Produced by: Manoj Kumar
In 1973, Ingo Swann claimed to psychically “visit” Jupiter from a chair in California—and eerily described rings and atmospheric crystals years before NASA probes confirmed them. Coincidence, or something deeper?
Forget spy satellites. The CIA bankrolled Swann’s brainwaves, hoping he could read enemy secrets using nothing but his mind. Welcome to Project Stargate: America’s strangest Cold War weapon.
Before Swann, “remote viewing” didn’t exist—not as a term or as a CIA-sanctioned skillset. He not only coined it but crafted a system so compelling, military intelligence took notes—and kept funding.
Swann wasn’t just a psychic; he painted his visions. His cosmic artworks, blending psychedelia and prophecy, now hang in the Smithsonian—otherworldly images pulled from the mind’s eye, not a telescope.
Born in Telluride, Colorado, Swann grew up amid mountains and mysticism. As a child, he reported out-of-body experiences and aura sightings—long before anyone handed him a clipboard or CIA badge.
In his cult classic Penetration, Swann suggests extraterrestrials are watching—and perhaps walking among us. With government agents, UFOs, and telepathic battles, it reads like sci-fi. But he insisted it wasn’t.
At Stanford Research Institute, Swann underwent controlled psychic experiments with physicists Hal Puthoff and Russell Targ. Results were so strange, even skeptics couldn’t look away. Neither could the CIA.
Swann described faint rings around Jupiter in 1973. Voyager 1 confirmed them in 1979. He said he saw them in a trance. NASA saw them with a billion-dollar probe. The timeline still baffles researchers.
Swann called it “projecting consciousness.” To him, the mind was a telescope, able to travel galaxies without rockets. While critics scoffed, intelligence agencies quietly took notes—and kept the files classified for years.