The main guest is Dale Graff, the man who coined the name for the government's secret remote viewing effort, Project Stargate. Graff, who spent 17 years in the Defense Department researching parapsychological phenomena, confirms that psi is real based on his quarter-century of work. He describes the protocols used in remote viewing sessions, including randomized targeting and double-blind procedures, and offers his theory that remote viewers may actually be perceiving their own future knowledge rather than traveling through time.
Graff reveals that the program's cancellation was driven more by career concerns of military commanders than by any failure of results. He states that if the 1995 review had examined earlier successes from the 1980s rather than only the final two years, the conclusion would have been very different. He maintains that psi ability exists in everyone to varying degrees and represents an extension of natural human intuition.
Key Moments
Texas flesh-eating strep A - 89 cases, 18 dead: Art reads breaking Reuters wire copy: a Group A streptococcus outbreak in Texas has killed 18 people in three months across 89 reported cases since December 1, including a five-year-old Houston boy. He demands to know why a CDC-linked outbreak isn't getting national coverage.
How Stargate got its name: Graff explains that when he became director of the in-house remote viewing unit around 1989, he renamed the program Stargate because he wanted a name with symbolism - one that evoked an innovative project for reaching beyond the horizon of human potential.
How Nightline broke Stargate publicly: Graff describes the 1995 leak: an unclassified American Institutes for Research report commissioned by the CIA somehow circulated inside the Beltway, ABC's Nightline beat competing outlets to it, and a 20-year secret psychic-intelligence program was suddenly national news.
Art's on-air remote viewing experiment that scared him: Bell recounts an audience experiment a year prior in which listeners faxed drawings of an unguessable object in his home - a marble slab with his own etched portrait. Two listeners drew it precisely, and Bell and his wife felt watched 'times a thousand' during the session.
Art's Santa Barbara premonition about his car: Bell shares his one undeniable psi experience: while watching the evening news in Santa Barbara, mental 'ocean waves' warned him repeatedly that his car was about to be hit. He looked out just in time to watch a man back into it. Graff frames it as picking up the driver's reckless intent.