 1: the judge is gonna choose and they're going to have
35:06
Speaker 1: a hit. So there's a lot of like real problems
35:09
Speaker 1: with us. Even though they tried to add like science
35:11
Speaker 1: to the whole thing. They they you just can't do
35:16
Speaker 1: it just right exactly. And then um, so so there
35:21
Speaker 1: that was just the experiments that they conducted to kind
35:24
Speaker 1: of show and demonstrate that this worked a lot of
35:27
Speaker 1: the stuff that they used for intelligence that was much
35:30
Speaker 1: more along the lines of them the free association one.
35:34
Speaker 1: It's not called free association what is it called? Oh,
35:37
Speaker 1: the free response experiments where they're just like, tell us
35:41
Speaker 1: about you know, the Soviets, any new submarine designs the
35:46
Speaker 1: Soviets are working on or something. So can we can
35:49
Speaker 1: we tell some of these uh stories that were supposedly successes. Yes,
35:54
Speaker 1: all right. The West Virginia site is the first one.
35:57
Speaker 1: Uh DR targ relayed this story, and these were from
36:01
Speaker 1: the early days in the early seventies, in which a
36:04
Speaker 1: remote viewer in California was given the longitude and latitude
36:08
Speaker 1: coordinates of somewhere in West Virginia said what do you see?
36:13
Speaker 1: And the remote viewer said, um, described like what was
36:16
Speaker 1: going on with a terrain above the ground and about
36:20
Speaker 1: a secret underground government site, and supposedly provided names of
36:25
Speaker 1: personnel who worked there. Uh code words used for the
36:28
Speaker 1: top secret projects UM. And apparently the description was really
36:32
Speaker 1: really accurate, so accurate that the CIA said, Um, I
36:37
Speaker 1: don't know if it was the CIA, I assume it was,
36:39
Speaker 1: but they said that we've got a leak and we
36:42
Speaker 1: need to find out what's going on and investigate this. Right,
36:46
Speaker 1: that's the kind of thing I think, like you said,
36:48
Speaker 1: that was an early seventies doctor targ one, Yeah, something
36:51
Speaker 1: like that. That prompts an investigation into a leak. That's
36:55
Speaker 1: that will get you more funding for a while. That
36:57
Speaker 1: like definitely will cement your scare the end of giving funding, Yeah,
37:01
Speaker 1: for sure, especially Yeah, if people are jumpy about what that.
37:04
Speaker 1: The Soviets might be onto this kind of thing too
37:06
Speaker 1: when we got to get on it. Sure. And apparently
37:08
Speaker 1: that same remote viewers saw or remotely saw um an
37:13
Speaker 1: underground site that was similar in Russia, and the Ural
37:16
Speaker 1: Mountains described that that was supposedly verified as quote substantially
37:21
Speaker 1: correct by the CIA. Yep. So that was one of
37:25
Speaker 1: the big ones that people kind of tout as evidence
37:28
Speaker 1: that Project Stargate worked. Right. There's also one called the
37:31
Speaker 1: Microwave Generator Report. UM. This one was with Dr May
37:35
Speaker 1: Dr Edwin May and um, the remote viewer was, as
37:40
Speaker 1: is typical, just given longitude and latitude, maybe given like
37:44
Speaker 1: a little more evidence. I think they were told that
37:46
Speaker 1: it was a technical site in the US, and the
37:50
Speaker 1: remote viewers started describing a microwave generator on site. And
37:55
Speaker 1: the most astounding thing about it is that the remote
37:59
Speaker 1: viewers said that this microwave had a beam of divergence
38:04
Speaker 1: angle of thirty degrees, which is not something that you
38:08
Speaker 1: should be able to glean from somebody telling you the
38:13
Speaker 1: latitude and longitude coordinates of a technical site. So that
38:16
Speaker 1: is pretty impressive. And then later on Dr May took
38:20
Speaker 1: the whole description um, which is we'll see is is
38:24
Speaker 1: rare in these cases and and determine that it was
38:28
Speaker 1: that the specs of the generator itself were accurate, and
38:32
Speaker 1: that the site as a whole were se accurate, okay,
