The Stargate Conspiracy

by Lynn Picknett

  In its work at Giza, SRI used ‘remote sensing’ - a hi-tech but resolutely mainstream scientific technique - which is entirely different from another of their specialities, the similarly named ‘remote viewing’ that was the focus of work on which they concentrated on behalf of the CIA during the 1970s. Masterminded by researchers Russell Targ and Harold (‘Hal’) Puthoff, this was pure X-Files research. It almost certainly inspired much of the concept of the cult series, not to mention being the catalyst for the Pentagon and CIA’s own lengthy remote-viewing programmes.

  Remote viewing (RV) is an entirely psychic or paranormal technique, although it was investigated, and then taught, in Pentagon and CIA-funded projects known, for example, as Grill Flame or Sun Streak — and, significantly, Star Gate - over a twenty-year period at a cost estimated at approximately $15 million, although many sources put it much higher.97 The term ‘stargate’ has been popularised in recent years because of the successful 1994 movie and later television series of the same name, which presented the idea of an ancient device that, properly operated, could transport human beings to other worlds. Presumably the producers knew that the ancient Egyptian sba meant both ‘star’ and ‘gate’ or ‘door’,98 although the reason why a remote- viewing project was given the name Star Gate remains tantalisingly unclear.

  Essentially remote viewing deliberately induces a form of out-of-body experience (OOBE) in order to ‘travel’ to distant locations - usually across space, but occasionally even across time - and then to report back on what was ‘seen’.

  In the 1970s SRI’s research into RV was well-known among the international parapsychological communities, where it was on the whole received positively as exciting evidence for the existence of a mind, or consciousness, that could act independently of the physical body and brain. (Its implications are enormous, not least because it appears to confirm what religions and mystics have always taught: that there is an individual consciousness - spirit or soul — that can operate beyond the confines of the body, and which therefore could, theoretically, continue to exist after the body dies.)

  Targ and Puthoff’s research attracted media attention in the 1970s, mostly because it appeared that, with minimal training, almost anyone could learn how to remote view. Their experiments were featured in several television documentaries. In one, the researcher, persuaded to participate, passed with flying colours, correctly describing a ‘target’ location that she had ‘seen’ with her invisibly travelling consciousness. But back at SRI it soon became clear that there were remote-viewing ‘stars’, notably New York artist Ingo Swann and former police chief Pat Price. After being trained as a remote viewer, Price went to work for the CIA. He was later to die in mysterious circumstances.99 Swann went on to train remote viewers for the Pentagon, and afterwards for a private company. But of all the stars who took part in SRI experiments, none were as famous as the young Israeli psychic who arrived in 1972: the handsomely charismatic Uri Geller, now internationally known as the metal-bender extraordinaire.

  Geller had been ‘talent-spotted’ while entertaining in nightclubs in Israel and was taken to the United States, where his powers were tested by SRI in a controlled scientific environment. 100 The man entrusted with persuading Geller to go to SRI was to become not only his mentor, if only for a short time, but also the key player in an astonishingly complex network of interlinked conspiracies and agendas. His name was Dr Andrija Puharich — truly, as we shall see, a name to conjure with.

  The publicity surrounding Targ and Puthoff’s RV research at SRI never mentioned one major fact. The research into the RV psychic surveillance technique was funded directly by US intelligence agencies, especially the CIA’s Office of Technical Services and Office of Research.101

  The SRI research was bolstered by an injection of $150,000 from the CIA over a period of two years. There were also, according to Jim Schnabel’s Remote Viewers (1997): ‘two small contracts with the Navy and NASA, plus money left over from private grants for the Geller research’.102

  In the mid-1990s, SRI’s CIA and Pentagon backing was finally made public, partly because of the demands of the Freedom of Information Act, but also as a result of the testimony of ex-RVers themselves, especially David Morehouse, a former US Army officer, who had worked as a ‘psi spy’ on Operation Sun Streak in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In his book Psychic Warrior (1995), Morehouse describes his reaction to reading a file on the background to the RV projects:

