THE STARGATE CHRONICLES: Memoirs of a Psychic Spy

Back in 1964, 18-year-old Joseph McMoneagle joined the army to escape an unhappy family in the Miami projects. McMoneagle had shown high aptitude in intelligence tests and soon wound up in several interesting assignments in the Bahamas, West Germany and Thailand as an intelligence officer. But McMoneagle was not happy—his military career interfered with what was eventually a failed marriage, and his applications for promotion went answered. Still, he seemed to have a charmed life and met people who directed him along his path. In 1977, he was recruited for a top secret army project that became known as Star Gate—psychic spying on behalf of the United States. The army showed McMoneagle secret documents, based on information compiled by the Stanford Research Institute, that revealed enemy psychic spying on the United States. Willing to learn more, McMoneagle soon became immersed in the program, which was set up in some old buildings on the periphery of Fort Meade, Md., near Washington, D.C. During the 10 years that McMoneagle spent with this program, he allegedly developed an uncanny ability at "remote viewing," a process by which he was able to psychically see a targeted object, at one point seeing into a secret Soviet submarine construction facility and at another pinpointing where an American general was being held by members of Italy's Red Brigades. McMoneagle retired from this draining work in 1987, married a third time and devoted his time to freelance work, sometimes at Stanford. After the Star Gate program was revealed to the public on Nightline, McMoneagle appeared on television in America and Japan. This book (his fourth on remote viewing) is a fascinating peek into the secret world of an offbeat military intelligence program and a life lived within it. (Oct.)