SRI International

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SRI International

SRI International (formerly the Stanford Research Institute) is an independent research and development nonprofit based in Menlo Park, California, separated from Stanford University in 1970 — best known in exopolitics and psychotronics research as the institution where Hal Puthoff and Russell Targ conducted the classified remote viewing research program (1972–1985) that became Project STARGATE, and where Uri Geller was scientifically tested under CIA sponsorship in 1972–1973.

Founding and institutional structure

Stanford Research Institute was founded in 1946 as a contract research affiliate of Stanford University, intended to provide applied research services to government and industry in the post-war era. In 1970, amid controversy over the institute's classified defense research — including its connections to chemical and biological weapons programs — Stanford severed the formal affiliation, and the institute became SRI International, a fully independent nonprofit. The separation allowed SRI to continue its classified government contracts while distancing Stanford from the political controversy. SRI's Menlo Park campus maintained the institutional infrastructure for classified research, including cleared personnel, compartmented facilities, and established relationships with the CIA, DIA, and military intelligence services — the same infrastructure that would host the remote viewing program beginning in 1972.

Origins of the remote viewing program

The SRI remote viewing program began in 1972 through a sequence of events that Hal Puthoff later described as almost entirely accidental. While at SRI conducting laser physics research, Puthoff had written up a proposal for an experiment testing biological sensitivity in algae cultures — a straightforward physics experiment on the boundary between animate and inanimate matter. A polygraph researcher named Cleve Baxter read Puthoff's proposal at a cocktail party and passed it to Ingo Swann, a self-described psychic and artist who wrote to Puthoff suggesting that if he was interested in consciousness and physics, he should test a human subject rather than algae. Puthoff, skeptical, invited Swann to SRI for a weekend. Swann's first SRI test involved a highly sensitive quantum device — a magnetometer sealed inside multiple layers of electrical, magnetic, superconducting, and acoustic shielding. Swann not only affected the device's output signal — making it stop oscillating, then oscillate faster — but first drew an accurate diagram of the shielded interior that had never been published. The CIA had been monitoring Puthoff's unusual research and arrived at SRI shortly after to propose a formal study, framing the need defensively: the Soviets were spending millions on psychic espionage research, and the agency needed to know whether such capabilities were real and what classified materials they could access.

Remote viewing program

The SRI remote viewing program began in 1972 with CIA funding following interest in Soviet psychotronics programs. Puthoff and Targ tested multiple subjects including Ingo Swann, Pat Price, and Uri Geller, demonstrating statistically significant results in double-blind trials. The Uri Geller results were published in Nature in 1974 over objections from the editors — the first peer-reviewed publication of paranormal results in a major scientific journal. The program generated the protocols and training curriculum that were later deployed in the government Project STARGATE program at Fort Meade.

Among the most significant early results was Pat Price's remote viewing of a classified NSA facility at Sugar Grove, West Virginia. Price, a former Burbank police commissioner who had learned of Puthoff's research through press coverage, was given the geographic coordinates of the facility — which he had not been told was classified — and produced a detailed written account of the site that included specific project codenames from a safe inside the building. The result brought federal law enforcement to SRI's door demanding to know how Price had obtained classified information. A subsequent experiment targeting a Soviet R&D facility at Semipalatinsk produced drawings of a giant overhead crane system that was confirmed by satellite imagery — the result that finally convinced CIA contract monitors that the capability was operationally real.

The program also demonstrated that remote viewing ability was not confined to exceptional individuals. Tests with an SRI staff member who had no prior interest in the phenomenon — Hella Hammid — produced accurate descriptions of randomly selected targets, suggesting the capability was broadly distributed across the population. This discovery expanded the program's scope: Army intelligence subsequently sent officers to SRI for training, and Sergeant Joe McMoneagle eventually received the Legion of Merit for over 200 remote viewing missions for CIA, DIA, FBI, and the National Security Council. Among McMoneagle's notable results was an advance description of the Soviet Typhoon-class submarine — including its titanium hull, enormous size, and top-mounted missile silos — produced before the submarine's existence was known to Western intelligence.

CIA/DIA funding and validation

The SRI program received initial CIA funding of approximately $50,000–$60,000 for the first Swann experiments, then expanded over subsequent years as results were validated. The program ran for over 20 years at a highly classified level. When Puthoff briefed CIA Director William Casey (under Reagan), Casey cancelled the rest of his afternoon schedule and spent five hours reviewing the remote viewing data. A former CIA skeptic sent to disprove the program was converted into one of the agency's own remote viewers after independently replicating results in the SRI lab. The most significant real-world operational success acknowledged publicly came from former President Jimmy Carter, who disclosed that CIA remote viewers had pinpointed the location of a crashed Soviet Tu-22 bomber in Africa — enabling U.S. forces to reach it before Soviet recovery teams.

Uri Geller testing

Uri Geller was tested at SRI in 1972–1973 in a series of double-blind experiments under CIA oversight. Geller correctly identified hidden drawings on 10 of 14 trials. The results were controversial; the CIA's supporting role was not disclosed at the time of the Nature publication. Hal Puthoff later stated that Geller's performance under controlled conditions was genuinely anomalous and that the CIA was satisfied that the phenomenon was real.

Transition and replication

The SRI remote viewing program ran through approximately 1985, when funding and operations transitioned to Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) and eventually to the Army's Fort Meade unit that became Project STARGATE. Puthoff left SRI in 1985. The program's SRI-era findings were independently replicated at Princeton University's PEAR (Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research) Laboratory under aerospace engineering professor Robert Jahn, who confirmed both the remote viewing results and demonstrated similar effects on quantum-driven random number generators. At the Cold War's end, SRI-trained American remote viewers met Soviet counterparts and found they had experienced nearly identical phenomena and faced nearly identical institutional skepticism from their respective governments.

Zero-point energy research

Puthoff subsequently became the key theorist connecting zero-point energy to propulsion — arguing in his post-SRI work that the Casimir effect demonstrates the reality of vacuum energy and that non-human craft use ZPE manipulation as their propulsion mechanism. His SRI-era credentialing underpins his later role as a scientific anchor for the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) and the To The Stars Academy disclosure ecosystem.

Ultraterrestrials and UAP materials

Puthoff's trajectory from SRI remote viewing to UAP materials analysis illustrates the institutional continuity between Cold War consciousness research and the post-2017 disclosure ecosystem. In a 2022 paper titled "Ultraterrestrials Models," Puthoff — drawing on his decades of classified research — argued that the UAP phenomenon may not be exclusively extraterrestrial, laying out multiple hypotheses including hidden ancient human civilizations, interdimensional beings, time travelers, and "stranded ET gods," and calling for a forensic rather than speculative approach to hypothesis testing. The paper's publication was notable for its frank acknowledgment that crash-retrieval programs had occurred and that materials had been distributed to private aerospace corporations.

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