38:37
Speaker 1: seventy percent reliable. No idea how you would conclude that
38:41
Speaker 1: or quantify that kind of thing. But again, this is
38:44
Speaker 1: the kind of thing like you're starting to build like
38:46
Speaker 1: a lore around this department, this agency that people who
38:50
Speaker 1: are already kind of into the existence of this kind
38:55
Speaker 1: of thing can come and participate in and talk about
38:58
Speaker 1: with their friends and wow, people at cocktail parties with
39:02
Speaker 1: the Russian crane. This one came from doctor targ remote
39:05
Speaker 1: viewer was given again coordinates of a site near a
39:09
Speaker 1: city in the former Soviet Union, and there was a
39:14
Speaker 1: um in the in like what do you see? What
39:16
Speaker 1: the drawing detailed was a large industrial crane called a
39:20
Speaker 1: gantry clane crane. And they said, you know what, there's
39:24
Speaker 1: no way that this person could have known how to
39:27
Speaker 1: draw this gantry crane unless they saw it through remote
39:30
Speaker 1: viewing or someone told them this. No other explanation, yeah, um,
39:36
Speaker 1: And that was what the analyst who has handed this
39:38
Speaker 1: was like, wow, that's really impressive. So the Russian crane
39:41
Speaker 1: stands on its own too. And then there's also one
39:45
Speaker 1: called the Lowell Fugitive. There's a woman named Angela Ford
39:49
Speaker 1: who was a longtime participant in Project stargate Um and
39:54
Speaker 1: she used kind of medium ship where she had three
39:59
Speaker 1: different we're at guides who would cause her to carry
40:02
Speaker 1: out automatic writing. That's how she did her remote viewing right.
40:07
Speaker 1: And she and this is you know, she would go
40:10
Speaker 1: down to Fort Meat at the barracks and do this
40:12
Speaker 1: right under army supervision, which is so bizarre, but that's
40:16
Speaker 1: what would happen, right. So Angela Ford was given the
40:19
Speaker 1: name of a guy named Charles Jordan's who was an
40:22
Speaker 1: interesting cat in and of himself. He was he called
40:25
Speaker 1: himself the ruler of the Florida Keys. He was at
40:30
Speaker 1: he was He's the prince of the flooria um. He
40:34
Speaker 1: was the He was a crooked customs agent who had
40:38
Speaker 1: turned into a drug smuggler down there. And also it
40:41
Speaker 1: was very easily bribed so that other drugs smugglers could
40:44
Speaker 1: smuggle their drugs. And he got caught and went on
40:48
Speaker 1: the run, and so they were looking for him. So
40:50
Speaker 1: they asked Angela Ford if she could find him for
40:53
Speaker 1: him that's right, And she said, I'm seeing or my
40:57
Speaker 1: friends or my ghost friends are telling me and I'm
41:00
Speaker 1: automatically writing this city Lowell, Wyoming. And it turned out
41:06
Speaker 1: that he was apprehended a hundred miles west of Lavelle,
41:10
Speaker 1: Wyoming with a v but a hundred miles west of
41:14
Speaker 1: a place that she still didn't name. Some people say, though,
41:18
Speaker 1: that Charles Jordan's admitted to being in the town on
41:24
Speaker 1: the day Angela Ford did her remote viewing sension proven right,
41:30
Speaker 1: So you've got all this stuff, all of these anecdotes
41:34
Speaker 1: that are just coming together into like get this, check
41:37
Speaker 1: this out, get a load of this. Were all these
41:40
Speaker 1: things that you can point to and write books on
41:42
Speaker 1: and say that like this is for real and that
41:44
Speaker 1: the Washington Post can report on. And that's what's kept
41:48
Speaker 1: this legend, this stuff about Project Stargaping for real going
41:54
Speaker 1: all these years. And if you dig it to it,
41:56
Speaker 1: it's really really hard to pull up heart because the
42:01
Speaker 1: people who were there will tell you in an interview like, oh,
42:04
Speaker 1: this person said this. But then if you interview somebody
42:06
Speaker 1: else to say, well, now they didn't say that. She
42:08
Speaker 1: didn't say she didn't say Lowell, she said northern Wyoming.
