Remote viewing · 13 MIN READ · 8 SOURCE QUOTES
Gondola Wish to Star Gate: the program names
The U.S. remote-viewing effort the public calls Stargate ran under at least five names. Gondola Wish began in September 1977 as an Army intelligence security project at Fort Meade, Maryland. In 1978 the Army's intelligence staff replaced it with Grill Flame, a cover name for all Army parapsychology and remote-viewing work, and tasked the Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM) to build an operational unit. When Congress cut that funding, INSCOM restarted the unit in December 1982 as Center Lane, a special access program paid for from other money. In 1985 the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) took it over as Sun Streak, and by the time of the 1995 outside evaluation the DIA program was called Star Gate. The evaluation ended it.
The names changed for reasons of money, security and ownership. The method, the small unit at Fort Meade and many of its people carried through from one name to the next. Released Army papers, now readable on archive.org and in the CIA's reading room, give the dates; participants such as Joe McMoneagle, Remote Viewer 001, and Skip Atwater, the unit's operations and training officer, give the human version, which does not always match.
Robert Monroe's laboratory appears at both ends of the Army story. Gondola Wish was first planned around training Army personnel in Monroe's out-of-body technique, an idea canceled in 1978. In November 1983 INSCOM authorized Monroe's Gateway-based RAPT seminar as a screening and sensitizing tool for Center Lane, and McMoneagle spent months of long weekends in Monroe's lab during the same period.
Gondola Wish, Grill Flame, Center Lane, Sun Streak, Star Gate: one remote-viewing effort, renamed as its funding, owner and security changed.
Key points
Gondola Wish (1977–1978): a defensive project
Army papers date Gondola Wish to September 1977. It belonged to the 902d Military Intelligence Group at Fort Meade and was designed to fold the Soviet and East European psychic intelligence threat into Army operations security: train Army personnel to mimic Soviet collectors, then use them to show what was vulnerable and how to protect it. McMoneagle remembers being recruited into a project then called Gondola Wish and numbered 001.
The first plan ran through Monroe's institute
A Gondola Wish assessment dated August 25, 1978 explains why the Monroe Institute of Applied Sciences in Afton, Virginia, was chosen to train Army personnel in out-of-body experience. The Army had checked with the CIA, DIA and the Air Force's Foreign Technology Division first. A May 1978 memo records the Institute interviewing trainee volunteers, and the assessment says Monroe agreed to run a confidential training program in October and November 1978.
Canceled in favor of SRI and remote viewing
On September 25, 1978, an Army memo recorded that the Gondola Wish concept was canceled, that the Monroe Institute was not cleared, that mind-related training contracts needed clearance through an office at HEW, and that the Army might attach its training to an existing contract with SRI in California. Army briefings later explain the shift: by spring 1978 the intelligence staff wanted a comprehensive program aimed at collecting intelligence with remote viewing, not a security demonstration.
Grill Flame (1978–1982): the Army's umbrella name
On July 13, 1978 the Army's Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence ordered that all Army parapsychology and remote-viewing research, experiments and applications be protected by the unclassified nickname Grill Flame. That covered an Army research agency's work with SRI as well as INSCOM's operational unit. INSCOM was tasked in October 1978, Maj. Murray Watt was named project manager on October 27, and of 251 people considered, 117 were interviewed and six were selected for training, which began at SRI.
Grill Flame at work
A 1983 briefing gives the unit's output: 79 operational missions in 1979, 43 of them for the Iranian hostage crisis; 386 in 1980, 154 still on Iran; 153 in 1981, with only six on Iran. Personnel losses then cut production, to 47 missions in the first nine months of 1983. In 1981 the Army's intelligence staff gave INSCOM full management of Grill Flame, a joint committee with DIA and the Air Force was formed, and the Air Force later withdrew. DIA's side was research; INSCOM's was applications.
Center Lane (December 1982 to 1985)
At the end of fiscal 1982, the budget subcommittee of the Senate intelligence committee curtailed all Army psychic operations funded through the National Foreign Intelligence Program. INSCOM ended its Grill Flame involvement at the end of fiscal 1982 and, in December 1982, restarted the work as Center Lane, a special access program funded from security and investigative money. On September 1, 1983 the Secretary of the Army approved continued Army participation in Center Lane, in cooperation with DIA. A briefing from this period is given by the project manager, Lt. Col. Buzby, who introduces his operations officer, Fred (Skip) Atwater.
Monroe's RAPT seminar and SRI's training
On November 10, 1983 the INSCOM commander authorized the Rapid Acquisition Personnel Training (RAPT) seminar at the Monroe Institute in Faber, Virginia, as a screening and sensitizing tool for Center Lane, funded through a separate INSCOM office for security reasons. Recordings of Monroe's talks to an INSCOM RAPT Gateway group survive from December 1983. In the same period Center Lane paid SRI for coordinate remote viewing training and for a new viewer-screening profile, and Lt. Col. Wayne M. McDonnell wrote his 1983 assessment of the Gateway process.
