Overview

The Star Gate program represented one of the most sustained and well-documented government-sponsored investigations into anomalous cognition and remote viewing. Operating under classified status for over two decades, the program brought together physicists, parapsychologists, and intelligence professionals to explore whether individuals could acquire information about distant or hidden targets through non-sensory means. May’s role as director during the program’s final decade positioned him at the centre of both its operational activities and its scientific documentation, making him a key figure in understanding how government-sponsored parapsychology research was conducted and evaluated during the Cold War era and beyond.

Program origins and early history

The Star Gate program emerged from earlier government interest in psi phenomena during the Cold War, when intelligence agencies sought potential advantages in espionage and strategic assessment. The program’s formal inception in 1972 marked the beginning of a systematic, long-term investigation into whether remote viewing could provide actionable intelligence.¹ Initial work at the Stanford Research Institute established protocols for training and evaluating remote viewers, developing methodologies that would be refined and expanded over the following decades.

The early phase of the program established foundational operational procedures and began accumulating a substantial database of remote viewing sessions. These early efforts, conducted under the auspices of the Stanford Research Institute, created the infrastructure and conceptual framework that would persist throughout the program’s existence. The work during this period focused on demonstrating the feasibility of remote viewing as an intelligence tool and developing reliable methods for training and assessing viewer performance.

May’s directorship and operational phase

May assumed directorship of the Star Gate program in 1985, inheriting a well-established operation and continuing the work that had been pioneered by his predecessors at the Stanford Research Institute.¹ His tenure marked a transition in the program’s institutional home, as operations shifted from the Stanford Research Institute to Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), a private research and engineering company. This transition reflected both the evolving nature of government contracting and the program’s maturation as a research enterprise.

During his decade as director, May oversaw the operational remote viewing activities that formed the core of the program’s mission. He managed the training and deployment of remote viewers, supervised the collection and analysis of viewing sessions, and maintained the scientific rigor necessary to evaluate whether the program was producing genuine anomalous cognition effects or whether results could be attributed to conventional explanations such as sensory leakage, statistical artifacts, or experimenter bias. May’s background as a physicist brought quantitative and analytical discipline to the program’s operations, emphasizing statistical analysis and methodological controls.

The operational phase under May’s direction involved systematic remote viewing sessions targeting various categories of information relevant to intelligence interests. Viewers were trained to describe distant or hidden targets, and their descriptions were recorded and later compared against the actual targets to assess accuracy. The program maintained detailed records of these sessions, creating an extensive archive that would later become the basis for comprehensive historical documentation.

Research scope and methodologies

The Star Gate program under May’s direction employed sophisticated methodologies designed to maximize the likelihood of detecting genuine anomalous cognition while minimizing potential sources of error or artifact. The program investigated remote viewing across multiple target categories and experimental conditions, seeking to understand both the reliability of the phenomenon and the factors that might enhance or inhibit viewer performance.²

May’s approach to program management emphasized the importance of rigorous analysis and systematic documentation. The program collected extensive data on viewer performance, target characteristics, and experimental conditions, creating a comprehensive database that allowed for detailed statistical analysis and pattern recognition. This analytical focus reflected May’s commitment to treating remote viewing as a scientific phenomenon worthy of careful empirical investigation, rather than as an anecdotal or purely operational matter.

The research conducted during this period advanced understanding of how remote viewing performance varied across different types of targets, different viewers, and different experimental protocols. The program investigated whether certain target properties (such as emotional salience, geographical distance, or temporal displacement) affected the likelihood of successful remote viewing. These investigations contributed to the broader scientific understanding of anomalous cognition phenomena and informed both the operational deployment of remote viewers and the theoretical frameworks used to interpret the results.

Program closure and legacy

The Star Gate program concluded in 1995, following a comprehensive review by the American Institutes for Research (AIR). This review, commissioned by the government, examined the program’s scientific validity and operational utility. May subsequently provided detailed commentary on the AIR review, offering his perspective on the review’s methodology and conclusions.³ The closure of the program marked the end of nearly a quarter-century of government-sponsored remote viewing research, though it did not end May’s involvement with anomalous cognition research.

Following the program’s closure, May became instrumental in preserving and documenting the Star Gate archives. Working with collaborators, he compiled comprehensive reports covering the entire span of the program from 1972 to 1995.² These archival efforts ensured that the extensive data collected during the program’s operation would be available for future analysis and historical study. The Star Gate Archives represent one of the most complete records of a government-sponsored parapsychology program, providing researchers with detailed information about operational procedures, analytical methods, and empirical results.

May also documented the international dimensions of remote viewing research, including comparative accounts of how the Soviet Union and other nations approached similar investigations into anomalous cognition phenomena.⁴ These accounts provided historical context for understanding the Star Gate program within the broader landscape of Cold War-era scientific competition and intelligence gathering.

Responses and evaluation

The closure of the Star Gate program and the American Institutes for Research review prompted significant discussion within the scientific and intelligence communities about the validity and utility of remote viewing research. May’s response to the AIR review articulated his perspective on the review’s assessment and defended the scientific integrity of the program’s research.³ His commentary addressed specific methodological questions raised by the review and provided context for understanding the program’s findings.

May’s subsequent work in documenting the Star Gate Archives served as both a historical record and a response to questions about what the program had actually accomplished. By making the detailed archival materials available, May enabled independent researchers to examine the program’s data and draw their own conclusions about the validity of the remote viewing effects that had been reported. This commitment to transparency and documentation reflected a broader scientific principle that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and that such evidence should be preserved and made available for scrutiny.

The legacy of the Star Gate program, as preserved and interpreted by May, demonstrates the complexity of evaluating government-sponsored parapsychology research. The program operated within the constraints of classified intelligence work, yet also maintained scientific standards and documentation practices. May’s role in both directing the program and subsequently documenting its history positioned him as a key figure in understanding how anomalous cognition research was conducted within institutional and governmental contexts, and how such research could be evaluated and preserved for future scientific consideration.