42:12
Speaker 1: Somebody else would say no, she just said, you know,
42:15
Speaker 1: somewhere in the west or something like that. So as
42:18
Speaker 1: the story of Charles Jordan being captured in Yellowstone Um
42:23
Speaker 1: comes out later, the story of Angela Ford remotely viewing
42:28
Speaker 1: him in Wyoming gets piled on and added to over
42:31
Speaker 1: the years until you have her just missing the letter
42:35
Speaker 1: of the word or the word by one letter and
42:38
Speaker 1: then seeing him in that town on the day that
42:40
Speaker 1: it happened. And that's how like this stuff goes it's
42:43
Speaker 1: just anecdotal stuff that really did happen, Like she really
42:47
Speaker 1: did have this remote viewing session. But the accuracy of
42:50
Speaker 1: it is what's always been in doubt. The problem is, Chuck,
42:53
Speaker 1: is there are examples of people doing some really spectacularly
43:01
Speaker 1: amazingly accurate hits over the years that really kind of
43:05
Speaker 1: lend credence to it in in some way, so much
43:09
Speaker 1: so that that American Research instau American Institute of Research
43:13
Speaker 1: paper still said, look, there are some weird, unexplainable stuff
43:18
Speaker 1: in here. Does it prove that remote viewing is real
43:22
Speaker 1: and that it exists. No, there's a lot of things
43:25
Speaker 1: that could explain these spectacular accurate hits, but overall, no,
43:32
Speaker 1: it's not going to It doesn't show that this is
43:35
Speaker 1: this is real because these are the hits. There was
43:39
Speaker 1: so much garbage produced that by the time old around
43:43
Speaker 1: the CIA was like, this is even if remote viewing
43:47
Speaker 1: does exist, it's so useless as an intelligence tool that
43:50
Speaker 1: we're not going to fund it anymore. Should we take
43:53
Speaker 1: another break? Yeah, all right, let's take a break it.
43:57
Speaker 1: We'll be right back after this. Alright. So here's the deal,
44:27
Speaker 1: and this is sort of the big question which you
44:30
Speaker 1: kind of answered before the break, is it no, that's
44:33
Speaker 1: sor right, it's a It was a nice tease. Is
44:36
Speaker 1: it a useful spy tool because we can have fun
44:39
Speaker 1: all day funding something and doing these fun experiments and
44:42
Speaker 1: getting them sort of right or not. But the whole
44:45
Speaker 1: purpose of all of this was can we actually use
44:48
Speaker 1: this stuff as actionable evidence or intelligence? And you can't. Really. Um,
44:55
Speaker 1: Like we said, they are anecdotal um. They might be
44:58
Speaker 1: impressed by a certain part of a thing, and you
45:02
Speaker 1: mentioned that it is rare that they ever included like
45:04
Speaker 1: the full drawing or the full discourse on whatever they
45:08
Speaker 1: supposedly saw it didn't see. They would sort of pick
45:10
Speaker 1: out something that was right and say, look they got
45:12
Speaker 1: this one part right. That's amazing. But that's sort of
45:16
Speaker 1: where it ended. Um, the with the with the gantry crane.
45:20
Speaker 1: You know, they got that gantry crane right, but there
45:23
Speaker 1: was there was so much stuff that was wrong that
45:26
Speaker 1: they said, we we can't use this. And that's sort
45:29
Speaker 1: of the point of all this is, we can't use
45:32
Speaker 1: this stuff as intelligence because it's just partial. Uh. People
45:38
Speaker 1: that defended it would say, and Jordan mcmonagle is one
45:42
Speaker 1: of them, said, this isn't supposed to be the end
45:44
Speaker 1: all be all. This is supposed to work alongside real
45:47
Speaker 1: intelligence and just see if it could help support some
45:51
Speaker 1: of this stuff or give them a hint in the
45:53
Speaker 1: right direction to start using real intelligence. And it was
45:56
Speaker 1: never supposed to be a stand alone that you go
46:00
Speaker 1: in like raid a Russian village because some remote viewers
46:03
Speaker 1: said there was a nuclear weapon there or something. Yeah. Yeah,
46:06
Speaker 1: And I think the CIA always viewed as that too,
46:08
Speaker 1: and that like it was benign. It was very cheap
46:12
Speaker 1: and inexpensive. It can be done easily, um. But the
46:16
Speaker 1: problem is is like if you have somebody who's producing
46:19
Speaker 1: tons and tons of garbage intelligence, the analysts still has
46:23
Speaker 1: to sift through that, and in some of that garbage intelligence,
46:27
Speaker 1: there may be something that leads them down the wrong path,
46:30
Speaker 1: and while they're doing that, they miss some other intelligence
46:34
Speaker 1: that that actually is useful and good. And so it's
46:38
Speaker 1: kind of like a metaphor for what pseudoscience in general
46:41
Speaker 1: does the society, Like there's garbage on there that kind
46:44
Speaker 1: of distracts you from the stuff that you could be
46:46
Speaker 1: doing that would actually be beneficial. That's what it did
46:49
Speaker 1: to intelligence analysts too, and that's why they ultimately abandoned
46:53
Speaker 1: the whole program. Right, But for twenty years they thought,
46:57
Speaker 1: you know, there were three big reasons why it was attractive,
46:59
Speaker 1: and they all kind of boy down to why not.