Sun Streak (1985 onward): DIA takes over
In July 1984 the INSCOM commander decided Center Lane's methods would be better used higher in the Defense Department and offered its people and assets to DIA. A memorandum of agreement on March 7, 1985 gave DIA interim operational control and folded Center Lane into DIA's new Sun Streak program. A December 1985 Sun Streak procedures document describes 12 to 18 months of coordinate remote viewing training at Fort Meade and SRI offices. McMoneagle says the change to Sun Streak came about the time he retired.
Star Gate and the end in 1995
The 1995 evaluation by the American Institutes for Research, done for the CIA, calls the DIA program Star Gate. It reported a statistically significant laboratory effect but found no case where remote viewing had guided an intelligence operation, and the program was closed that year. The DIA protocols file in the same collection is dated January 1994. McMoneagle says he kept working on the research side, with SRI and then SAIC, until the 1995 closure.
In their own words
Quotes are checked word for word against the recordings and documents they come from. Bracketed words correct transcription errors; “…” marks an omission.
“We lost the original name, and we became Grill Flame. Grill Flame, that lasted until President Carter gave a interview to some people and talk[ed] to some news … people. And they asked where he had gotten the information from that allowed him to find the bomber, and he said, we got it from our psychics. He happened to be holding a green folder in his arm here with a red stripe across it, and it said Grill Flame on it. So we lost the name Grill Flame.”
“So we [were] Center Lane for a while. And then we became too important for the small, the small people that were running it, thus the Army intelligence, was taken over by the Defense Intelligence Agency, which was the center for handling all intelligence for America. And when it got taken over by DIA, the name changed from Center Lane to [Sun Streak].”
“I had got sent to Fort Meade, and I didn't realize it, but I had moved in next door to Skip Atwater, who was the operations and training officer for the Stargate, what, what then was called Center Lane, but today [the] Stargate program.”
“This report details the criteria under which the Monroe Institute of Applied Sciences (MIAS), Afton, VA, was selected as the organization to train MI personnel in a parapsychological intelligence collection technique, so that they can mimic Soviet collectors in an operations security (OPSEC) support effort. This project is referred to as GONDOLA WISH.”
“COL Capps related the following: the 902d's concept, unclassified title GONDOLA WISH, is cancelled. Monroe Institute not cleared. Contract regarding training involving [experiments] with the mind must be cleared through an office at HEW. DARCOM has an on-going contract with SRI, CA, and possibility exists to satellite our training on this contract.”
“By spring of 1978, the Army ACSI concluded there was sufficient evidence to warrant the development of a comprehensive program to explore military applications of psychoenergetics. He cancelled the Gondola Wish effort, placed a complete security envelope over Army's interest in psychoenergetics, and implemented a new program directed towards intelligence collection using [remote] viewing. The new effort was given the unclassified nickname GRILL FLAME.”
“In July 1984, CG, INSCOM determined that the technology and intelligence collection methodology used by CENTER LANE would have greater potential and could be better utilized at a higher echelon in DoD. Accordingly, CG INSCOM offered to transfer to DIA CENTER LANE's assets and personnel. On 7 March 1985, a memorandum of agreement was concluded between DIA and INSCOM providing for the interim operational control of CENTER LANE by DIA, and for the ultimate assimilation of CL assets and personnel into DIA's new SUN STREAK psychoenergetics program.”
“On 10 November 1983, CG, INSCOM authorized use of the Rapid Acquisition Personnel Training (RAPT) [seminar] at Monroe Institute of Applied Sciences, Faber, [Virginia], as a screening and sensitizing tool for ICLP. For OPSEC reasons, RAPT is [funded] and [administered] by INSCOM CENTEX, but managed by the ICLP Manager.”
Important things to consider
Memory and the documents give different reasons
McMoneagle says Grill Flame lost its name after President Carter mentioned psychics finding a downed bomber while holding a folder marked Grill Flame. The Army papers give a budget reason instead: Congress cut Army funding through the National Foreign Intelligence Program, and INSCOM carried on under a new program name. The documents say nothing about a compromised name. Use the papers for dates and causes, and participants for what the work felt like.
Gondola Wish meant two things
In the documents, Gondola Wish is a 1977–1978 security project that first planned out-of-body training at the Monroe Institute and was canceled in 1978, with the remote viewers selected under Grill Flame in the winter of 1978–79. McMoneagle remembers joining a project called Gondola Wish. Both are accurate as far as they go: the label he heard belongs to the transition between the two programs.
Grill Flame was bigger than Fort Meade
The Grill Flame nickname covered all Army parapsychology work, including research by the Army Materiel Systems Analysis Activity with SRI and a joint committee with DIA and the Air Force. When a source says Grill Flame, check whether it means the INSCOM operational unit or the wider research effort.
