CIA’s Psychic Gamble: Inside the Cold War Project That Bent Reality

Produced by: Manoj Kumar

Magnetic Mind

Ingo Swann reportedly altered a magnetometer reading inside a shielded vacuum underground—using only his thoughts. A Stanford physicist watched in stunned silence as reality seemed to glitch.

Psychic Arms

During the Cold War, the U.S. didn’t just build nukes—they built psychics. Funded by the CIA and DIA, Project Stargate aimed to weaponize the human mind for espionage warfare.

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Shielded Secrets

Buried in classified reports are experiments so bizarre they read like sci-fi: face-recognition without sight, mind travel without motion, and mental influence over physical fields.

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Remote Eyes

Trained “viewers” were tasked with mentally locating Soviet submarines, hidden hostages, and more—all from secure U.S. labs. Some hits were eerily accurate, raising CIA eyebrows.

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Unspoken Rules

One scientist asked: What if we create a drug that makes someone super psychic? The answer? “It would disappear.” Research that worked too well became a vanishing act.

Statistical Whispers

Statistician Jessica Utts said the numbers don’t lie: remote viewing effects were consistent, repeatable, and beyond random chance. Skeptics admitted something strange was happening.

Judgment Flaws

Skeptics argued the experiments weren’t watertight—one judge, same trials, potential bias. But even they admitted: this wasn’t just statistical noise. Something weird was going on.

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Professional Paranoia

Working on Stargate meant being briefed every two weeks on national security threats. Some scientists said they felt like spies themselves—haunted by what they might uncover.

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Invisible Continuum

Stargate was officially shut down in 1995. But many involved believe it never truly ended. The most successful experiments? Possibly still hidden in the blackest of black budgets.

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