47:01
Speaker 1: Which it's it's a passive operation, so it's it doesn't
47:05
Speaker 1: require a lot of resources. It's you know, I don't
47:08
Speaker 1: know how many people they had remote viewing it their max,
47:10
Speaker 1: but I doubt if it was that many. Um, it
47:13
Speaker 1: didn't cost a lot. Six million bucks a year isn't
47:15
Speaker 1: that much money? And a defense budget. And then it's
47:18
Speaker 1: what's known as no known defense. So even if it's working,
47:22
Speaker 1: let's say, then the enemy can't really stop this, Um,
47:26
Speaker 1: I guess except for rooting these people out and tracking
47:29
Speaker 1: them down and killing them. Sure, But aside from that,
47:32
Speaker 1: those are the three reasons. For twenty years, they threw
47:35
Speaker 1: six million bucks a year at it, and I'm sure
47:37
Speaker 1: that kind of waivered in and out. But you know,
47:40
Speaker 1: they spent ollion dollars. No, I think they spent twenty
47:44
Speaker 1: million dollars over twenty years. Oh is that all? Yeah? Man?
47:48
Speaker 1: That was it for the whole the whole time. Spent
47:51
Speaker 1: six million a year. No, I think it might have
47:53
Speaker 1: been up to like six million dollars at the end
47:56
Speaker 1: of it, but over over the course of it, and
47:59
Speaker 1: I don't think this is really necessarily adjusted for inflation.
48:01
Speaker 1: But starting in seventy five and ending in nine, twenty
48:04
Speaker 1: million dollars, you know, on paper, is what got spent.
48:08
Speaker 1: So those first years it was like, here's a hundred
48:09
Speaker 1: thousand dollars in a bucket of weed, kind of I
48:12
Speaker 1: think so in some grape cool ais and saltines. Alright, well,
48:16
Speaker 1: twenty million bucks. But um, yeah, that's not a lot
48:18
Speaker 1: of money for you know, if you're talking overall defense budgets. No,
48:21
Speaker 1: it's not. And so it's it's so cheap that we're
48:25
Speaker 1: even vaguely promising or vaguely helpful. The c i A
48:29
Speaker 1: would have been fools not to keep funding this, or
48:32
Speaker 1: the Defense Department would have been fools not to keep
48:36
Speaker 1: funding it. Somebody and I could have kept funding it
48:39
Speaker 1: if we really put our minds to it. But it
48:41
Speaker 1: it not only wasn't useful, it it did not It
48:47
Speaker 1: was actually harmful as far as an intelligence tool is concerned.
48:51
Speaker 1: That was I think what I gather from them finally
48:54
Speaker 1: canceling it. Yeah, and this, you know, this last bit
48:57
Speaker 1: about the representative from North Carolina, Charlie Rose, not the
49:02
Speaker 1: not the the TV guy who's turned out to be
49:05
Speaker 1: quite a jerk, but um, he kind of summed it up.
49:08
Speaker 1: And this is what I think the deal is is
49:11
Speaker 1: if and this is what started it to begin with.
49:13
Speaker 1: If you think the Soviets are doing this, you can't
49:15
Speaker 1: just sit back, or at least that's the rationale. You
49:18
Speaker 1: can't just sit back and say, well it's it's probably
49:21
Speaker 1: so silly and not even real, but um, we're certainly
49:25
Speaker 1: not going to let them be the only ones trying this. Yeah, yeah,
49:29
Speaker 1: like if the Ruskies have it, we sure as heck
49:31
Speaker 1: better be on it ourselves. Luckily, Um well I was
49:37
Speaker 1: gonna say luckily that mentality favor with the Cold War.