  I couldn’t believe it. This programme had been in existence since early 1974, for nearly 15 years. It wasn’t experimental any longer ... they knew it worked - they’d proven that at Stanford, and all the evidence was here. There were books written on the stuff by the researchers involved; nobody paid any attention to them. The books didn’t mention the intelligence involvement, but evidence of government fund ing was written all over the place.103

  Morehouse also stated: ‘The government was funding paranormal research in half a dozen private, and as many state and federal research centres across the United States. They were pumping tens of millions of dollars into remote viewing and various related techniques.’104

  During the 1970s, SRI undertook several different psi-related projects, but it was the remote-viewing research that was their most cherished and important. This was the time that SRI began their work at Giza. Was this just a coincidence, or was more going on behind the scenes?

  A clue may lie in the experiences of the remote viewers. Many of them spontaneously reported encountering pyramids during their RV sessions. This, like all information gathered by remote viewing, was routinely taken seriously by the experimenters or ‘handlers’. Neither SRI nor the intelligence agencies themselves would have failed to seize upon this information, especially as they were already involved with excavations at Giza, directly or indirectly. However, it is known that when Lambert Dolphin Jr took charge of the SRI expedition to Giza in the 1970s he had information about the plateau gleaned from SRI’s remote viewers. 105 Significantly, Dolphin’s friend James Hurtak also seems, in his usual elusive fashion, to have been involved in the establishment of SRI’s remote-viewing project. When they initially established it they called in a veteran parapsychologist, Harold Sherman, to advise them,106 and we know that Hurtak was in contact with him at that time. In the words of a spokesperson for Hurtak’s Academy for Future Sciences, Hurtak ‘shared insights’ with Sherman about remote viewing.107

  However, there is another side to remote viewing, which raises some disturbing questions about the military and intelligence agencies’ enthusiasm for experimenting with it. Some commentators, such as Alex Constantine, argue that remote viewing was more concerned with beaming information into people’s minds than information-gathering from distant locations.108 Constantine maintains that remote viewing as we know it is merely misinformation, that the whole purpose of the Pentagon’s research was experimentation with mind control, and that the ‘psychic spying’ aspects were merely colour. Although Constantine presents a compelling case that some of the remote viewing projects had this hidden agenda, on the evidence, this rather extreme view seems unlikely. It is perfectly logical to assume that there was at least an element of ‘remote influencing’ in their research because, if remote viewing is a viable military technique, then some form of counter technique - like radar jamming — must also have been taken into account. Few researchers have even considered this aspect, so we cannot know for certain how far remote influencing has been taken by the authorities, although the mass of parapsychological evidence suggests strongly that all psychic processes are two-way and also occult tradition has always maintained that they can be used for good or evil.

  For these reasons, the possibility of remote influencing should be borne in mind in all the following discussions about remote viewing, especially when dealing with some of the more extreme claims made by remote viewers.

  Search for the Stargate

  Perhaps no one will ever know the full picture of what has been going on at
Giza during these last thirty or so years. The presence of apparently disparate groups and organisations such as ARE and SRI — with their often weird mix of hi-tech science and psi — and the Joseph M. Schor Foundation might at first suggest individual, even personal, aims and agendas. When the surface of this activity is scratched a little more deeply, however, the military and intelligence interest becomes increasingly clear.

  Some more colourful than others, rumours spread about Giza and the organisations involved, even producing claims that the US government is searching for a physical artefact or ancient device, perhaps even of extraterrestrial origin. Are they looking for a real working stargate, as in the movie, maybe following instructions given by remote viewers? Or, more disturbingly, have they already found it? This stupendous — and very romantic — idea remains speculation. If the Americans are involved with ancient stargate technology, then it would be the most top secret project in history, and the number of people ‘needing to know’ about it would be minimal. But what can be said with certainty is that virtually all the individuals and groups involved in the present activity at Giza are engaged in exploiting the culture, religion and even the gods of the ancient Egyptians to fulfil various aims and agendas. Essentially they show little respect for the mysterious geniuses who built the pyramids and the Sphinx for their own specific mystical reasons.

