Project Gateway
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Project Gateway is, in John Kiriakou's account, the CIA's astral-projection and remote-viewing effort, a component of the broader MK-Ultra program that ran from 1952 to 1975, distinct from the later Project Stargate, which Kiriakou dismissed as "so out there." He says it grew out of a fabricated source who told the CIA the Russians were experimenting with ESP, astral projection and mind reading, prompting a panic to catch up. In fact, Kiriakou says, the Russians were doing no such thing, though the Chinese were, unknown to the agency at the time.

Kiriakou says the program, associated with the Monroe Institute's "Gateway" effort, was, to his understanding, wound down in the 1970s after millions of dollars produced no results; he says he never personally encountered it during his own career. He argues that any secret ongoing remote-viewing program would inevitably leak, since the CIA's internal social scene, its softball league, LGBTQ organization, or quilting club, is where classified rumors travel: "everyone knows" eventually, whether in the hallway, the cafeteria, or the bar.

Origin as a sub-programme of MK Ultra

On Covert Strategies Revealed in July 2026, John Kiriakou said Project Gateway is best understood as one strand of the wider MK Ultra programme, which ran from 1952 to 1975 and included "ESP, astral projection, mind reading, LSD and using LSD to get people to confess to their deepest, darkest secrets." Kiriakou says the entire enterprise began after the CIA recruited "a fake, a phony source who said 'the Russians are experimenting with this'", a claim Kiriakou says was untrue, though the Chinese were. "We're behind the eight-ball," the agency told itself, and poured resources into the ESP-and-LSD portfolio on a false premise.

See also

- MK-Ultra
- Family Jewels