49:39
Speaker 1: But it's back, everybody. Hey, the eighties are back. Yeah
49:43
Speaker 1: they are big time people wearing Fannie packs. And apparently
49:47
Speaker 1: there's um, what's that one thing where like you touched
49:50
Speaker 1: the shirt and like your handprint would be a color.
49:53
Speaker 1: Oh sure, like the the heat Heat shirts or whatever.
49:57
Speaker 1: I can't remember what they're called, but anyways, apparently a yeah,
50:02
Speaker 1: eighties are back. So that's it. That's Project Stargate. There's
50:05
Speaker 1: a lot to read about it. If you're fascinated by it,
50:08
Speaker 1: whether you're fascinated by it it's just completely crackpot thing,
50:11
Speaker 1: or you're like, Nope, I don't believe you, Josh and Chuck.
50:14
Speaker 1: I think you're covering up for the government, in the Illuminati, whatever.
50:18
Speaker 1: Go read more about it, and in particular, I want
50:21
Speaker 1: to I want to direct you to Mars Exploration May
50:25
Speaker 1: twenty second. It's a declassified transcript from a remote viewing
50:31
Speaker 1: session of Mars where they asked the I think Joseph
50:35
Speaker 1: mcmonagle to wander around Mars um At in the year
50:41
Speaker 1: one million b C. And it's fascinating stuff. But it
50:45
Speaker 1: also tells you everything you need to know about Project
50:47
Speaker 1: Star Gake. Uh if you want to know what I
50:51
Speaker 1: already said that kind of thing, didn't I, Chuck. I
50:53
Speaker 1: guess it's time now for listener mail. I'm gonna call
50:57
Speaker 1: this Heroin Podcast and this is from anonymous YO. Thanks
51:03
Speaker 1: for your Heroin podcast. You spoke fairly about something that
51:08
Speaker 1: is usually wrought with bias. I grew up in the
51:10
Speaker 1: Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia. It's one of the largest drug
51:13
Speaker 1: markets in the world, most of which is heroin. We
51:16
Speaker 1: are ground zero now for the opioid epidemic. Growing up
51:19
Speaker 1: around so much heroin messes with you. My childhood best
51:22
Speaker 1: friends UH turned to sex work to pay for it
51:25
Speaker 1: while we played video games upstairs. People were odean in
51:28
Speaker 1: middle school the class clowns. Dad was one of the
51:31
Speaker 1: biggest runners in the city, so when he was arrested,
51:34
Speaker 1: the kid was never the same. It's very difficult to
51:37
Speaker 1: explain what being around groups of people on heroin is like.
51:40
Speaker 1: The link below is an excellent New York Times article
51:42
Speaker 1: about the Kensington Avenue area. Luckily for me, I suppose
51:46
Speaker 1: I got out relatively unscathed. A lot of people see
51:50
Speaker 1: people who are addicted as animals and criminals. I struggle
51:53
Speaker 1: with where I stand. I know, as a group it's
51:55
Speaker 1: a public health issue, but it is also hard when
51:58
Speaker 1: looking at the individual's actions. Kensington was a middle class
52:01
Speaker 1: haven from the early to mid nineteenth century until the
52:04
Speaker 1: crack epidemic of the eighties. According to my parents, a
52:07
Speaker 1: Sunday event was walking to the shops on Kensington Avenue.
52:11
Speaker 1: Did not happen after that and that Here's the article.
52:15
Speaker 1: It is called Trapped by the Walmart of Heroin by
52:18
Speaker 1: Jennifer Percy from New York Times October and that is
52:22
Speaker 1: from anonymous man alive. Anonymous, I'm glad you made it
52:26
Speaker 1: out alive because that is very scary stuff. What a man,
52:32
Speaker 1: It's crazy. It makes you realize what what what a
52:34
Speaker 1: lottery birth is? You know, not just in like your
52:39
Speaker 1: socioeconomic class or your race or what country you're born into,
52:42
Speaker 1: but like where, what neighborhood you're born into too. I've
52:45
Speaker 1: never heard of it. Yeah, I hadn't either. Read that article.
52:48
Speaker 1: That looks good. Yeah, well, thanks a lot. And uh,
52:50
Speaker 1: we appreciate you getting in touch with us, and if
52:52
Speaker 1: you want to get in touch with us, please do.
52:55
Speaker 1: You can send us an email to Stuff podcast at
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53:05
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