  If the intelligence agencies are seeking a device - or possibly information - then this implies that they regard the ancient Egyptians as being somehow more advanced, in some way, than our own civilisation. Once again, we return to the idea of a lost, advanced people, or perhaps an extraterrestrial connection, as promulgated most effectively by Robert Temple in The Sirius Mystery. Remember that - rather inexplicably — it attracted the attention of not only the Freemasons but also the CIA and MI5.

  But what do Hancock and Bauval think about the extraterrestrial question? After writing Keeper of Genesis they continued to investigate the mysteries of Giza, and discovered some thought-provoking connections between some of the other people and organisations involved in clandestine activity on the plateau and the newly emerging mysteries about Mars.109 For a while, it seemed as if the conspiracy that they had uncovered also had a Martian angle. The original intention behind The Mars Mystery (co-written with John Grisby, but oddly credited to Hancock alone in the United States) was to reveal it to the world. Its original subtitle was to be Message at the Edge of the World.110 When the book appeared in 1998, although it included material about a possible civilisation on Mars and its connection with ancient Egypt, it had dropped the examination of the link with the modern Giza conspiracy in favour of a study of the dangers of the Earth being hit by a comet or asteroid.

  While not explicitly expressing a belief in extraterrestrial intervention in human development, there is every indication that Hancock and Bauval are at least sympathetic to the idea. Bauval frequently acknowledges his own debt to Temple’s book, and was responsible for the publication of the new edition in 1998.111 In recent interviews, Hancock has played down the extraterrestrial angle, saying that it is not necessary for his theories, but it has been stated that a chapter on this subject was removed from Fingerprints of the Gods.112 Moreover, he and Bauval went on to write The Mars Mystery, which not only championed the idea of an ancient Martian civilisation, but also made an explicit connection with Egypt. Also suggestive is Hancock’s recent endorsement of the work, and implicitly the claims, of alien abductee Whitley Strieber (see Chapter 7).

  Hancock and Bauval’s interest in the controversy surrounding Mars marks a significant development in this story. This forms another element that has been introduced into the wider picture over the last few years. The belief that there is some connection between ancient Egypt and a long-dead civilisation on Mars has been steadily growing over the last twenty years, but is it based on anything more substantial than a fantasy? Is there any real evidence for a Martian civilisation, and for a link between it and the ancient Egyptians?

  3

  Beyond the Mars Mission

  In April 1998 the latest US space probe, Mars Global Surveyor, sent back new images of the surface features of the area of the Red Planet known as Cydonia Mensae. These were among the most eagerly awaited images in history, believed to be about to reveal details of the so-called ‘Face on Mars’, proof to many that Mars once supported a civilisation much like our own. With a resolution ten times better than previous images, these new pictures of the Face were released on the Internet to a largely stunned audience. The long-awaited images did not show new and conclusive detail of a strange face on the surface of Mars. They revealed a very eroded and very shapeless lump of rock, without discernible facelike features. The anticlimax, and in many cases, bleak disappointment, was appalling — analogous only, in our experience, to the results of the carbon-dating in 1988 that revealed the Shroud of Turin to be a fake. And although many believers in the Face are fighting back, the excitement about the anomalies on Mars has largely subsided. If Mars has a message for us, it appears to be keeping quiet about it, at least for the time being.

  The pyramids of Mars

  Mars is our near neighbour. Only 34 million miles away at its closest, the Red Planet is the fourth from the sun, the second closest to us after Venus. Just half the size of Earth, it has almost the same length of day (a little over 24.5 hours), but its year is 687 days, and its temperature ranges from an inhospitable ‘high’ of just 20 degrees Celsius to a low of — 120 degrees.