One document reuses a name backward
The December 1985 Sun Streak procedures copy earlier Center Lane text, and in one paragraph say the work restarted in December 1982 under the INSCOM Sun Streak Project. The 1984 Center Lane version of the same paragraph says Center Lane. The DIA writers swapped in the new name; Sun Streak did not exist in 1982.
The CIA's own summary orders the names differently
The CIA's public web story calls Stargate the DIA's first name for the program and Grill Flame a later one, which conflicts with the dated Army papers. Popular videos add more variants, and some merge every name into Stargate. When dates matter, rely on the dated Army and DIA documents.
The CIA did not run Monroe training in 1978
Some videos claim the CIA began working with the Monroe Institute in 1978 as part of Center Lane, or trained CIA agents there. The record shows something narrower: an Army plan for Monroe training was canceled in 1978, Center Lane did not exist until December 1982, and the people who attended Monroe's RAPT seminar from 1983 were Army INSCOM personnel.
The Gateway assessment is a separate document
Lt. Col. Wayne M. McDonnell's 1983 Analysis and Assessment of Gateway Process sits in the same period and archive as Center Lane, but it is an analysis of the Gateway technique, not a remote-viewing program file. The name Stargate is not a reference to the Gateway Experience.
Exact start dates for the later names are thin here
These sources give firm dates for Gondola Wish, Grill Flame, Center Lane and the 1985 Sun Streak agreement. They do not give a dated order renaming Sun Streak to Star Gate, so this page does not invent one.
Common questions
What were the code names for Project Stargate?
In order: Gondola Wish, an Army intelligence security project begun in September 1977; Grill Flame, the Army's cover name for all its parapsychology and remote-viewing work from July 1978; Center Lane, the INSCOM special access program that restarted the Fort Meade unit in December 1982 after Congress cut its old funding; Sun Streak, the Defense Intelligence Agency program that absorbed Center Lane under a March 1985 agreement; and Star Gate, the name the 1995 evaluation used for the DIA program. The work closed in 1995. Stargate, one word, is the popular name for the whole effort.
Why did the remote viewing program keep changing names?
Mostly because its funding, owner and security status changed. Gondola Wish was replaced in 1978 when the Army wanted a full intelligence program rather than a security demonstration. Grill Flame ended for the Army after a Senate intelligence subcommittee cut off Army psychic operations in the national intelligence budget at the end of fiscal 1982, so INSCOM continued with other money as Center Lane. Center Lane became Sun Streak when DIA took it over in 1985. Joe McMoneagle remembers a different trigger for the Grill Flame change, a public remark by President Carter, but the Army papers record the budget reason.
Was the Monroe Institute part of Project Stargate?
It was connected, not part of the unit. In 1978 the Army's first plan, Gondola Wish, chose the Monroe Institute to train intelligence personnel in out-of-body experience, but that plan was canceled in September 1978 and the Army turned to SRI's remote viewing. In November 1983 INSCOM authorized the Monroe Institute's RAPT seminar, built on Gateway, as a screening and sensitizing tool for Center Lane, and Monroe gave talks to INSCOM groups. Joe McMoneagle also worked in Monroe's lab under an Army arrangement. The remote viewing itself was run from Fort Meade.
What was Gondola Wish?
Gondola Wish was the first Army program in this line, set up in September 1977 by the 902d Military Intelligence Group at Fort Meade. Its purpose was defensive. Army personnel would be trained to mimic Soviet psychic intelligence collectors, then used to show what was vulnerable and how to protect it. An August 1978 assessment explains why the Monroe Institute was selected to teach out-of-body experience for this, and Monroe agreed to a confidential course that autumn. A September 1978 memo canceled the concept, noted the Monroe Institute was not cleared, and pointed to SRI instead. McMoneagle remembers Gondola Wish as the name when he was recruited.
What was Center Lane?
Center Lane was the name of the Army's Fort Meade remote-viewing unit from December 1982 until DIA took it over in 1985. After a Senate intelligence subcommittee cut Army psychic funding through the National Foreign Intelligence Program, INSCOM kept the work going as a special access program funded from security and investigative money. Its stated mission was psychic intelligence collection and counterintelligence, with plans to expand beyond remote viewing into psychic communication and psychokinesis. Its staff included project manager Lt. Col. Buzby and operations officer Skip Atwater. Center Lane paid SRI for coordinate remote viewing training and used the Monroe Institute's RAPT seminar to screen and prepare people.
Who ran the remote viewing program?
It depends on the name. Gondola Wish belonged to the Army's 902d Military Intelligence Group. Grill Flame was directed by the Army's Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence, with the Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM) running the Fort Meade unit and taking over full management in 1981. Center Lane was INSCOM's own program. Sun Streak and Star Gate were DIA programs. The CIA funded the early SRI research, commissioned the 1995 evaluation, and by McMoneagle's account directed some of the later laboratory work at SAIC.
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