The CIA built a machine to test if psychic sessions bend light

The report's opening section establishes the basis for the experiment by referencing earlier claims that anomalous photomultiplier tube signals had been observed during remote viewing sessions specifically when a viewer correctly identified target material. The target material in those earlier sessions consisted of Chinese language characters physically concealed inside the housing of the photomultiplier tube itself, a detector designed to register individual photons of light.

A photomultiplier tube is a sensitive scientific instrument that detects extremely small quantities of light, capable of registering single photons. The claim under investigation was specific and falsifiable: that successful remote viewing sessions were accompanied by an anomalous physical signal in this light-detection equipment, suggesting some form of light emission occurring near the concealed target material at the moment a viewer correctly perceived it.

The report, prepared by G. Scott Hubbard and Edwin C. May for SRI International under contract to the U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command, describes a three-phase protocol. A brief pilot phase was conducted first to refine the experimental procedure. A formal phase followed, using the same four individuals who had participated in the pilot phase. The experiment then included a control phase consisting of two distinct types of controls, designed to rule out conventional explanations for any signal detected.

This report is identified in the document as Objective E, Task 1, described as an experiment to determine fundamental parameters of feedback, shielding, and limits of spatial resolution for remote viewing. The formal three-phase design, with a dedicated pilot phase and two separate control conditions, indicates a structured attempt to apply standard experimental physics methodology to a claim that originated from anecdotal reports during operational sessions.

This experiment was conducted under U.S. Army contract DAMD 17-85-C-5130, with Peter J. McNelis serving as Contracting Officer's Technical Representative. The report was prepared at SRI International's Geoscience and Engineering Center under the direction of Executive Director Robert S. Leonard. The document is dated to the 1985-1986 contract period and was later filed in the CIA's STARGATE collection, indicating that the research, while funded through Army channels, was considered part of the broader CIA and DIA remote viewing research effort.

The fact that the U.S. government funded controlled physics experiments testing a claimed paranormal light-emission effect, using federal contract dollars and proper scientific protocol with pilot phases and controls, is itself the primary finding of this document, independent of whatever the experiment's results showed. A federal research contract was structured around the explicit premise that a remote viewing session might produce a detectable physical signature in light-sensitive equipment.

This document establishes: SRI International, under a U.S. Army research contract later filed in the CIA's STARGATE collection, conducted a formal three-phase controlled experiment in 1985 and 1986 specifically designed to test whether light was physically emitted near remote viewing target material during successful sessions. The experiment was prompted by prior anecdotal reports of anomalous photomultiplier tube signals during sessions involving concealed Chinese characters. The research used proper experimental controls and a documented protocol.

This document does not establish, in the portion summarized here, what the experiment's results actually were. The full primary documents page contains the complete available text of the report's design and stated objectives. Whether the photon detection system registered an anomalous signal during the formal phase, and how the results compared against the control conditions, is detailed in the original 20-page report. The CIA's broader 1995 evaluation of the entire remote viewing program, conducted by the American Institutes for Research, ultimately concluded that no remote viewing session had ever produced actionable intelligence, a finding that applies to the program's operational record as a whole rather than to this specific physics experiment.

This experiment represents a distinct category within the STARGATE archive: not an operational intelligence tasking, and not a session targeting Soviet facilities or geopolitical events, but a dedicated physics experiment attempting to determine whether remote viewing, if real, produced any detectable physical signature. This places the photon detection experiment alongside the Mars remote viewing session and the Uri Geller experiments as part of the program's parallel track of fundamental research into the mechanism of the claimed phenomena, separate from its operational intelligence work.

Related: STARGATE Mars 1984, the CIA remote viewing session targeting ancient Mars →

Related: CIA tests Uri Geller at Stanford Research Institute, 1973 →

Related: Project STARGATE, the full program record and the 1995 evaluation that ended it →