  Associated in the minds of the ancients with armed conflict - our word ‘martial’ comes from the Latin Mars, the Roman god of war - the Red Planet has long exerted a particularly powerful, often awe-inspiring, influence on mankind. But only in February 1972 did the Mariner 9 probe show us what the planet was really like, sending back the first close-up images of our neighbour: it was rocky, barren — and yes, it was rather red.

  However, neither the redness nor the rockiness attracted the most attention, especially in certain quarters. Images of the surface of Mars, taken on 8 February 1972, in the region known as the Elysium Quadrangle (15 degrees north of the Martian equator), appeared to show apparently pyramidal features — two large and two small three-sided pyramids. A second picture of the region, taken six months later on 7 August, showed the same features. These apparent structures were seized upon as evidence of an ancient Martian civilisation by, among others, Dr James J. Hurtak, then Professor of Oriental Studies at the California Institute of the Arts, who a few years later, as we saw in the last chapter, would carry out secretive work in the Great Pyramid.

  In the 1970s Hurtak was described — by British author Stuart Holroyd — in these terms:

  Hurtak ... was not so much a teacher as an experience, a guru-figure whose teaching was not an explanation of objective reality but a spontaneous creation of ideas and experiences that made his students explore new areas for themselves and in themselves. Dressed always in a crumpled suit and wearing a black beret perched on the back of his head, Hurtak held classes which sometimes ran as long as eight hours, during which he would alternate between reading long passages of scripture and delivering rambling commentaries on them.1

  Outside classes, Hurtak would lead groups of students on nighttime and weekend outings to ‘power spots’ in the Californian desert, revealing - if nothing else — a sympathy with the New Age faith in unseen energies and a living Earth.

  Few people took the Mariner 9 images of the Elysium pyramids seriously, although they did inspire a Dr Who television story2 and, ironically, intrigue that arch-‘Skeptic’ Dr Carl Sagan, enough for him to write in Cosmos (1981):

  The largest [of the pyramids] are 3 kilometers across at the base, and 1 kilometer high — much larger than the pyramids of Sumer, Egypt or Mexico on Earth. They seem eroded and ancient, and are, perhaps, only small mountains, sandblasted for ages. But they warrant, I think, a careful look.3

  In 1976, a new American space mission, Viking, photographed the surface of Mars.4 The two spacecraft i
nvolved, Vikings I and II, each consisted of an orbiting vehicle to send back pictures and other data and a lander that touched down on the surface to undertake — among other tasks - a search for life. In this, they apparently failed, although the results are still disputed among some scientists.5 The journey took the probes nine months, and each spacecraft cost $500 million. Viking I’s lander was originally intended to touch down on 4 July 1976 to mark the American Bicentennial, but worries about the viability of the chosen landing site led to a delay to 20 July, thus instead marking the seventh anniversary of the first moon landing. Viking I landed successfully and sent back the first television pictures from the surface of Mars. Viking II landed on 3 September 1976 and the landers continued to transmit data on the Martian weather conditions back to Earth for six years afterwards.

  On 25 July 1976, from an altitude of 1,162 miles, Viking I photographed the region of Mars known as Cydonia Mensae, about 40 degrees north of the Martian equator, on the other side of the planet to Elysium. The image that was returned to Earth showed what looked like a human face staring outwards into space. This feature, about a mile long, was noticeable enough to be pointed out at a NASA press conference the next day, but, as it could reasonably be supposed to be merely a trick of the light, this, too, was deemed of no special interest. The image was filed away with the 51,538 other pictures taken during the mission. (Incredibly, only 25 per cent of these images have ever been scientifically analysed, as the budget ran out before the task could be completed.) This particular frame was given the official identification code of 35A72 - that is, the thirty-fifth image taken by Spacecraft A, Viking I, on its seventy-second orbit.